March 2016 – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

Prospects for Catholic-Muslim ‘Dialogue’ and the Foolishness of the Catholic Bishops

Robert Reilly is too politic to refer to the Catholic bishops as fools, so I'll do it for him. Not all of them are fools, of course, but many if not most, and not just on the topic of Islam, but on other topics as well, such as capital punishment. Reilly's recent Catholic Thing piece is essential reading if you care about hard truth as opposed to liberal-left feel-good pablum. I'll pull a few quotations.

. . . like most Americans, the bishops know almost nothing about Islam. Therefore, they don’t understand the context in which their Muslim interlocutors are speaking. As a result, they engage in mirror imaging, i.e., understanding the Muslims as the good bishops understand themselves. A big mistake.

A big mistake indeed. See the detailed discussion in my Islam and the Perils of Psychological Projection. Reilly continues:

San Diego Bishop Robert W. McElroy recently provided an example at the University of San Diego’s Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. The Catholic News Service headlined the event: “Bishop challenges Catholics to combat ‘ugly tide of anti-Islamic bigotry.’” The bishop said Catholics must speak out against “distortions of Muslim theology and teaching on society and the state.”

What might these distortions be? Apparently, that we should view with repugnance the “repeated falsehoods” that Islam is inherently violent, that Muslims seek to supplant the U.S. Constitution with sharia law, and that Muslim immigration threatens “the cultural identity of the American people.”

Bishop McElroy’s dialogue partner for the evening was Sayyid Syeed, a leader of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), whose name was familiar to me because he has been a fixture in the Midwest Catholic-Muslim dialogues. Perhaps the bishop was unacquainted with the pedigree of ISNA, which was spawned by the Muslim Brotherhood, the premier world organization for the reestablishment of the caliphate – whose purpose is the establishment of sharia.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.

Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, also a frequent dialogue partner with the bishops and past president of ISNA, had this to say in the newspaper Pakistan Link: “We must not forget that Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.” In 2001, he wrote, “Once more people accept Islam, insha’allah, this will lead to the implementation of Sharia in all areas.”

[. . .]

While acknowledging the terrible situation of Christians in the Middle East, Bishop McElroy apparently praised Islam’s respect for “the peoples of the Book.” In this, he was eagerly seconded by his dialogue partner, Mr. Syeed, who, according to CNS, said that the first millennium was marked by positive relations between Christianity and Islam, but that all changed in the millennium that followed, which included the Crusades.

This is an interesting perspective on history.

By A.D. 650, Muslims ruled Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt – all of which had been Christian lands whose inhabitants were demoted to the subject status of dhimmis. Less than a century later, Islam had spread to North Africa and Spain – all within the first millennium of “positive relations.” In none of these places did Muslims arrive peacefully.

I suggest that the bishops put Bat Ye’or’s book, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude, on their reading list so they can speak accurately about Islam’s respect for “the peoples of the Book” in the first millennium and afterwards. From this history, is it unreasonable to consider that there is something “inherently violent” in Islam?

Mr. Syeed went on to say that, in the second millennium, “the two faiths divided the world into a ‘house of Islam’ and a ‘house of Christianity.’” Actually, the division was made well before that by Islam, which created the distinction between between the dar al-islam and dar al-harb, with the Christian world being described as the “house of war.”

But perhaps this distinction is superannuated? Somewhat around the time of Bishop McElroy’s speech, in a Friday sermon in Edmonton, Alberta, Imam Shaban Sherif Mady declared, “Look forward to it, because the Prophet Muhammad said that Rome would be conquered! It will be conquered. Constantinople was conquered. Rome is the Vatican, the very heart of the Christian state.”

Now who is misunderstanding Islam here, the imam or the bishop? (I leave out Mr. Syeed because he could hardly deny that Mohammed said this.)

In other words, the San Diego Peace Institute event provides a microcosm for what generally goes wrong in Catholic-Muslim dialogue as conducted by the bishops’ conferences. None of the many Muslim intellectual reformers with whom I have worked over the years has ever been invited to such a dialogue. For the most part, only Islamist organizations need apply.

Citizens Lynching Citizens

In light of the Brussels attack and Obama's unbelievably lame 51 second response thereto, in which he once again refused properly to name the source of the carnage, the following re-posting of an entry from over a year ago is justified.

……………………………..

