April 2018 – Maverick Philosopher

Stella Morabito on the “Feral” Michelle Wolf

'Feral' is precisely the word for this disgusting leftist. The vile specimen cannot seem to distinguish between being foul-mouthed and being funny. There is no humor in what she said. Succeding as a scum bag, she fails as a comedienne.

She actually joked about abortion in the crudest terms imaginable. "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it." And then something about knocking the baby out. But she missed the one pun in the vicinity, 'being knocked up' as a slang phrase for 'being pregnant.'

Even the left-wing 'journalists' present thought Wolf's trangressivity excessive.

Pretense and Aspiration

How much of pretense is in aspiration, and aspiration in pretense?

Addicted to Food?

This is a re-post (re-entry?) from 9 December 2009. Re-posts are the re-runs of the blogosphere. You don't watch a Twilight Zone or Seinfeld episode only once, do you? The message delivered below is very important and needs be repeated and repeated again.

………………

Can one be addicted to food? If yes, then I am addicted to exposing liberal nonsense. What I have said more than once about the non-addictiveness of tobacco can be applied mutatis mutandis to food 'addiction':

To confuse psychological habituation with addiction is conceptual slovenliness. Addiction, if it means anything definite, has to involve (i) a physiological dependence (ii) on something harmful to the body (iii) removal of which would induce serious withdrawal symptoms. One cannot be addicted to nose-picking, to running, to breathing, or to caffeine. Furthermore, (iv) it is a misuse of language to call a substance addictive when only a relatively small number of its users develop — over a sufficient period of time with sufficient frequency of use — a physical craving for it that cannot be broken without severe withdrawal symptoms. Else one would have to call peanuts toxic because a tiny number of people have severe allergic reactions to them. Heroin is addictive; nicotine is not. To think otherwise is to use ‘addiction’ in an unconscionably loose way.

Addiction is not a Disease

The liberal wussification initiative needs ever more victims, ever more government dependents, and ever more sick people. Hence the trend in this therapeutic society to broaden the definition of 'disease' to cover what are obviously not diseases. Need more patients? Define 'em into existence! Theodore Dalrymple talks sense:

There are cheap lies and expensive lies, and the lie that addiction is a disease just like any other will prove to be costly. It is the lie upon which Washington has based its proposed directive that insurance policies should cover addiction and mental disorders in the same way as they cover physical disease. The government might as well decriminalize fraud while it is at it.

The evidence that addiction is not a disease like any other is compelling, overwhelming, and obvious. It has also been available for a long time. The National Institute on Drug Abuse’s definition of addiction as a “chronic, relapsing brain disease” is about as scientific as the advertising claims for Coca-Cola. In fact, it had its origin as a funding appeal to Congress.

To take only one point among many: most addicts who give up do so without any medical assistance—and most addicts do give up. Moreover, they do so at an early age. The proximate cause of their abstinence is their decision to be abstinent. No one can decide not to have rheumatoid arthritis, say, or colon cancer. Sufferers from those diseases can decide to cooperate or not with treatment, but that is another matter entirely. Therefore, there is a category difference between addiction and real disease.

Read it all.

The Multiverse Idea: Does it Help with the Question ‘Why Something Rather than Nothing?’

If 'universe' refers to the totality of what exists in space-time, then there can be only one universe. Call that the ontological use of 'universe.' On that use, which accords with etymology and common sense, there cannot be multiple universes or parallel universes. But if 'universe' refers to the totality of what we can 'see' (empirically detect) with our best telescopes in all directions out to around 14 billion light-years — call that the epistemological use of the term — then it is a reasonable speculation that there are many such universes.

After all, it is epistemically possible — possible for all we know — that there are other self-contained spatio-temporal regions beyond our current ken. Let's run with the speculation.

These many universes would then make up the one actual universe (in the ontological sense) which we can now call the multiverse: one universe with many spatio-temporally disconnected regions each with its origin in its own big bang.

Some journalists succumb to the conflation of the MODAL notion of possible worlds with the COSMOLOGICAL notion of a multiplicity of universes. These need to be kept distinct.

