Scared yet? If not, take a gander at this creepy clown, a Chicago philosophy adjunct whose main claim to fame is his philosophy gossip site. His latest prank is a scurrilous smear of Rightly Considered. He foolishly confuses one of the commenters, Jacques, with one of the contributors.
Month: October 2016
Libtards
From PC Watch:
Hillary Milhous Clinton
John Fund explores the parallels between Nixon and Hillary, between Watergate and the e-mail scandal.
Is Everything an Object Among Objects?
My opponent says Yes; I return a negative answer. This entry continues the discussion in earlier theological posts, but leaves the simple God out of it, the better to dig down to the bare logical bones of the matter. Theologians do not have proprietary rights in the Inexpressible and the Ineffable.
Argument For
The opponent offers a reductio ad absurdum:
a. It is not the case that everything is an object. (Assumption for reductio)
Therefore
b. Something is not an object. (From (a) by Quantifier Negation.)
c. 'Something' means some thing, some object.
Therefore
d. Some object is not an object. Contradiction!
Therefore
e. Everything is an object. (By reductio ad absurdum)
The argument could also be put as follows. An object is anything that comes within the range of a logical quantifier. So someone who denies that everything is an object must be affirming that something is not an object, which is tantamount to saying that some item that comes within the range of a quantifier — 'some' in this instance — does not come with the range of a quantifier. Contradiction. Therefore, everything is an object!
Argument Against
First, two subarguments for premises in my main argument against.
Subargument I
Every declarative sentence contains at least one predicate.
No predicate functioning as a predicate is a name.
Therefore
No declarative sentence consists of names only.
For example, 'Hillary is crooked' cannot be parsed as a concatenation of three names. A sentence is not a list of names. And the unity of a proposition expressed by a sentence is not the unity of a collection of objects. A proposition attracts a truth-value, but no collection of objects attracts a truth-value. The mereological sum Hillary + instantiation + crookedness is neither true nor false. But Hillary is crooked is true.
Adding a further object will not transform the sum into a proposition for well-known Bradleyan reasons.
So what makes the difference between a mereological sum of sub-propositional (but proposition-appropriate) items and a proposition? A noncompound proposition is clearly more than its sub-propositional constituents. The proposition a is F is more than the sum a + F-ness. The former is either true or false; the latter is neither. (Bivalence is assumed.) What does this 'more' consist in? The 'more' is not nothing since it grounds the difference between sum and proposition. The 'more' is evidently not objectifiable or reifiable.
The ancient problem of the unity of the sentence/proposition was already sighted by the 'divine' Plato near the beginning of our tradition. The problem points us beyond the realm of objects.
The paradox, of course, is that I cannot say what I mean, or am 'pointing to.' For if I say: 'Something lies beyond the realm of objects,' then I say in effect: 'Some object is not an object.' But I am getting ahead of myself.
Subargument II
Names refer to objects and predicate expressions refer to concepts.
Anything that can be quantified over can in principle be named.
Concepts cannot be named.
Therefore
Concepts cannot be quantified over.
In support of the second premise: 'Some horse is hungry' cannot be true unless there is a particular horse in the domain over which the existential/particular quantifier ranges, and this horse must in principle be nameable as, say, 'Harry' or 'Secretariat.' There needn't be a name for the critter in question; but it must be possible that there be a name.
Now for the main argument contra:
A. There are declarative sentences.
B. No declarative sentence consists of names only; predicative expressions are also required. (Conclusion of subargument I)
C. Predicates refer to concepts, not objects.
D. Concepts cannot be quantified over. (Conclusion of Subargment II)
Therefore
E. Concepts are real ingredients of propositions but they are not objects.
Therefore
F. Not everything real is an object among objects.
Summary
The unity of the sentence/proposition is one of several problems that point us beyond what I have been calling the Discursive Framework (DF). These problems, properly understood, show the inadequacy of this framework and refute its claim to unrestricted applicability. The unity of the sentence/proposition needs accounting. (There is also the unity of concrete truth-making facts or states of affairs that cries out for explanation.)