Imagine a history teacher who tells his students that in the American South, as late as the 1960s, certain citizens lynched certain other citizens. Would you say that the teacher had omitted something of great importance for understanding why these lynchings occurred? Yes you would. You would point out that the lynchings were of blacks by whites, and that a good part of the motivation for their unspeakable crimes was sheer racial animus. In the case of these crimes, the races of the perpetrators and of their victims are facts relevant to understanding the crimes. Just to describe the lynchings accurately one has to mention race, let alone to explain them.

I hope no one will disagree with me on this.

Or consider the case of a history teacher who reports that in Germany, 1933-1945, certain German citizens harassed, tortured, enslaved, and executed other German citizens. That is true, of course, but it leaves out the fact that the perpetrators were Nazis and (most of) the victims Jews. Those additional facts must be reported for the situation to be properly described, let alone explained. Not only that, the Nazis were acting from Nazi ideology and the Jew were killed for being Jews.

According to recent reports, some Muslim jihadis beheaded some Egyptian Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach. Now beheading is not lynching. And religion is not the same as race. But just as race is relevant in the lynching case, religion is relevant in the beheading case. That the perpetrators of the beheadings were Muslims and the victims Christians enters into both an adequate description and an adequate explanation of the evil deeds of the former.

This is especially so since the Muslims were acting from Islamic beliefs and the Christians were killed for their Christian beliefs. It was not as if some merely nominal Muslims killed some merely nominal Christians in a dispute over the ownership of some donkeys.

Bear in mind my distinction between a 'sociological' X and a 'doctrinal' X. Suppose you were brought up Mormon in Idaho or Utah, but now reject the religion. Your being no longer doctrinally a Mormon is consistent with your remaining sociologically a Mormon.

What did Barack Obama say about the beheading? He said: “No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence and terrorism."

Now that is a mendacious thing to say. Obama knows that the behavior of people is influenced by their beliefs. For example, he knows that part of the explanation of the lynchings of blacks by whites is that the white perpetrators held racists beliefs that justified (in their own minds) their horrendous behavior. And of course he knows, mutatis mutandis, the same about the beheading case.

He knows that he is engaging in a vicious abstraction when he sunders people and their beliefs in such a way as to imply that those beliefs have no influence on their actions.

Why then is Obama so dishonest? Part of the explanation is that he just does not care about truth. (This is a mark of the bullshitter as Harry Frankfurt has pointed out in his celebrated On Bullshit.) Truth, after all, is not a leftist value, except insofar as it can be invoked by leftists to forward their agenda. It is the 'progressive' agenda that counts, first, and the narrative that justifies the agenda, second. (Karl Marx, 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it.") Truth doesn't come into it since a narrative is just a story and a story needn't be true to mobilize people to implement an agenda.

There's more to it than that, but that's enough for now. This is a blog and brevity is the soul of blog as some wit once observed.

What is to be done? Well, every decent person must do what he or she can to combat the destructive liars of the Left. It is a noble fight, and may also be, shall we say, conducive unto your further existence in the style to which you have become accustomed.

The Jean-Paul Sartre Cookbook

You probably knew that Elizabeth Warren, aka Fauxcahontas, contributed recipes to the cookbook, Pow Wow Chow. You might even know that some have alleged that these recipes were plagiarized by the Indian maiden. But I'll bet you don't know that Jean-Paul Sartre worked on a cookbook. Another reason why you need to read my blog.

Here is a 'taste':

We have recently been lucky enough to discover several previously lost diaries of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre stuck in between the cushions of our office sofa. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Aparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write "a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavor forever.'' The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal.

October 3

Spoke with Camus today about my cookbook. Though he has never actually eaten, he gave me much encouragement. I rushed home immediately to begin work. How excited I am! I have begun my formula for a Denver omelet.

October 4

Still working on the omelet. There have been stumbling blocks. I keep creating omelets one after another, like soldiers marching into the sea, but each one seems empty, hollow, like stone. I want to create an omelet that expresses the meaninglessness of existence, and instead they taste like cheese. I look at them on the plate, but they do not look back. Tried eating them with the lights off. It did not help. Malraux suggested paprika.

October 6

I have realized that the traditional omelet form (eggs and cheese) is bourgeois. Today I tried making one out of a cigarette, some coffee, and four tiny stones. I fed it to Malraux, who puked. I am encouraged, but my journey is still long.