If there are many physical universes, as some cosmologists speculate, they are parts of total physical reality, albeit spatio-temporally disconnected parts thereof, and therefore parts of the total way things are, using 'are' tenselessly. But the total way things are is just what we mean by the actual world. To invoke the Tractarian Wittgenstein, "The [actual] world is all that is the case." "The [actual] world is the totality of facts not of things." The actual world is the total (maximal) way things are, and merely possible worlds are total ways things could have been. Therefore, if there are many physical universes, they are all 'located within' the actual world in the sense that they are all parts of what is actually the case.

In other words, each universe in the multiverse is a huge chunk of actuality; universes other than ours are not merely possible. They are actually out there beyond our ken. So it is a mistake to refer to the universes in the multiverse as possible worlds. This should be obvious from the fact that there is a possible world in which there are no universes beyond the one we 'see.' Obviously, this possible world is not identical to a physical universe beyond the reach of our telescopes.

Now suppose we want an answer to the question, Why is there anything physical at all, and not rather nothing physical at all? Does the multiverse idea help with this question?

Not in the least.

First of all, we can ask the same question about the multiverse that we asked about the plain old universe prior to the popularity of the multiverse theory. We can ask: why does the multiverse exist? After all, it is just as modally contingent as 'our' universe, the one we 'see.' Even if there are infinitely many universes in the multiverse, there might not have been any. What then explains the existence of the multiverse?

If I want to know why 'our' universe exists, it does no good to say that it is one of the universes in the multiverse, for that simply invites the question: why does the multiverse exist?

You might say, "The multiverse contains every possible universe, and therefore, necessarily, it contains ours." This is not a good answer because the ensemble of universes — the multiverse — might not have existence at all. Surely there is a possible world in which nothing physical exists.

Let us also not forget that the multiplicity of universes comes into existence. So there is need of a multiverse-generating mechanism which will have to operate on some pre-given stuff according to laws of nature. Even if different universes have different laws, there is need for meta-laws to explain how the base-level laws come to be. According to Paul Davies, as paraphrased and quoted here,

. . .to get a multiverse, you need a universe-generating mechanism, "something that's going to make all those Big Bangs go bang. You're going to need some laws of physics. All theories of the multiverse assume quantum physics to provide the element of spontaneity, to make the bangs happen. They assume pre-existing space and time. They assume the normal notion of causality, a whole host of pre-existing conditions." Davies said there are about "10 different basic assumptions" of physical laws that are required "to get the multiverse theory to work."

Davies then made his deep point. "OK, where did those laws all come from? What about those meta-laws that generate all the universes in the first place? Where did they come from? Then what about the laws or meta-laws that impose diverse local laws upon each individual universe? How do they work? What is the distribution mechanism?" Davies argues that the only thing the multiverse theory does is shift the problem of existence up from the level of one universe to the level of multiple universes. "But you haven't explained it," Davies asserted.

Davies dismissed the idea that "any universe you like is out there somewhere. I think such an idea is just ridiculous and it explains nothing. Having all possible universes is not an explanation, because by invoking everything, you explain nothing."

Here Davies may be going too far. If you want to explain why the physical constants are so finely tuned as to allow the emergence of life and consciousness and the minds of physicists, then it does seem to be a good explanation to say that there are all the possible universes there might have been; it would then be no surprise that in our universe physics exists. It had to exist in at least one! One would not then need God to do the fine-tuning or to actualize a life-supporting universe. But this still leaves unexplained why there is the ensemble of universes in the first place.

Davies' critique of the multiverse goes deeper. To explain the universe, he rejects "outside explanations," he said.

"I suppose, for me, the main problem [with a multiverse] is that what we're trying to do is explain why the universe is as it is by appealing to something outside of it," Davies told me. "In this case, an infinite number of multiple universes outside of our universe is used as the explanation for our universe."