Now we should try to account for sentential/propositional unity as parsimoniously as possible. We shouldn't bring in any queer posits if we can avoid them, a point on which my opponent will insist, and in those very terms. Unfortunately, we cannot eke by with objects alone. To repeat: a sentence is not a list; a proposition is not a collection of objects. So we need to bring in some queer entities,whether Fregean unsaturated concepts, or Strawsonian nonrelational ties, or relational tropes, or some odd-ball Bergmannian nexus, even my very own Unifier. (See A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer, 2002.)
The problem, of course, is that these queer items entangle us in contradictions when we try to state the theories in which they figure. The contradictions give aid and comfort to the Opponent who takes them as justifying his claim that the DF is unrestricted in its applicability.
Frege's paradox of the horse illustrates this very well. Frege notoriously asserted, "The concept horse is not a concept." Why not? Because 'the concept horse' names an object, and no object is a concept. An application of existential/particular generalizattion to Frege's paradoxical sentence yields: Some concepts are not concepts. But that's a contradiction, as is the original sentence.
But Frege was no 'stoner' to use an expression of the Opponent. His contradiction is, shall we say, motivated. Indeed, it is rationally motivated by the noble attempt to understand the nature of the proposition and the nature of logic itself.
Why can't concepts be named? Suppose we try to name the concept involved in 'Hillary is crooked.' The name would have to be something like 'crookedness.' The transformation of the predicate into an abstract substantive loses the verbal chararacter, the characterizing character of the predicate '___ is crooked' functioning as a predicate. If 'crookedness' has a referent, then that referent is an object. But as I said, the proposition Hillary is crooked is not the mereological sum Hillary + crookedness. The former attracts a truth-value; the latter doesn't.
The unity of a proposition, without which it cannot be either true or false, is not the unity of an object or a collection of objects, which is just a higher-order object. This peculiar truth-value attractive unity cannot be accounted for in terms of any object or collection of objects. And yet it is real. So not everything real is an object.
Impasse?
We seem to be in an aporetic bind. We need to bring in some queer elements to solve various problems that are plainly genuine and not pseudo. But the queer items generate paradoxes which, from within the DF, are indistinguishable from bare-faced contradictions. The paradoxes/contradictions arise when we attempt to state the theories in which the queer entities figure. They arise when we attempt to talk about and theorize about the pre-objective or non-objectifiable. I cannot state that no concept is an object, for example, without treating concepts as objects. But doing so drains the concept of its predicative nature. I cannot say what I mean. I can't eff the ineffable.
One move the Opponent can make is to flatly deny that there is the Inexpressible, thereby defying the author of Tractatus 6.522. Das Mystische does not exist, and, not existing, it cannot show itself (sich zeigen).
If the Opponent is a theist, then his god must be a being among beings, a highest being, a most distinguished denizen of the Discursive Framework, but not ipsum esse subsistens.
How might the Opponent deal with the problem of the unity of the sentence/proposition? Perhaps he will say that a noncompound proposition is a partially but not wholly analyzable unity of sense, but that the 'more' that makes the proposition more than the sum of its constituents has no Deep Meaning, it does not 'point' us anywhere, and certainly not into Cloud Cuckoo Land but is merely a curious factum brutum for which there is no accounting, no philosophical explanation.
I don't think this would be a good answer, but this entry is already too long.
At the moment I would happy if I could get the Opponent to make a minimal concession, namely, that I have mounted a strong, though not compelling, rational case for the thesis that reality is not exhausted by objects, and that I have not "destroyed all of logic" in so doing.
But I am undermining the claim of the DF to have universal applicability. This undermining takes place within the DF by reflection of something essential to the DF, namely, propositions. As long as I refrain from making positive assertions about the Transdiscursive, I avoid contradiction.
‘Incentivize,’ ‘Incent,’ or Neither?
Some discussion here. My sense of style suggests the avoidance of both.
Example: "When was the last time Democrat, or Republican, tax hikes balanced the budget instead of merely incenting even more government spending?"