October 7

Today I again modified my omelet recipe. While my previous attempts had expressed my own bitterness, they communicated only illness to the eater. In an attempt to reach the bourgeoisie, I taped two fried eggs over my eyes and walked the streets of Paris for an hour. I ran into Camus at the Select. He called me a "pathetic dork" and told me to "go home and wash my face." Angered, I poured a bowl of bouillabaisse into his lap. He became enraged, and, seizing a straw wrapped in paper, tore off one end of the wrapper and blew through the straw. propelling the wrapper into my eye. "Ow! You dick!" I cried. I leaped up, cursing and holding my eye, and fled.

Socialism Kills

Literally

Callicles as Precursor of De Sade

At Gorgias 492, tr. Helmbold, the divine Plato puts the following words into the mouth of Callicles:

     A man who is going to live a full life must allow his desires to
     become as mighty as may be and never repress them. When his
     passions have come to full maturity, he must be able to serve them
     through his courage and intelligence and gratify every fleeting
     desire as it comes into his heart.

[. . .]

     The truth, which you claim to pursue, Socrates, is really this:
     luxury, license, and liberty, when they have the upper hand, are
     really virtue, and happiness as well; everything else is a set of
     fine terms, man-made conventions, warped against nature, a pack of
     stuff and nonsense!

Now let us consider what the decidedly undivine Marquis de Sade has Mme. Delbene say in Julliette or Vice Amply Rewarded:

. . . I am going to dismiss this equally absurd and childish obligation which enjoins us not to do unto others that which unto us we would not have done. It is the precise contrary Nature recommends, since Nature's single precept is to enjoy oneself, at the expense of no matter whom. But at our leisure we shall return to these subjects; for the nonce, let's now put our theories into practice and, after having demonstrated that you can do everything without committing a crime, let's commit a villainy or two to convince ourselves that everything can be done. (p. 30, emphasis in original, tr. Casavini)

From the cover: "abridged but unexpurgated from the original five-volume work especially for the adult reader." In other other words, the good stuff, i.e., the philosophy, has been cut, but the 'adult matter' remains. I get a kick out of this use of 'adult' — but that's another post.

The natural man, in the grip of his lusts, is a natural sophist: what can be done is eo ipso permissible to do. Reason in a philosopher without God easily becomes unhinged.

Prostitution

A great evil well-exposed by Rachel Moran, a former prostitute, in Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution (W. W. Norton, first American edition 2015).

A Fool and His Coat

A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him. (anon. via Sowell)

A Question About Tropes

EL: I have been reading with great pleasure and enlightenment certain sections of your superb work, A Paradigm Theory of Existence: Onto-Theology Vindicated. Your skill and poise in framing and unfolding your argument, your marvelous dexterity with rebuttal of adversarial views, and your insistence that existence remain at the center of metaphysical inquiry instead of being reduced to an afterthought – or cast out of the mind altogether – reward and refresh the reader.

BV: Thanks for the kind words. The book snagged some favorable reviews from Hugh McCann, Panayot Butchvarov, and others. But the treatment it received at Notre Dame Philosophy Reviews was pretty shabby. Kluwer sent the then editor Gary Gutting a copy and he sent it to a reviewer who declined to review it. So I requested that the copy be returned either to me or Kluwer so that it could be sent elsewhere. Gutting informed me that the reviewer had sold the book. So the reviewer accepted an expensive book to review, decided not to review it, and then sold it to profit himself. A person with a modicum of moral decency would first of all not agree to have a book sent to him if he had no intention of reviewing it. But if he finds that for some reason he cannot review it, then he ought to return it. The book is the payment for the review; it is wrong to keep a book one does not review after one has agreed to review it.

EL: My question concerns your statement, in A Paradigm Theory of Existence, that tropes “float free” (221). Is this correct?

BV: It depends on what 'float free' means. Here is what I said in PTE, 221-222:

Tropes differ from Aristotelian accidents in that they do not require the support of a substratum. They 'float free.' They need individuation ab extra as little as they need support ab extra: they differ numerically from each other without the need of any constituent to make them differ. In that respect they are like bare particulars except of course that they are not bare. Each is a nature. Each is at once and indissolubly a this and a such. Tropes are the "alphabet of being" (D. C. Williams), the rock bottom existents out of which all else is built up. Ordinary, concrete particulars are bundles or clusters of these abstract particulars. Thus Socrates is a bundle of tropes, a system of actually compresent tropes, and to say that he is pale is to say that a pale trope is compresent with other tropes comprising him.