Then Davies makes his damning comparison. "To me, multiverse explanations are no better than traditional religion, which appeals to an unseen, unexplained God — a God that is outside of the universe — to explain the universe. In fact, I think both explanations — multiverse and God — are pretty much equivalent." To Davies, this equivalence is not a compliment.

I don't see the damnation nor the equivalency. The appeal to God is the appeal to a necessary being about which it make no sense to ask: But why does it exist? The crucial difference between appealing to God and appealing to the multiverse is that the former is a necessary being while the second is not.

I grant, though, that the idea of a necessary being is a very difficult one!

What Alfie’s All About

Read it.

The title is a play on the title of a great Burt Bacharach-Hal David composition here sung by Dionne Warwick.

Is Leftist Politics Anti-Identity Politics?

S. J. writes,

Reading your posts lately, the following thought struck me. I wonder if it's struck you, and if you'd agree:

Identity politics is a misleading name for the recent catastrophic turn in so-called progressive politics. For what it actually aims at primarily is the *destruction* of traditional modes of identity, which are, loosely speaking, summarised by the slogan "faith, flag and family". What it replaces those with is of secondary importance to that central mission.

That's why the obvious contradictions, and vicious internecine rivalries, on the left seem not (with certain honourable exceptions) to lead to anything approaching the self-doubt and ideological re-evaluation that conservatives assume – logically from their own frame of reference – that they ought. For it simply doesn't matter to the contemporary leftist that his preferred categories are flimsy and self-contradictory. They're only a means to an end; a solvent to be applied to the older forms of identity and self-understanding.

On which account, it would be far more truthful to reckon it "anti-identity politics".

(I might also add that we should therefore avoid the trap of playing up too much the individualism that, rightly understood, is central to much conservative thought, to the point of downplaying those old and authentic attachments – and so allowing the left to pose, utterly falsely, as the champions of community and relational life.)

With heartfelt thanks for the stimulation to thought, not to say sheer enjoyment, that your blog continues to provide.

My kind reader is suggesting that left-wing politics is destructive of traditional forms of identity and therefore best understood as anti-identity politics rather than as identity politics.

I see matters differently. There is an identity politics of the Left and an identity politics of the Right. This became obvious to me when, after objecting to the tribalism of blacks, Hispanics, and other racial/ethnic groups, and after calling for a transcending of tribalism, I was countered by certain alt-rightists/neo-reactionaries who reject any such transcending and think that what is needed is a white tribalism to oppose tribalisms 'of color.' See If I'm a Racist, then You're a Tribalist! (56 good comments).

As I see it, there is nothing inherently leftist or rightist about identity politics in the way political correctness is inherently leftist. (Anyone who is politically correct is by definition a leftist.) So what is it to be identity-political? I suggest that it is to take one's primary self-identification to be a tribal identification, an identification in terms of race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, religion, disability, socio-economic class, or some combination of these.

In a separate post I hope to clarify and develop this suggestion.

Is William Kilpatrick Too Soft on Pope Francis?

Dr. Vito Caiati writes,

I read your post on “The Church and Islam: Dangerous Illusions,” and while I share your appreciation of Kilpatrick’s continuing commentary on the real nature of Islam, I am uncomfortable with his statement that “It seems clear to me that the pope and others in the hierarchy are enabling the spread of an evil ideology; however, it’s not at all clear that they understand what they’re doing. Francis, for instance, seems to sincerely believe that all religions are roughly equal in goodness. Thus for him, the spread of any religion must seem like a good thing. It’s an exceedingly naïve view, but one that seems honestly held.”

I do not claim that the Pope is a “collaborator,” but I think that Kilpatrick overlooks the deep anti-Western politics and ideology of Bergoglio, who has expressed open contempt for the advanced capitalist nations to exercise their sovereign rights to control illegal immigration (all his asinine remarks on “walls, the obligation to admit endless streams of “migrants,” and so on); who offered only a highly muted response to the wholesale murder and displacement of Christians in the Middle East by Islamic fanatics (remember the plane full of refugees that he took back to Italy with him: All Muslims?); and who works tirelessly to undermine Roman Catholic doctrine and traditions, which remain fundamental to many Catholics in Eastern and Southern Europe and in the United States and which constitute an important part of the cultural inheritance of Europe. His embrace of Islam is part of the leftist embrace of this highly dangerous and alien religious-political ideology under the banners of diversity and globalism. His perspective on Islam is thus not so “naïve” as Kilpatrick would have us believe. Kilpatrick, like so many Catholics, seems fearful of going the full distance and exposing the Pope and most of the hierarchy of the Church as active participants in the ongoing leftist assault on the nation state and Western civilization.