Language is fun even in cases in which it doesn't much matter, as here. In politics, however, it matters greatly: he who controls the language controls the debate.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Clowns Before They Were Creepy and Violent
Being hung up on the '60s, there is and will be only one clown for me, Bozo the Clown. After Bozo I had no truck with clowns. I'm a serious man. But I can relate to this segment from the Seinfeld episode, "The Fire." It is one of the funniest in the whole series. But I suppose you had to be there. In the '60s I mean. With Bozo. The Clown. Now some songs featuring clowns.
Roy Orbison, In Dreams. "A candy-colored clown they call the sandman . . . ."
James Darren, Goodbye Cruel World. "I'm off to join the circus, gonna be a broken-hearted clown."
Frank Sinatra, Send in the Clowns
Everly Bros., Cathy's Clown
Burl Ives, A Little Bitty Tear. A little bitty tear let me down, spoiled my act as a clown/ I had it made up not make a frown, but a little bitty tear let me down.
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Tears of a Clown
Kinks, Death of a Clown
Harry Nilsson, 1941
Religious Liberty and a Brooks Boner
The Op-Ed pages of The New York Times are piss-poor to be sure, but Ross Douthat and David Brooks are sometimes worth reading. But the following from Brooks (28 October) is singularly boneheaded although the opening sentence is exactly right:
The very essence of conservatism is the belief that politics is a limited activity, and that the most important realms are prepolitical: conscience, faith, culture, family and community. But recently conservatism has become more the talking arm of the Republican Party. Among social conservatives, for example, faith sometimes seems to come in second behind politics, Scripture behind voting guides. Today, most white evangelicals are willing to put aside the Christian virtues of humility, charity and grace for the sake of a Trump political victory.
Come on, man. Don't be stupid. The Left is out to suppress religious liberty. This didn't start yesterday. You yourself mention conscience, but you must be aware that bakers and florists have been forced by the state to violate their consciences by catering homosexual 'marriage' ceremonies. Is that a legitimate use of state power? And if the wielders of state power can get away with that outrage, where will they stop? Plenty of other examples can be adduced, e.g., the Obama administration's assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The reason evangelicals and other Christians support Trump is that they know what that destructive and deeply mendacious stealth ideologue Hillary will do when she gets power. It is not because they think the Gotham sybarite lives the Christian life, but despite his not living it. They understand that ideas and policies trump character issues especially when Trump's opponent is even worse on the character plane. What's worse: compromising national security, using high public office to enrich oneself, and then endlessly lying about it all, or forcing oneself on a handful of women?
The practice of the Christian virtues and the living of the Christian life require freedom of religion. Our freedoms are under vicious assault by leftist scum like Hillary. This is why Trump garners the support of Christians.
The threat from the Left is very real indeed. See here and read the chilling remarks of Martin Castro of the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights. Given Castro's comments the name of the commission counts as Orwellian.
A Grave Matter
It's a 'grave' matter when the dead vote, but apparently nothing to worry about as long as they vote Democrat.
The Dems take 'univeral' in 'universal suffrage' a bit too literally to include felons, illegal aliens, children, and the dead.
UPDATE (1:20 PM)
Via Bill Keezer: The Integrity of the Electoral Process
Prudence: For Trump
Publius Decius Mus responds brilliantly to William Voegeli.
Who is the most penetrating political commentator now writing? I give the palm to PDM.
Clinton’s State Department: A RICO Enterprise
Andrew C. McCarthy ought to know. Damning.
As we go to press, the stunning news has broken that the FBI’s investigation is being reopened. It appears, based on early reports, that in the course of examining communications devices in a separate “sexting” investigation of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the bureau stumbled on relevant e-mails — no doubt connected to Huma Abedin, Mr. Weiner’s wife and, more significantly, Mrs. Clinton’s closest confidant. According to the New York Times, the FBI has seized at least one electronic device belonging to Ms. Abedin as well. New e-mails, never before reviewed by the FBI, have been recovered.
Camille Paglia on Hillary
"The woman is a disaster!"
As I have quipped more than once, C. P. is a partial antidote to P. C.
But she does not earn the plenary MavPhil endorsement. Partial is better than nothing, however. She can say some dumb things.