Therefore, to say that tropes 'float free' is to say that they are unlike Aristotelian accidents in at least two ways.

First, they do not require for their existence a substratum in which to inhere. An accident A of a substance S cannot exist except 'in' a substance, and indeed, 'in' S, the very substance of which it is an accident. To exist for an accident is to inhere. But to exist for a trope is not to inhere. That is what it means to say that tropes do not need support ab extra. They stand on their own, ontologically speaking. Otherwise they wouldn't constitute the "alphabet of being" in Donald C. Williams' felicitous phrase.

If an ordinary particular, my coffee cup say, is a bundle of compresent tropes, then surely there must be a sense in which the tropes are ontologically prior to the bundle, and a corresponding sense in which the bundle is ontologically posterior to the constituent tropes. This is obvious from the fact that my cup is a contingent being. In trope-theoretic terms what this means is that the tropes that compose my cup might not have been compresent. The possible nonexistence of my cup is then the possible non-compresence of its constituent tropes. The tropes composing my cup could have existed without the cup existing, but the cup could not have existed without those tropes existing. Crude analogy: the stones in my stone wall could have existed without the wall existing, but the wall — that very wall — could not have existed without the stones existing.

But this is not to say tropes can exist on their own apart from any bundle. It could be that they can exist only in some bundle or other but not necessarily in the bundle in which they happen to be bundled. The perhaps infelicitous 'float free' need not be read as implying that tropes can exist unbundled. By the way, here is where the crude analogy breaks down. The stones in my wall could have existed in a wholly scattered state. But presumably the tropes composing my cup could not have existed unbundled.

Second, tropes, unlike accidents, do not need something external to them for their individuation, or rather ontological differentiation. What makes two accidents two rather than one? The numerical difference of the substances in which they inhere. The metaphysical ground of the numerical difference of A1 and A2 — both accidents — is the numerical difference of the primary substances in which they inhere. But tropes need nothing external to them to ground their numerical difference from one another.

Example. My cats Max Black and Manny Black are asleep by the fire. Each is warm, both metabolically, and by the causal agency of the fire. Consider only the warmth in each caused by the fire. Assume that the degree of warmth is the same. If warmth is either an Aristotelian accident or a trope then it is a particular (an unrepeatable, non-instantiable) item, not a universal. On either theory, each cat has its own warmth. But what makes the two 'warmths' two? What is the ground of their numerical difference? On the accident theory, it is the numerical difference of the underlying substances, Max and Manny. On the trope theory, the two warmths are just numerically different: they are self-differentiating.

EL: I understand that tropes are self-individuating, each being a numerically distinct, particularized, and unrepeatable quality. As Maurin explains, “To a trope theorist, therefore, the fact that each particular redness (each trope) is such that it resembles every other particular redness is a consequence of the fact that each particular redness is what it is and nothing else” (2002, 57). But I don’t understand how tropes “float free.”

BV: I believe I have just given a satisfactory explanation of what 'floats free' means in this context. I would agree, however, that 'floats free' is not a particularly happy formulation.

EL: Your clarification would be keenly appreciated. When reading about trope theory, I sometimes feel that I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. Then you need some music therapy.

BV: If you want from me a defense of the coherence and tenability of trope theory, that I cannot provide. I suspect that every philosophical theory succumbs in the end to aporiai. And that goes for the theories I propose in PTE as well.

EL: On the one hand, tropes (abstract particulars) are logically prior to things (concrete particulars), because through their compresence tropes bring things into existence.

BV: Right.

EL: On the other hand, things are logically prior to tropes because, lacking existential independence, tropes are only through compresence in the thing they constitute.

BV: Not quite. Tropes are only when compresent in some bundle or other. But this is not to say that tropes composing my coffee cup could not have existed in other bundles.

EL: Indeed, Lowe argues that trope theory “fall[s] into a fatal circularity which deprives both tropes and trope-bundles of well-defined identity-conditions altogether” (1998, 206).

BV: What is the title of the book or article?

The following view is fatally circular. An ordinary particular is a system of compresent tropes. Its existence is just the compresence of those tropes. The tropes themselves exist only as the relata of the compresence relation within the very same ordinary particular.