I fear Dr. Caiati is correct.

On Opposing a Dangerous Ideology that is also a Religion

This article by William Kilpatrick bears on my ongoing conversation with a Canadian philosopher about Islam, religious tests, and constitutional interpretation. Last exchange here. I'll pull a few quotations from Professor Kilpatrick and add some comments.

The idea of opposing dangerous ideologies is not foreign to Americans, but the idea of opposing an ideology that is also a religion is more problematic. It has become increasingly problematic now that we live in an era in which merely disagreeing with another’s opinions is tantamount to a hate crime.

But obviously, to dissent from a proposition is not to hate a person. Nor is dissent on the part of the dissenter a sign of mental malfunction. Liberals who would smear Kilpatrick by calling him an 'Islamophobe' are either ignorant or vicious. Ignorant, if they do not understand that a phobia is an irrational fear. Vicious, if they mean to silence such a truth-teller by questioning his sanity.

The U.S. Constitution in the first and second clauses of its First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion. But does Islam fall under this protection? Ought there be freedom of religion for a religion that seeks to eliminate every other religion? Obviously not. The Constitition is not a suicide pact. I argue this out in painful detail in my last exchange with the Canadian.

I don't deny that Islam is a religion. It may even be a way to God for some who know of no better Way. (The allusion is to via, veritas, vita.)But Islam is just as much, if not more, a political ideology that seeks to subvert the principles and values of the American founding. Let us note en passant that this explains what would otherwise be very hard to explain, namely, why the Left is in cahoots with Islam. For the Left too is out to subvert said principles and values. Islamists must view leftists as useful idiots who will be sent packing to the realm of the black-eyed virgins should the former gain the (knife-wielding) upper hand. Leftists are in for a surprise if they think that they can use Islamists for leftist purposes.

I feel a rant coming on, so back to the sober Irishman:

Under Pope Benedict XVI there were signs—such as his Regensburg Address—that the Church was developing a more realistic view of Islam. But whatever ground was gained by Benedict was given up by Francis. Indeed, it seems fair to say that under Francis, the Church’s understanding of Islam regressed. Perhaps the most glaring example of this regression can be found in the Pope’s assertion that “authentic Islam and a proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.” It’s hard to imagine any of his predecessors or any of their advisors making a similar claim.

Holy moly! Could Bergoglio the Boneheaded be that benighted? Yes, take a gander at this:

By contrast, Church leaders and Pope Francis in particular, have become, in effect, enablers of Islam. Pope Francis has denied that Islam sanctions violence, has drawn a moral equivalence between Islam and Catholicism (“If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence”), and has campaigned for the admittance of millions of Muslim migrants into Europe. Moreover, he has criticized those who oppose his open borders policy as hard-hearted xenophobes. In return for his efforts, he has been publicly thanked by several Muslim leaders for his “defense of Islam.”

One might be tempted to use the word “collaborator” instead of “enabler.” But collaborator is too strong a word. In its World War II context, it implies a knowing consent to and cooperation with an evil enterprise. It seems clear to me that the pope and others in the hierarchy are enabling the spread of an evil ideology; however, it’s not at all clear that they understand what they’re doing. Francis, for instance, seems to sincerely believe that all religions are roughly equal in goodness. Thus for him, the spread of any religion must seem like a good thing. It’s an exceedingly naïve view, but one that seems honestly held.

