Professor Dale Jacquette died suddenly and unexpectedly at his home in August of this year at the age of 63.
I remember Dale from the summer of 1984. We were fellow seminarians in Hector-Neri Castañeda's National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar at Indiana University in Bloomington. Dale struck me at the time as a classic introvert who spoke little but thought much. He made for a welcome contrast with some overconfident others who were of the opposite disposition.
He earns high praise in Nicholas Rescher's obituary. Other details in this local notice.
For a philosopher to die at 63 is to die young. May his passing remind us of philosophy's muse. For "Death is the true inspiring genius, or muse of philosophy." (Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation)
I am trying to soften up the Opponent for the Inexpressible. Here is another attempt.
……………………..
Surely this is a valid and sound argument:
1. Stromboli exists. Ergo 2. Something exists.
Both sentences are true; both are meaningful; and the second follows from the first. How do we translate the argument into the notation of standard first-order predicate logic with identity? Taking a cue from Quine we may formulate (1) as
1*. For some x, x = Stromboli. In English:
1**. Stromboli is identical with something.
But how do we render (2)? Surely not as 'For some x, x exists' since there is no first-level predicate of existence in standard logic. And surely no ordinary predicate will do. Not horse, mammal, animal, living thing, material thing, or any other predicate reachable by climbing the tree of Porphyry. Existence is not a summum genus. (Aristotle, Met. 998b22, AnPr. 92b14) What is left but self-identity? Cf. Frege's dialog with Puenjer.
So we try,
2*. For some x, x = x. In plain English:
2**. Something is self-identical.
So our original argument becomes:
1**. Stromboli is identical with something. Ergo 2**. Something is self-identical.
But what (2**) says is not what (2) says. The result is a murky travesty of the original luminous argument.
What I am getting at is that standard logic cannot state its own presuppositions. It presupposes that everything exists (that there are no nonexistent objects) and that something exists. But it lacks the expressive resources to state these presuppositions. The attempt to state them results either in nonsense — e.g. 'for some x, x' — or a proposition other than the one that needs expressing.
It is true that something exists, and I am certain that it is true: it follows immediately from the fact that I exist. But it cannot be said in standard predicate logic.
What should we conclude? That standard logic is defective in its treatment of existence or that there are things that can be SHOWN but not SAID? In April 1914. G.E. Moore travelled to Norway and paid a visit to Wittgenstein where the latter dictated some notes to him. Here is one:
In order that you should have a language which can express or say everything that can be said, this language must have certain properties; and when this is the case, that it has them can no longer be said in that language or any language. (Notebooks 1914-1916, p. 107)
Applied to the present example: A language that can SAY that e.g. island volcanos exist by saying that some islands are volcanos or that Stromboli exists by saying that Stromboli is identical to something must have certain properties. One of these is that the domain of quantification contains only existents and no Meinongian nonexistents. But THAT the language has this property cannot be said in it or in any language. Hence it cannot be said in the language of standard logic that the domain of quantification is a domain of existents or that something exists or that everything exists or that it is not the case that something does not exist.
Well then, so much the worse for the language of standard logic! That's one response. But can some other logic do better? Or should we say, with the early Wittgenstein, that there is indeed the Inexpressible, the Unsayable, the Unspeakable, the Mystical? And that it shows itself?
Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische. (Tractatus Logico-Philosphicus 6.522)
Yesterday, I wrote, ". . . a vote for Trump is not an endorsement of his character, but of the ideas and policies he stands for." To generalize and precisify: A vote for a political candidate need not be an endorsement of his character as a whole; it can be mainly an endorsement of the ideas and policies he stands for.
But then I came across some comments at Rightly Considered that seem to contradict my thesis. There I read something to the effect that on a ballot there is no circle to fill in labelled 'Trump's ideas and policies.' I read that voting is for people, not for ideas and policies.
I beg to differ. Obviously, if you are voting for a candidate as opposed to a proposition, you are voting for a person. But a wise voter does not vote for a person in abstraction from what he stands for, like the conservative grandmother who votes for Lenny the Leftist because Lenny is her beloved grandson, but precisely because of what the candidate stands for.