To avoid this circularity one could say what I said above: while tropes cannot exist apart from some bundle or other, there is no necessity that the tropes composing a given bundle be confined to that very bundle. Saying this, one would grant some independence to the trope 'building blocks.' But then the problem is to make sense of this independence.

Suppose that in the actual world trope T1 is a constituent of Bundle B1, but that there is a merely possible world W in which T1 is a constituent of bundle B2. But then T1 threatens to turn into a universal, a repeatable item. For then T1 occurs in two possible worlds, the actual world and W.

Skeptical in Philosophy, Committed in Politics

Recently over the transom:

Greetings from a long time reader and fan of your blog.

I'm often struck by the difference in tone (representing a difference in your doxastic stance?) when you discuss ontological issues and when you discuss political issues. This was brought home forcibly by 'Does Evil Disprove the Existence of God’ and your ongoing commentary on US politics.

When discussing ontology and philosophical theology you often insinuate that the existence of multiple rationally tenable answers to a given problem gives cause to question the very possibility of finding a solution, and thus that one should be at least cautious about claiming to have the correct answer. Yet, when commenting on politics you freely make moral condemnations and normative announcements [pronouncements].

What explains this discrepancy? Are you of the opinion that political philosophy questions have easier answers than those of the 'Ontology Room'? As you have admitted that politics' meta-ethical foundations largely depend on metaphysics one adopts, I find that hard to believe. Or do you hold that in principle the same qualifications apply, albeit for the sake of every day communication don't give them every time you comment? (I had assumed it was something along the lines of the latter).

As one of the things that drove me to Philosophy was the realisation that many people dogmatise about every-day social/political issues, but often throw up their hands—becoming skeptics, agnostics, or contradicting themselves—when faced with fundamental metaphysical or existential questions, I'm interested to hear your answer.

Best wishes from the land of Ockham and Whitehead,

D. C.

My reader accurately observes that my tone is very different when discussing philosophical questions and when engaging in political commentary. When discussing philosophy the position I take is often that of a solubility skeptic. To simplify my view and present it in the form of a slogan:

The classical problems of philosophy are all of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but none of them humanly soluble.

And of course I hold this view tentatively and non-dogmatically. This implies that my solubility skepticism extends to the meta-philosophical problem of the solubility of philosophical problems. I don't claim to have solved it! I claim only that a very strong rational case can be made for my slogan, or rather, for my slogan properly 'exfoliated,' i.e. properly unwrapped and unpacked and qualified with all key terms defined.

Of course, one doesn't have to subscribe to my solubility skepticism to think that philosophical questions should be discussed carefully, cautiously, and calmly.

When it comes to politics, however, my stance is more often than not partisan and polemical. I have been know to say things like, "Anyone who holds such-and-such a view is moral scum and ought to be morally condemned." But of course I would never accuse a philosopher of moral turpitude should he adopt a regularity theory of causation or accept a Meinongian semantics. Subject to some qualifications, there is no place for polemics in philosophy proper. There is also not much need for it since the problems that fascinate us professional philosophers are often not exactly 'pressing.'

Now one distinction that needs to be made, and that my reader seems not to be making, is between political philosophy and politics. The first is philosophy, the second is not. The philosopher aims at understanding the world in its deepest and most pervasive features. His task is theoretical, not practical. Politics, however, is practical, a matter of action. To borrow a beautiful line from Plato's Republic at 486a, the philosopher is a "spectator of all time and existence." The state and the political in general are among the objects of the philosopher's calm and unhurried contemplation. But of course no human being is a pure transcendental spectator, not even the philosopher who meets the stringent Platonic demands and possesses magnificence of mind and a proper sense of the relative insignificance of human affairs; he is also an animal embedded in nature. As indigent, at-risk participants in natural and social life, as possessing what Wilhelm Dilthey called a Sitz im Leben, we must act to ward off threats and secure our continuance. And we must act in 'Cave-like' conditions where the lighting is bad and much is unclear. Here is the province of politics. As Schopenhauer observes, the world is beautiful to behold, but terrible to be a part of. We are both: spectators and participants. We are beholders of it and beholden to it. As participants, we must act to secure our material existence so that we can engage in the higher pursuits.