See Camille Paglia on Philosophy and Women in Philosophy
and
The Bully Party
Team Clinton has succeeded in perpetuating one of the greatest evils I have seen in my lifetime. Her side has branded Trump supporters (40%+ of voters) as Nazis, sexists, homophobes, racists, and a few other fighting words. Their argument is built on confirmation bias and persuasion. But facts don’t matter because facts never matter in politics. What matters is that Clinton’s framing of Trump provides moral cover for any bullying behavior online or in person. No one can be a bad person for opposing Hitler, right?
Some Trump supporters online have suggested that people who intend to vote for Trump should wear their Trump hats on election day. That is a dangerous idea, and I strongly discourage it. There would be riots in the streets because we already know the bullies would attack. But on election day, inviting those attacks is an extra-dangerous idea. Violence is bad on any day, but on election day, Republicans are far more likely to unholster in an effort to protect their voting rights. Things will get wet fast.
Good advice.
“A Cesspool of Corruptibles”
The Clintons. Invective courtesy of Judge Jeanine Pirro. Last night on Hannity. Modeled on Hillary's "basket of deplorables." Invective has its place in the armamentarium of the conservative. Lying crooks cannot be engaged on the plane of reason via calm conversation. Conservatives need to learn how to punch back.
Creation: Ex Nihilo or Ex Deo?
Classical theists hold that God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. This phrase carries a privative, not a positive, sense: it means not out of something as opposed to out of something called ‘nothing.’ This much is crystal clear. Less clear is how creation ex nihilo (CEN), comports, if it does comport, with the following hallowed principle:
ENN: Ex nihilo nihit fit. Nothing comes from nothing.
The latter principle seems intuitively obvious. It is not the case that something comes from nothing. Had there been nothing at all, there would not now be anything. (ENN) is not, however, a logical truth. A logical truth is one whose negation is a formal-logical contradiction. Negating (ENN) yields: something comes from nothing. This is logically possible in that no contradiction is involved in the notion that something come to be out of nothing. Logical possibility notwithstanding, that is hard to swallow. Rather than explain why — a fit topic for yet another post — I will assume for present purposes that (ENN) is a necessary truth of metaphysics. It is surely plausible. (And if true, then necessarily true.) Had there been nothing at all, there would have been nothing to 'precipitate' the arisal of anything. (But also nothing to prevent the arisal of something.)
You are not philosophizing until you have a problem. My present problem is this: If (ENN) is true, how can (CEN) be true? How can God create out of nothing if nothing can come from nothing? It would seem that our two principles form an inconsistent dyad. How solve it?
It would be unavailing to say that God, being omnipotent, can do anything, including making something come out of nothing. For omnipotence, rightly understood, does not imply that God can do anything, but that God can do anything that it is possible to do. But there are limits on what is possible. For one thing, logic limits possibility, and so limits divine power: not even God can make a contradiction true. There are also non-logical limits on divine power: God cannot restore a virgin. There are past events which possess a necessitas per accidens that puts them beyond the reach of the divine will. Nor can God violate (ENN), given that it is necessarily true. God's will is subject to necessary truths. Necessary truths, like all truths, are accusatives of the divine intellect and so cannot exist unless the divine intellect exists. The divine intellect limits the divine will.
Admittedly, what I just stated, though very plausible, is not obvious. Distinguished philosophers have held that the divine will is not limited in the way I have described. But to enter this can of worms would take us too far afield, to mix a couple of metaphors. So we add to our problem the plausible background assumption that there are logical and non-logical limits on divine power.
So the problem remains: How can God create the world out of nothing if nothing can come from nothing? How can we reconcile (CEN) with (ENN)?
One response to the problem is to say that (CEN), properly understood, states that God creates out of nothing distinct from himself. Thus he does not operate upon any pre-given matter, nor does he bestow existence on pre-given essences, nor create out of pre-given possibles. God does not create out of pre-given matter, essences, or mere possibilia. But if God creates out of nothing distinct from himself, this formulation allows that, in some sense, God creates ex Deo, out of himself. Creating the world out of himself, God creates the world out of nothing distinct from himself. In this way, (CEN) and (ENN) are rendered compatible.