Thus when I vote for Trump, I will vote for a particular deeply flawed man because of the policies (some of which) he can be expected to promote, policies which are salutary, as opposed to the policies of Hillary which are almost all of them deleterious. I will vote for him despite his character flaws just as, if I were a benighted lefty, I would vote for Hillary despite her even worse character flaws. I would not vote for Hillary because she is a woman, even if I were a woman who agreed with her ideas. The record will show that I am neither.
But you don't have to agree with me that Hillary is worse than Trump character-wise. We should be able to agree that both are on a fairly low moral level. The point is that my wise vote for Trump will not be an endorsement of his character as a whole. I will be voting for the Orange Man as a vehicle for the implementation of policies that will serve the greater good.
So that's the first mistake about voting. It is the mistake of thinking that to vote for candidate X is to endorse the character of candidate X in the main or as a whole. Of course, character comes into it. If I thought that Trump's mendacity extended to his lying about all of what he has promised to do, such as appoint conservative justices for the Supreme Court, then I would probably abstain from the presidential decision.
The second mistake is to think that a vote for Hillary is not also a vote for Huma, and indeed for all of Hillary's ilk and entourage. (Do you want Bill, and Huma, and possibly the texting, sexting Anthony Weiner in the White House?) The mistake is to think that a vote for a candidate is not also, indirectly a vote for all of the people the candidate, if elected, will bring into the government or appoint. Indeed, and even more indirectly, to vote for a candidate is to vote for an entire governing culture which, even if the candidate is in office for only four years, might continue on for decades .
The Hillary Stench could haunt the halls of the People's House for a long time to come.
Then you had better vote for Trump, characterological warts and all.
By the way, a vote for Trump is not an endorsement of his character, but of the ideas and policies he stands for. As for you namby-pamby, quasi-conservative, crypto-quislings whose tender consciences cannot allow a vote for Trump, I ask you: will you feel any pricks of conscience if and when a Hillary administration of possibly eight years duration completes the leftist infiltration of our institutions and the "fundamental transformation" Obama promised?
Ambush-style killings of police officers are up 167% this year. At the same time the murder rate is way up in black ghettoes across the land due to the Ferguson effect. (Can you blame the boys in blue for drinking more coffee and eating more donuts?) Hillary is sure to continue the Obama administration's erosion of the rule of law. She has already thrown her support behind Black Lives Matter, a virulent anti-cop outfit that spreads the lie that the police are on the hunt for blacks, an outfit that is itself based on brazen lies about Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. She also peddles the myth of mass incarceration and spouts nonsense about 'systemic' racism, a figment of the febrile left-wing imagination. And of course what motivates her in all this inanity, insanity, and mendacity is simply the need for black votes.
Black votes matter!
And then there is Hillary's flouting of the law herself. She is now the target of two FBI investigations, one concerning her unspeakably irresponsible self-serving storage of state secrets on her private e-mail server, the other concerning the Clinton Foundation.
So if you care about the rule of law, you will vote for Trump.
For background, read thisInside Higher Ed article.
As far as I can make out, NYU professor Michael Rectenwald is a commie who takes issue with the trigger warning nonsense because it gives the Left a bad name. The following from an interview in the NYU student newspaper:
Michael Rectenwald: My contention is that this particular social-justice-warrior-left is producing the alt-right by virtue of its insanity. And because it’s doing all these things that manifest to the world, the alt-right is just eating this stuff alive. That’s why I adopted Nietzsche as the icon for the @antipcnyuprof and that’s why I said “anti-pc.” Frankly, I’m not really anti-pc. My contention is that the trigger warning, safe spaces and bias hotline reporting is not politically correct. It is insane. This stuff is producing a culture of hypervigilance, self-surveillance and panopticism.
WSN: Could you explain your feelings towards trigger warnings and safe spaces?
MR: One of the major problems of a trigger warning is this: according to trauma psychology, nobody has any idea what can trigger somebody. It’s completely arbitrary, and I don’t want to be indelicate, but let’s say a woman is raped while the guy happened to have this particular pack of gum on the table. So the woman would see this type of gum, and she’s going to feel triggered by this. Who could possibly anticipate such a thing? There is no way to anticipate just what would trigger people. As for safe spaces, I’m more ambiguous about it. I do think some people need safe spaces from different things, such as different beleaguered populations or groups who have been harassed or hounded — even murdered. People have their right to assemble as they wish. A safe space represents such an assembly. I do question their legality at some kind of state university for example, because it’s exclusionary, and that’s a public space.
WSN: How does that manifest at NYU?