And so we must battle our enemies. When one's liberties, way of life, or very existence are under threat one must take a stand. This involves what might be called the 'dogmatism of action.' There is a certain benign skepticism that is essential to the life of inquiry; doubt, I like to say, in the engine of inquiry. But one cannot suspend judgment and refrain from the necessary one-sidedness of action in the face of one's enemies.

The human condition is indeed a predicament. We must act even though we lack full insight into how we ought to act. And we must patiently inquire into how we ought to act and live even though calm inquiry can impede action. We have to avoid both a thoughtless decisionism and the paralysis that can result from excessive analysis.

If we distinguish, as we should, between political philosophy and political action, then the "discrepancy" my reader notes does not boil over into a contradiction within my 'system.' It would eventuate in a contradiction were I to maintain both of

a. Solubility skepticism is a rational position with respect to all classical philosophical problems

and

b. Solubility skepticism is not a rational position with respect to the problems of social and political philosophy.

But of course I don't maintain both of these propositions. I maintain (a) and the negation of (b). I would also be in trouble if I fell into a sort of performative inconsistency by upholding (a) while acting and writing as if I also uphold (b). But I don't think I am doing that. For when I do battle with political opponents I am operating in the political sphere, not the philosophical sphere, and therefore not in the political-philosophical sphere.

"But why battle your opponents? Why not get along with them?" Because they won't allow it. You cannot get along with someone who labels you a racist for opposing illegal immigration. You cannot get along with someone who thinks it perfectly legitimate to use the awesome power of the state to destroy the livelihoods of bakers and florists who refuse to violate their consciences by supplying goods and services to same-sex 'marriage' events. And so on through dozens of examples.

As I said, polemics has no place in philosophy. But politics is not philosophy and its is hard to imagine politics without a sizeable admixture of polemics. I wish it were not true, but politics is war conducted by other means. That is clearly how our opponents on the Left view it, and so that is how we must view it if we are to oppose them effectively.

As a culture warrior, I do battle with my enemies. As a philosopher, I seek truth with my friends.

Another very important distinction that is relevant here is that between philosophy-as-inquiry and philosophy-as-worldview. A worldview could be characterized as a system of ideas oriented toward action. Worldviews are action-guiding. Since we must act, and since we must act in some principled way, we need worldviews. But which worldviews are in the long run conducive to human flourishing? Here is where philosophy-as-inquiry comes into the picture.

My reader speaks of the Ontology Room; he should have spoken more broadly of the Philosophy Mansion in which there are many rooms, one of them being the Political Philosophy Room. In this mansion and in all of its rooms, polemics and invective are out of place. But the Philosophy Mansion can exist only if she is defended against her enemies. Manning the ramparts and minding the moats are the culture warriors who defend the mansion so that the acolytes of our fair mistress Philosophia can carry on as they have for millennia. (Similarly for churches and monasteries and synagogues and ashrams and zendos. Nazis and Commies and Islamists have a history of destroying them.)

As one of the things that drove me to Philosophy was the realisation that many people dogmatise about every-day social/political issues, but often throw up their hands—becoming skeptics, agnostics, or contradicting themselves—when faced with fundamental metaphysical or existential questions, I'm interested to hear your answer.

My reader is speaking of the average Joe and Jane. These types are not skeptical in my sense since they are not inquirers. They have no interest in the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. They are, for the most part, bottom-of-the-Cave types who are lazy and thoughtless and simply want an excuse to not think about the so-called Big Questions. The are typically anti-philosophical: they think philosophy is hot air, word games, and mental masturbation. But when it comes to hot-button issues, they adopt absurd philosophical views that they are incapable of recognizing as philosophical. One hears, for example, the opinion that a human fetus is "just a bit of tissue."

To sum up.

There is no inconsistency in my position as far as I can see either logically or performatively. Political philosophy must be distinguished from politics. The first is a theoretical enterprise. It ought to be pursued non-polemically and non-tendentiously. Politics, however, is a form of action in which we must engage in order to preserve ourselves and our way of life. This involves battling enemies. Here polemics is not only admissible but unavoidable. One must act and one cannot be sure that one's actions are right. That is just the predicament we are in.

Philosophers who shirk their political responsibilities abdicate what little authority they have.

Comments enabled. But don't comment on my solubility skepticism. That's not the point of the post.