In sum, ‘Creatio ex nihilo’ is ambiguous. It could mean that God creates out of nothing, period, in which case (CEN) collides with (ENN), or that God creates out of nothing ultimately distinct from himself. My proposal is that the Latin phrase be construed in the second of these ways. So construed, it has the sense of ‘creatio ex Deo.’
But what exactly does it mean to say that God creates out of God? A critic once rather uncharitably took me to mean precisely what I do not mean, namely, that God creates out of God in a way that implies that the product of the creative operation (creation in the sense of created entities) is identical to its operator (God) and its operand (God). That would amount to an absurd pantheism in which all distinctions are obliterated, a veritable "night in which all cows are black," to borrow a phrase from Hegel.
When I say that God creates ex Deo what I mean is that God operates on entities that are not external to God in the sense of having existence whether or not God exists. I build a rock cairn to mark the trail by piling up otherwise scattered rocks. These rocks exist whether or not I do. My creation of the cairn is therefore neither out of nothing nor out of me but out of materials external to me. If God created in that way he would not be God as classically conceived, but a Platonic demiurge.
So I say that God creates out of ‘materials’ internal to him in the sense that their existence depends on God’s existence and are therefore in this precise sense internal to him. (I hope it is self-evident that materials need not be made out of matter.) In this sense, God creates ex Deo rather than out of materials that are provided from without. It should be obvious that God, a candidate for the status of an absolute, cannot have anything ‘outside him.’
To flesh this out a bit, suppose properties are concepts in the divine mind. Then properties are necessary beings in that they exist in all metaphysically possible worlds just as God does. The difference, however, is that properties have their necessity from another, namely God, while God has his necessity from himself. (This distinction is in Aquinas.) In other words, properties, though they are necessary beings, depend for their existence on God. If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then properties, and indeed the entire Platonic menagerie (as Plantinga calls it) would not exist.
Suppose that properties are the ‘materials’ or ontological constituents out of which concrete contingent individuals – thick particulars in Armstrong’s parlance – are constructed. (This diverges somewhat from what I say in A Paradigm Theory of Existence, but no matter: it is a simplification for didactic purposes.) We can then say that the existence of contingent individual C is just the unity or contingent togetherness of C’s ontological constituents. C exists iff C’s constituents are unified. Creating is then unifying. (We have a model for this unifying in our own unification of a sensory manifold in the unity of one consciousness.) Since the constituents are necessary beings, they are uncreated. But since their necessity derives from God, they are not independent of God.
In this sense, God creates out of himself: he creates out of materials that are internal to his own mental life. It is ANALOGOUS to the way we create objects of imagination. (I am not saying that God creates the world by imagining it.) When I construct an object in imagination, I operate upon materials that I myself provide. Thus I create a purple right triangle by combining the concept of being purple with the concept of being a right triangle. I can go on to create a purple cone by rotating the triangle though 360 degrees on the y-axis. The object imagined is wholly dependent on me the imaginer: if I leave off imagining it, it ceases to exist. I am the cause of its beginning to exist as well as the cause of its continuing to exist moment by moment. But the object imagined, as my intentional object, is other than me just as the creature is other than God. The creature is other than God while being wholly dependent on God just as the object imagined is other than me while being wholly dependent on me.
A critic thinks that "The notion of total dependence, dependence in every respect, entails identity, and therefore no dependence at all. If a is dependent on b in all respects, then a ‘collapses’ into b, taking dependency, and difference, with it." So if the creature is dependent on God both for its existence and for its nature, the creature collapses into God. And of course we can’t have that. It is obvious that the manifest plurality of the world, the difference of things from one another and from God, must be maintained. We cannot allow a pantheism according to which God just is the world, nor one on which God swallows up the plural world and its plurality with it.