MR: What happens is that the left presents its needs to the administration in universities, and the administration seizes on these opportunities to produce power and control to actually discipline the subjects under them. They don’t care what ideologies — whether it’s right, left, center. My dean two years ago — I mentioned the words trigger warning, and he snickered out loud, as if it was some foreign concept. Then last year, towards the end of the semester when we had a colloquium, he was floating the idea that they would be required on the syllabi. This is what happens. Once the administration gets it, it becomes a tool — an instrument — for them. Then they are able to compute to have more leverage and control over the curriculum, which should be faculty controlled in every university.
WSN: How do students handle this?
MR: Identity politics on campus have made an infirmary of the whole, damn campus. Let’s face it: every room is like a hospital ward. What are we supposed to do? I can’t deal with it — it’s insane. Look at the rules about Halloween costumes now. There’s a hoopla and hysteria surrounding Halloween. I tweeted something the other night about this self-surveillance — that they’re calling on people to do as reference to their Halloween costumes. It literally says “track your own online behavior” — self-surveillance. Safe spaces are turning the whole campus into an infirmary. And what do hospitals require? They require certain containment. They require a certain restriction of movement. They require surveillance. They require all of these things that I’m talking about, and that’s the problem with having a hospital as a university.
WSN: So how does this tie into Trump? Could you explain your support for him?
MR: I don’t support Trump at all. I hate him — I think he’s horrible. I’m hiding amongst the alt-right, alright? And the point is, this character is meant to exhibit and illustrate the notion that it’s this crazy social-justice-warrior-knee-jerk-reaction-triggered-happy-safe-space-seeking-blah, blah, blah, blah culture that it’s producing this alt-right. Now, I’m not dumb enough to go there. And my own politics are very strong — I’m a left communist. But I think that in fact, the crazier and crazier that this left gets, this version of the left, the more the more the alt-right is going to be laughing their asses off plus getting more pissed. Every time a speaker is booed off campus or shooed off campus because they might say something that bothers someone, that just feeds the notion that the left is totalitarian, and they have a point.
Liberals are horrified at any and all 'blaming of the victim.' Conservatives know better: there are situations in which it is just and right to assign a certain amount of the blame for a crime to the victim.
Suppose I withdraw money from an outdoor ATM in a bad part of town on a Saturday night. I walk away from the machine, head down, counting my loot while yapping on a cell phone. I end up getting mugged. Am I not partially to blame for the attack?
If you say No, then you lack common sense and you have no understanding of human nature.
You don't realize that you have a moral obligation not to suborn bad behavior.
There is no common sense and no wisdom on the Left.
So wise up and stop being a librul. The life you improve will be your own.
This entry is part of the ongoing debate with the Opponent.
It is interesting that 'nothing' has two opposites. One is 'something.' Call it the logical opposite. The other is 'being.' Call it the ontological opposite. Logically, 'nothing' and 'something' are interdefinable quantifiers:
D1. Nothing is F =df It is not the case that something is F.
D2. Something is F =df it is not the case that nothing is F.
These definitions, which are part of the articulation of the Discursive Framework (DF), give us no reason to think of one term as more basic than the other. Logically, 'nothing' and 'something' are on a par. Logically, they are polar opposites. Anything you can say with the one you can say with the other, and vice versa.
We also note that as quantifiers, as terms expressing logical quantity, 'nothing' and 'something' are not names or referring expressions.
So far I have said nothing controversial.
Ontologically, however, being and nothing are not on a par. They are not polar opposites. Being is primary, and nothing is derivative. (Note the ambiguity of 'Nothing is derivative' as between 'It is not the case that something is derivative' and 'Nothingness is derivative.' The second is meant.)
Now we enter the arena of controversy. For it might be maintained that there are no ontological uses of 'being,' and 'nothing,' that talk of being and nothing is replaceable without remainder by use of the quantifiers defined in (D1) and (D2).
Quine said that "Existence is what existential quantification expresses." I deny it: there is more to existence than what the existential quantifier expresses. Quine's is a thin theory of existence; mine is a thick theory. Metaphorically, existence possesses an ontological thickness. This is very important for metaphysics if true.
I won't be able to prove my point because nothing in philosophy can be proven. But I can argue for my point in a fallacy-free manner.