David Brooks on Donald Trump

I have on occasion praised Ross Douthat and David Brooks as worth reading among the contributors to the reliably piss-poor Op Ed pages of The New York Times. But my estimation of Brooks has dropped a notch after reading his No, Not Trump, Not Ever.

Donald Trump is a deeply flawed candidate as any half-way objective observer would have to admit, and most of what Brooks says against him is on target. But Brooks does not understand the factors responsible for Trump's spectacular rise. (The explanandum is not that Trump is in the race, but that he is still in the race with a very good shot at the nomination.)

Trump voters are a coalition of the dispossessed. They have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, lost dreams. The American system is not working for them, so naturally they are looking for something else.

Moreover, many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation.

This is only part of the explanation. Brooks ignores both the role of the ultra-divisive Obama with his project of a "fundamental transformation of America" and the role of the do-nothing, go-along-to-get-along 'establishment' Republicans who refused to oppose the pernicious and often extra-legal Obama initiatives. These factors are at least equal in explanatory relevance to the rage of the dispossessed and alienated. In a cute slogan of mine:

Trump's traction is mainly due to Obaminable action and conservative inaction.

Think of all those who support Trump who are not dispossessed or alienated. I am neither and I support Trump in the following weak sense: Should he get the Republican nod, I will vote for him. For Hillary is worse, for reasons I have sketched elsewhere.

Brooks comes across as a blind anti-Trump partisan. He writes,

Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.

That is true, but it is also true of Obama and Hillary as every half-way objective observer of the passing scene knows. Trump exaggerates, bullshits, lies, refuses to admit his lies when they are exposed, and so on. Not a pretty sight. In no way presidential. But the Obama-Hillary tag team is just as bad if not worse. Why does Brooks omit to point out the obvious? What's he going to do? Sit out the election? Vote for Hillary?

So I say Brooks is as bad as the blind pro-Trump partisans who would refuse to admit any of Brooks' positive points about Trump's negatives.

UPDATE:

Jonathan V. Last understands and documents Obama's role in begetting Trump. Excerpts:

When no one on the left was asking for it, Obama pursued the narrowest-possible reading of religious liberty, resulting in Supreme Court showdowns with a Lutheran school, which wanted to be free to hire its own ministers without government interference, and with the Little Sisters of the Poor, who didn't want to be forced to pay for abortifacients. There was no reason for Obama to pursue these policies except as an exercise in premeditated divisiveness. On the question of religious liberty, Obama has sought to undo a national consensus and foment conflict. In doing so, he set in motion a slow-rolling constitutional and cultural collision that is likely to end badly. The only reason this chaos isn't apparent to the general public is because Lutherans and nuns don't riot.

[. . .]

Then came Obama's penchant for wading into every racial police controversy that reached the front page of the New York Times. He took sides against the Cambridge cops in their arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. The police in this case were almost certainly in the wrong; but no one needed the president of the United States preening about it. He did the same with the death of Trayvon Martin, showing up unscheduled at a press availability to talk about the case the week after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting. Did Obama come before the cameras to reassure the public and vouch for the rule of law? No. He stoked the fires, telling America, "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago." This was a ridiculous exaggeration. Martin was (to put it charitably) a troubled teen with a history of problematic behavior; 35 years before, Barack Obama had been a promising student at an elite private school. By likening himself to Martin, Obama was viewing the episode through the most reductive and demagogic lens possible.

When the Michael Brown shooting turned Ferguson into a powder keg, Obama was ready for the cameras, calling it "heartbreaking" and sending his Justice Department in to ferret out wrongdoing. (They found none.) In a world full of real police abuses — such as the killing of Eric Garner in New York and the shooting of Walter Scott in Charleston — Obama seems to have a knack for tying himself to the cases where the police were actually in the right. It's enough to make one wonder if Obama can't tell the difference between proper and improper police conduct — or if he just doesn't care.

All of which lead to Obama's semi-embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement. As Heather Mac Donald has documented, Black Lives Matter is not an innocent college protest movement. It is an ugly strain of anarchic racialism that has led not just to the defense of looting but to the killing of police officers. Obama does not merely refuse to condemn Black Lives Matter — he attempts to rationalize it, explaining, "There is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that's not happening in other communities."

On Desire and Aversion: Two Perspectives

When we master desire and aversion in the present we mortify what will soon be dead in any case.