Tribalism and Diversity

Tribalism is on the rise. Given this fact, does it make sense to admit into one's country ever more different tribes? A piety oft-intoned by leftists is that diversity is our strength. An Orwellianism, that, if tribal diversity is at issue. For that would amount to the absurdity that the more domestic strife, the stronger we become. It is plain, after all, that tribes do not like each other, and do not see themselves in the other. Tribal identification is other-exclusive.

I am against tribal identification. I realize, however, that I am sawing against the grain of the crooked timber of humanity. So the realist in me says that immigration policy must favor those who are assimilable to our values and principles and must exclude those who aren't.

Now isn't that the sanest thing you've heard all day?

It is, an sich, eminently sane, but not to the destructive and self-enstupidated.

Revolution and Worse to Come

From the pen of an astute historian:

Insidiously and incrementally, we are in the process of normalizing violence against the elected president of the United States. If all this fails to delegitimize Trump, fails to destroy his health, or fails to lead to a 2018 midterm Democratic sweep and subsequent impeachment, expect even greater threats of violence. The Resistance and rabid anti-Trumpers have lost confidence in the constitutional framework of elections, and they’ve flouted the tradition by which the opposition allows the in-power party to present its case to the court of public opinion.

[. . .]

We are entering revolutionary times. The law is no longer equally applied. The media are the ministry of truth. The Democratic party is a revolutionary force. And it is all getting scary.

Survivalism

Many survivalists are extremists. But extremism is everywhere, in the longevity fanatic, the muscular hypertrophy nut, and so on.

That being said, a wise man, while hoping for the best, prepares for the worst. But the prepping is kept within reason, where part of being reasonable is maintaining a balanced perspective. A balanced approach, for me, does not extend to the homemade rain barrels that some recommend. But I do keep a lot of bottled water and other non-alcoholic potables on hand. Here are some questions you should ask yourself.

1. Are you prepared to repel a home invasion meeting deadly force with deadly force? Are you prepared for a break down in civil order?
2. Do you have sufficient food and water to keep you and your family alive for say three weeks?
3. Do you have the battery-operated devices you will need to survive the collapse of the power grid, and enough fresh batteries?
4. Can you put out a fire on your own?
5. Do you have a sufficient supply of the medications you will need should there be no access to pharmacies?

These are just some of the questions to consider. But how far will you go with these preparations? Will you sacrifice the certain present preparing for a disastrous future that may not materialize? Wouldn't that be foolish? Wouldn't it be as foolish as the ostrich-like refusal to consider questions like the above?

And then there is the question of suicide, which you ought to confront head on. Do you want to live in the state of nature after the collapse of civil society? Under what conditions is life worth living? Civilization is thin ice, a crust easy to break through, beneath which is a hell of misery. (Yes, I know I'm mixing my metaphors.) When the going gets unbearable, could you see your way clear to providing your spouse with the means of suicide and then killing yourself? Are there good moral objections to such a course of action?

Think about these things now while you have time and enjoy peace of mind.

Is an EMP Attack a Threat to be Taken Seriously?

Obama and his administration did not think so. Trump has different and better ideas. Score another for Trump. Please watch the video. You will learn something from an expert.

Filed under: Survival

Frege’s Horse Paradox, Bradley’s Regress, and the Problem of Predication

The concept horse is not a concept. Thus spoke Frege, paradoxically. Why does he say such a thing? Because the subject expression 'the concept horse' refers to an object. It names an object. Concepts and objects on his scheme are mutually exclusive. No concept is an object and conversely. Only objects can be named. No concept can be named. Predicates are not names. If you try to name a concept you will fail. You will succeed only in naming an object. You will not succeed in expressing the predicativity of the concept. Concepts are predicable while objects are not. It is clear that one cannot predicate Socrates of Socrates. We can, however, predicate wisdom of Socrates. It is just that wisdom is not an object.

But now we are smack in the middle of the paradox. For to explain Frege's view I need to be able to talk about the referent of the gappy predicate ' ___ is wise.' I need to be able to say that it is a predicable entity, a concept. But how can I do this without naming it, and thus objectifying it? Ineffability may be the wages of Frege's absolute object-concept distinction.