Suppose we try to define the existential 'is' in terms of the misnamed because question-begging 'existential' quantifier. (The proper moniker is 'particular quantifier.') This is standardly done as follows.
D3. y is/exists =df for some x, y = x.
In plain English, for y to be or exist is for y to be identical to something. For Quine to be or exist is for Quine to be identical to something. In general, to be is to be identical to something, not some one thing of course, but something or other. This thing, however, must exist, and in a sense not captured by (D3). Thus
Quine exists =df Quine is identical to something that exists
and
Pegasus does not exist =df nothing that exists is such that Pegasus is identical to it
or
Pegasus is diverse from everything that exists.
The point, which many find elusive, is that the items in the domain of quantification must be there to be quantified over, where 'there' has not a locative but an existential sense. For if the domain includes nonexistent objects, then, contrary to fact, Pegasus would exist in virtue of being identical to an item in this widened domain.
The conclusion is obvious: one cannot explicate the existential 'is' in terms of the particular quantifier without circularity, without presupposing that things exist in a sense of 'exist' that is not captured by (D3).
Mere logicians won't accept or perhaps even understand this since existence is "odious to the logician" as George Santayana observes. (Scepticism and Animal Faith, Dover, 1955, p. 48, orig. publ. 1923.) You have to have metaphysical aptitude to understand it. (But now I am tending toward the tendentious.)
Intellectual honesty requires that I admit that I am basing myself on an intuition, what J. Maritain calls the intuition of Being. I find it self-evident that the existence of a concrete individual is an intrinsic determination that makes it be as opposed to not be. This implies a real distinction between x and the existence of x. Accordingly, the existence of an individual cannot be reduced to its self-identity: the existence of Quine does not reduce to Quine's being (identical to) Quine, as on the thin theory. And the nonexistence of Pegasus does not reduce to its being diverse from everything. (If to be is to be identical to something, then not to be is to be diverse from everything.)
The Opponent does not share my intuition. In the past I have berated him for being 'existence-blind' but he might plausibly return the 'compliment' by accusing me of double vision: I see Socrates but I also 'see' the existence of Socrates when there is no such 'thing.'
So far, not good: I can't refute the Opponent but he can't refute me. Stand-off. Impasse, a-poria.
Let me try a different tack. Does the Opponent accept
ENN. Ex nihilo nihil fit?
Out of nothing nothing comes. Note that 'nothing' is used here in two different ways, ontologically and logically/quantificationally. For what the hallowed dictum states is that it is not the case that something arises from nothing/Nothingness.
Now if the Opponent accepts the truth or even just the meaningfulness of (ENN), then he must admit that there are two senses of 'nothing,' the logical and the ontological, and correspondingly, two senses of 'something.' If so, then being and nothing cannot be exhaustively understood in terms of logical quantifiers and propsitional negation, and then the thin theory bites the dust.
But if the thin theory succumbs, then there is more to existence than can be captured within the Discursive Framework.
If there are no races, then no one is a racist. But conservatives, by definition, are racists. So if race is a social construct in a sense that implies that there are no races, then there are no conservatives either.
Barack Hussein Obama, being mulatto, both white and black, exemplifies the highest form of diversity, self-diversity. It is this amazing fact that explains his success at having brought us all together.
More proof of the collapse of American universities and Catholic universities in particular. As a result of the abdication of authority on the part of administrators, 'Catholic' universities have become anti-Catholic leftist seminaries, hotbeds of cultural Marxism. Am I exaggerating? Read Rod Dreher's interview with Professor Esolen and see for yourself. Here is the message that has to go out to parents thinking of sending their children to Providence College (PC !), or DePaul, or Georgetown, or Notre Dame, etc.:
What advice would you give to young Christian academics? To Christian parents preparing to send their kids to college?
It’s long past the time for administrators at Christian colleges to abandon the hiring policies that got us in this fix to begin with. We KNOW that there are plenty of excellent young Christian scholars who have to struggle to find a job. Well, let’s get them and get them right away. WE should be establishing a network for that purpose — so that if a Benedictine College needs a professor of literature, they can get on the phone to Ralph Wood at Baylor or me at Providence or Glenn Arbery at Wyoming Catholic, and say, “Do you have anybody?”
Christian parents — please do not suppose that your child will retain his or her faith after four years of battering at a secular college. Oh, many do — and many colleges have Christian groups that are terrific. But understand that it is going to be a dark time; and that everything on campus will be inimical to the faith, from the blockheaded assumptions of their professors, to the hook-ups, to the ignorance of their fellow students and their unconscious but massive bigotry. Be advised.