"That may be appropriate wisdom for you, old man, but I'm in the full flood of my youth and vigor. I love, hate, and live passionately. Why should I mortify what will be dead? I should further enliven what is now alive!"

Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus

A world-wide bestseller, apparently. A religious novel that emerges from the wasteland of Soviet atheism. God just won't stay dead.

One of the things that leftists and evangelical atheists never understand is that, even if religion is pure buncombe, wholly lacking in transcendent reference, it yet supplies people with immanent meaning. People want their lives to have meaning, a meaning that cannot be had by the pursuit of name and fame, loot and land, food and sex. Not everybody of course: there are 'human' robots among us. But most people at least some of the time in however confused and obscure a fashion.

The want and the need are not going away. How would a leftist or an evangelical atheist like Dawkins supply it? By the erection of an idol? The State? Science?

You can read about Vodolazkin here and here.

Me, I'm heading over to Amazon.com right now to order me up a copy. Wonderful company. So not all corporations are evil? Did it arise in some communist paradise? In North Korea? In Cuba? The service is astonishingly good. They promise me a book in two days and I'll sometimes get it a day early. Who built Amazon? Obama? The government? Imagine the government in charge of all book distribution . . . it's easy if you try . . . See link below.

Propinquity and Social Distance

Familiarity and social proximity have their positive aspects, but they also breed contempt. No man is a hero to his valet. Nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua: No prophet is accepted in his own country. (Luke 4:24) Few bloggers are read by their relatives. Social distance, too, has positive and negative sides. One negative is that people are more ready to demonize and abuse the distant than the near-by. Internet exchanges make this abundantly evident. On the positive side, distance breeds respect and idealization which can taper off into idolization.

What is almost impossible to achieve is justice in our relations with others, near and far, falling into neither favoritism nor contempt, demonization nor idolization. Four extremes to avoid if you would be just.

A. Inordinately favoring one's own; being partial; overlooking or downplaying their wrong-doing. Tribalism. Nepotism. Clannishness. Chauvinism. Racism. Class-identification. Blut und Boden mentality. Example: John Gotti's children thought him a good man despite the fact that his good qualities were overshadowed by his murderous thuggishness. Their blood-ties to him blinded them to the fact that he was an evil man.

The conservative is more likely to make this mistake than the liberal.

B. Contempt for one's own; being impartial in violation of duties to kith and kin; treating them exactly as one would treat an outsider, if not better. A vacuous internationalism that ignores real differences. Example: the deracinated 'open borders' types who will not understand that a nation has a right to its culture and heritage and the preservation of its culture and heritage.

The liberal is more likely to make this mistake than the conservative.

C. Demonization of the other, the foreigner, the stranger. Xenophobia. Irrational hatred of the other just because he is other.

Some conservatives are prone to this. But of course leftists lie viciously when they brand conservative opposition to illegal immigration as xenophobic.

D. Excessive admiration of the other. Idolization of the far away. Idolatry. Romanticization of foreign lands and cultures.

Many liberals make this mistake. The young are more likely to make it than the old.

Haecceitism and Future Individuals: Focusing the Question

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates. Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having witnessed the execution of Socrates: Was that the man you prophesied?

Does this question make sense? Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man I prophesied!" Does this answer make sense?

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense. (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.) What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess. What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular: he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc. Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist: the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence. Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates. Call it Socrateity. Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above. Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself. His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"? Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates. But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity. This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in worlds at which our man does not exist. It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates. And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world. By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational. If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence. It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable. This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of a putative individual that has not yet come into existence. For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual. Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence. (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.) At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess. To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

Now a question for anyone who cares to comment. Is it at least clear what the issue is here?

Hugh J. McCann (1942 – 2016)

A somewhat belated notice. Professor McCann, a noted contributor to the philosophies of action and religion, died on 22 February 2016. He was born on 27 December 1942.

We honor a philosopher by studying his works, thinking his thoughts, and building upon them.

I have at least two substantial posts on McCann. Could God and the Universe be Equally Real? McCann, God, and the Platonic Menagerie

It is good that McCann lived long enough to publish his magisterial Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Indiana University Press, 2012).

My "Hugh McCann on the Implications of Divine Sovereignty" appeared in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 88, no. 1, Winter 2014, pp. 149-161.

Below the fold, a detailed obituary.

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