To savor the full flavor of the paradox, note that the sentence 'No concept can be named' contains the general name 'concept.' It seems we, or rather the Fregeans, cannot say what we or they mean. But if we cannot say what we mean, how do we know that we mean anything at all? Is an inexpressible meaning a meaning? Are there things that cannot be said but only shown? (Wittgenstein) Perhaps we cannot say that concepts are concepts; all we can do is show that they are by employing open sentences or predicates such as '___ is tall.' Unfortunately, this is also paradoxical. For I had to say what the gappy predicate shows. I had to say that concepts are concepts and that concepts are what gappy predicates (predicates that are not construed as names) express.

Why can't concepts be named? Why aren't they a kind of higher-order object? Why can't they be picked out using abstract substantives? Why can't we say that, in a sentence such as 'Tom is sad,' 'Tom' names an object while 'sad' names a different sort of object, a concept/property? Frege's thought seems to be that if concepts are objects, then they cannot exercise their predicative function. Concepts are essentially and irreducibly predicative, and if you objectify them — think or speak of them as objects — then you destroy their predicative function. A predicative proposition is not a juxtaposition of two objects. If there is Tom and there is sadness, it doesn't follow that sadness is true of Tom. What makes a property true of its subject? An obvious equivalence: if F-ness is true of a, then *a is F* is true. So we might ask the questions this way: What makes *a is F* true?

The Problem of the Unity of the Proposition and the Fregean Solution

We are brought back to the problem of the unity of the proposition. It's as old as Plato. It is a genuine problem, but no one has ever solved it. (Of course, I am using 'solve' as a verb of success.)

A collection of two objects is not a proposition. The mereological sum Tom + sadness is neither true nor false; propositions are either true or false. The unity of a proposition is a type of unity that attracts a truth value, whereas the unity of a sum does not attract a truth value. The unity of a proposition is mighty puzzling even in the simplest cases. It does no good to say that the copula 'is' in 'Tom is sad' refers to the instantiation relation R and that this relation connects the concept/property to the object, sadness to Tom, and in such a way as to make sadness true of Tom. For then you sire Mr Bradley's relation regress. It's infinite and it's vicious. Note that if the sum Tom + sadness can exist without it being true that Tom is sad, then the sum Tom + R + sadness can also exist without it being true that Tom is sad.

Enter Frege with his obscure talk of the unsaturatedness of concepts. Concepts exist whether or not they are instantiated, but they are 'gappy': if a first-level concept is instantiated by an object, there is no need for a tertium quid to connect concept and object. They fit together like plug and socket, where the plug is the object and the concept the socket. The female receptacle accepts the male plug without the need of anything to hold the two together.

On this approach no regress arises. For if there is no third thing that holds concept and object together, then no worries can arise as to how the third thing is related to the concept on the one side and the object on the other. But our problem about the unity of the proposition remains unsolved. For if the concept can exist uninstantiated, then both object and concept, Tom and sadness, can exist without it being true that Tom is sad.

The dialectic continues on and on. Philosophia longa, vita brevis. Life is brief; blog posts ought to be.

The Constitution, Reason, and Abstract Principles

This entry continues the 'religious test' discussion. (Last installment here.) The Canadian writes,

I agree that there's no incoherence in a statement such as "(1) The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and disallows religious tests. (2) The Constitution guarantees these things subject to the proviso that the religion in question is compatible with the principles of the American founding." But why is the most reasonable interpretation one that projects such a proviso on to the text? What are the criteria for a reasonable interpretation? On the one hand, a reasonable interpretation might be one that results in a constitution that reasonable people could accept. Naturally, if this is the criterion, no reasonable interpretation can produce a constitution that, in practice, would create a society where that same constitution would be destroyed. On the other hand, it might simply be one that's adequately supported by the textual evidence (and other evidence, e.g., reasonably hypotheses about the authors' intentions). Or maybe a reasonable interpretation is subject to both constraints. In any case there is a tension between the two. As you say, there's really no good textual evidence (or any other kind, as far as I know) to indicate that the Constitution really does implicitly limit the scope of religious freedom so as to preclude the freedom to practice traditional Islam, or that it limits the scope of 'No religious test' so as to allow for tests with respect to Islam. I'd argue that a reasonable interpretation in the second sense–the most reasonable one, in that sense–is unreasonable in the first sense.