There is little or no point in writing letters of protest to the administrative and professorial crapweasels that oversee and enable this leftist insanity. They will ignore your respectful objections and go back to calling you racist, xenophobic, homophobic, etc. To these willfully enstupidated shitheads you are just bad apples at the bottom of Hillary's "basket of deplorables."
What you have to do is cut off their funding. If you are an alumnus of DePaul or PC — how felicitous the abbreviation! — refuse them when they ask for donations. And let them know that you will not send your children there.
That will get their attention.
I believe it was Lee Iacocca who said, "When money talks, ideology walks." We need to give leftist ideologues, especially stealth ideologues like Hillary, their walking papers.
After a mastectomy, some women choose to go flat. Should these flat chesters be allowed shirtless in public? I can't see why not. On the other hand, there is some small case for requiring top-heavy men to wear the mansiere in public, though I won't press the point.
If I ask how many people showed up at a party, an answer might be 'a few.' Another answer could be, 'quite a few.' The first phrase means a small number, while the latter means a comparatively large number.
It follows that the meaning of 'quite a few' is not built up from the meanings of 'quite' and 'a few.' This is so whether 'quite' is taken to mean entirely or very.
Equivalently, the meanings of 'a few' and 'quite a few' have no common meaning element. 'Quite a few' functions as a semantic unit. Its meaning cannot be arrived at by piecing together the meanings of 'quite' and 'a few.' It must be learned as the unit it is: 'quite-a-few.'
I rejoice in being a native speaker of this irregular and illogical language. Irregular and illogical as she is, she is my thought's alma mater, and I love her dearly.
But my love is not jealous. I do not begrudge the foreigner who attempts to learn my language and share in her charms and foibles.
The Hillary/Bill fortune — generated by pay-for-play influence peddling on the proposition that Bill would return to the White House under Hillary’s aegis and reward friends while punishing enemies — hit a reported $150 million some time ago, a fortune built not on farming, mining, insurance, finance, high-tech, or manufacturing, but on skimming off money. The Clintons are simply grifters whose insider access to government gave them the power to make rich people richer.
[. . .]
The Clintons suffer from greed, as defined by Aristotle: endless acquisition solely for the benefit of self. With their insatiable appetites, they resented the limits that multimillionaire status put on them, boundaries they could bypass only by accumulating ever greater riches. The billion-dollar foundation squared the circle of progressive politicians profiting from the public purse by offering a veneer of “doing good” while offering free luxury travel commensurate with the style of the global rich, by offering sinecures for their loyal but otherwise unemployable cronies, and by spinning off lobbying and speaking fees (the original font of their $100-million-plus personal fortune and the likely reason for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to put all her communications, mercantile included, on a private server safe from government scrutiny). Acquiring money to the extent that money would become superfluous was certainly a Clinton telos — and the subtext of the entire Podesta trove and the disclosures about the Clinton Foundation.
Power and pride were the other catalyst for Clinton criminality. I don’t think progressive politics mattered much to the Clintons, at least compared with what drives the more sincere Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Hillary, like Bill, has no real political beliefs — though she doesn’t hesitate to pursue a mostly opportunistic progressive political agenda. By temperament and background, the Clintons are leftists and will follow a leftist vision, sort of, but one predicated on doing so within the constraints of obtaining and keeping power.
That's right. Hillary is Ambition in a pant-suit. What drives her are lust for power and greed. Her leftism is merely the means to her personal ends. But the main reason she must be stopped is not because of her vices, but because of her destructive leftism which will "fundamentally transform," which is to say, destroy, America as she was founded to be.
Hanson ends with this curious sentence:
And one wonders whether, in fleeting seconds here at the end of things, they still believe that it was all worth what they have become.
Is Hanson predicting Hillary's defeat in the election with the suggestion that they sense her defeat? Or is Hanson alluding to the horror of those who, at the end of their lives, come to realize that they have sold their souls in pursuit of worthless things? Or both? Or neither? Perhaps all he means by "the end of things" is the end of the presidential campaign, the last Hillary-Billary power-grab.
On occasion a good writer may indulge in a bit of obscurity to make the reader think — or, less nobly, to make himself appear profound.