The principle lately quoted is refuted by every intentional object qua intentional object. The object imagined is totally dependent in its existence on my acts of imagining. After all, I excogitated it: in plain Anglo-Saxon, I thought it up, or out. This excogitatum, to give it a name, is wholly dependent on my cogitationes and on the ego ‘behind’ these cogitationes if there is an ego ‘behind’ them. (Compare Sartre’s critique of Husserl on this score in the former’s Transcendence of the Ego.) But this dependence is entirely consistent with the excogitatum’s being distinct both from me qua ego, and from the intentional acts or cogitationes emanating from the ego and directed upon the excogitatum. To press some Husserlian jargon into service, the object imagined ist kein reeller Inhalt, it is not "really contained" in the act. The object imagined is neither immanent in the act, nor utterly transcendent of the act: it is a transcendence in immanence. It is ‘constituted’ as a transcendence in immanence.
The quoted principle may also be refuted by more mundane examples, examples that I would not use to explain the relation between creator and creature. Consider a wrinkle W in a carpet C. W is distinct from C. This is proven by the fact that they differ property-wise: the wrinkle is located in the Northeast corner of the carpet, but the carpet is not located in the Northeast corner of the carpet. (The principle here is the Indiscernibility of Identicals.) But W is wholly (totally) dependent on C. A wrinkle in a carpet cannot exist without a carpet; indeed, it cannot exist apart from the very carpet of which it is the wrinkle. Thus W cannot ‘migrate’ from carpet C to carpet D. Not only is W dependent for its existence on C, but W is dependent on C for its nature (whatness, quiddity). For W just is a certain modification of the carpet, and the whole truth about W can be told in C-terms. So W is totally dependent on C.
So dependence in both essence and existence does not entail identity.
Somehow the reality of the Many must be upheld. The plural world is no illusion. If Advaita Vedanta maintains that it is an illusion, then it is false. On the other hand, the plural world is continuously dependent for its existence on the One. Making sense of this relation is not easy, and I don't doubt that my analogy to the relation of finite mind and its intentional objects limps in various ways.
In any case, one thing seems clear: there is a problem with reconciling CEN with EEN. The reconciliation sketched here involves reading creatio ex nihilo as creatio ex Deo. The solution is not pantheistic, but panentheistic. It is not that all is God, but that all is in God.
I discuss and reject a different solution to the problem in On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit.
Meaning is Tied to Use; Syntax Too?
It would seem so. Consider the way Peggy Noonan, no slouch of a political commentator, uses the adjective 'crazy' in this passage about Donald Trump:
He had to be a flame-haired rebuke to the establishment. He in fact had to be a living insult—no political experience, rude, crude ways—to those who’ve failed us. He had to leave you nervous, on the edge of your seat. Only that man could have broken through. Crazy was a feature, not a bug. (The assumption seemed to be he could turn crazy on and off. I believe he has demonstrated he can’t.)
That is perfectly intelligible of course, even though Noonan uses 'crazy' twice as a noun.
The syntactical difference between noun and adjective no doubt remains in place; it is just that a word that traditionally was always used as an adjective is here used as a noun, as a stand-in for the abstract substantive, 'craziness.' A bit earlier in her piece, Noonan uses 'crazy' as an adjective.
(Can you adduce a counterexample to my 'always' above?)
No word has a true or real or intrinsic meaning that somehow attaches to the word essentially regardless of contextual factors. Is the same true of syntactical category? Can every word 'jump categories'? Or only some?
For a long time now, verbs have been used as nouns. 'Jake sent me an invite to his Halloween party.' 'How much does the install cost?' 'An engine overhaul will cost you more the vehicle is worth.' How far can it go? Will tire rotations ever be advertised as 'tire rotates'? 'I thought the rotate was part of the deal!'
Some words have always (?) had a dual use as verbs and nouns. 'Torch,' might be an example.
'I' is an interesting case. (I mean the word, not the English majuscule letter or the Roman numeral.) 'I' is the first-person singular pronoun. But it can also be used as a noun.
Suppose a Buddhist says, 'There is no I.' Is his utterance gibberish? Could I reasonably reply to the Buddhist: What you've said, Bud, is nonsense on purely syntactical grounds. So it is neither true not false.
More later.