"What are the criteria for a reasonable interpretation?" I agree that there is no evading this difficult question. One answer is that a reasonable interpretation is an internally coherent one. The First Amendment guarantees the "free exercise" of religion and "freedom of speech," inter alia. Now if "no religious test" (Article VI, section III) is interpreted in so latitudinarian a fashion as to allow Sharia-supporting Muslims to gain political power, then we are on the road to an internal contradiction. For these Muslims, once in power, will of course try to shut down the free exercise of religions other than Islam, and they will attempt to prohibit freedom of speech if it involves any criticism, no matter how respectful, of Muhammad or of any aspect of their religion. They will have used the Constitution to destroy the Constitution. They will have exploited our freedom of religion to eliminate freedom of religion, and our freedom of speech to eliminate freedom of speech.

It seems to me that the Constitution cannot be interpreted so as to allow the emergence of the following logical contradiction:

a) Under no circumstances shall (i) the freedom to practice the religion of one's choice (or to refrain from the practice of any religion) be prohibited by the government, or (ii) the freedom to express one's view publicly be abridged.

b) Under some circumstances (e.g., when enough Muslim fundamentalists gain power) the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech many be prohibited and abridged.

Note that the (a)-(b) dyad is logically inconsistent: the limbs cannot both be true. What we have here is a strict logical contradiction.

But to embrace a logical contradiction is the height of unreasonableness.

I conclude that to interpret the Constitution in such a way that it allows for the emergence of the above contradiction is unreasonable. The solution is obvious to me: one cannot allow a destructive political ideology such as Islam to count as a religion for purposes of Constitutional interpretation. I am conceding that Islam is a religion and not a mere political ideology masquerading as a religion, and I am conceding that it is a religion in its own right and not a Christian heresy; the point is that it is a religion-cum-political ideology that is incompatible with the principles and values of the American founding.

Therefore, Islam ought not count as a religion when it comes to interpreting the Constitution. It may well be a way to God for those brought up on it and who know no better way, and it deserves respect for that reason. But this is no reason to abstract from its totalitarian and theocratic political nature, a nature at war with our political principles.

The Canadian continues:

In any case, I think that for your argument you need the first notion of reasonable interpretation. But then there's a problem: Leftists, whose ideas about reasonable political principles are very different from ours, can now argue on a similar basis that we should just ignore the seemingly plain meaning of the Constitution in cases where it conflicts with their values. For instance, they can argue that since it's just not reasonable to let citizens buy AR-15s, the 2nd Amendment must be interpreted in such a way that citizens don't have that right. That seems worrisome. If there isn't even a generally agreed meaning for the constitution, the only way to politically resolve such disagreements is by some kind of debate over ultimate aims or values; but I know you agree with me that that isn't likely to happen either. So it seems wise to insist that the constitution's meaning is the meaning of the text, not the meaning that we think it would have or should have in order to be most reasonable. But then we're back to the problem that the text just doesn't seem to exclude Islamic freedom of religion, or to allow for a "religious test" in that case–or even to exclude the possibility that the Constitution is just internally inconsistent in some respects…

In many cases there is no "plain meaning." The meaning has to be 'excavated.' Does "establishment of religion" have a plain meaning in the First Amendment? (That's a rhetorical question.) "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." The meaning is open to interpretation. Or take the Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Does 2A bear its meaning on its sleeve? Of course not. What is the Militia? Is the right individual or collective? Does the initial clause supply a reason, or the only reason, in justification of the right to keep and bear arms? I have argued elsewhere that it supplies a reason, not the only reason. I am sure many if not most would disagree.

So I deny the Canadian's assumption that the Constitution has a plain meaning that can just be 'read off' the text. There is no avoiding interpretation in the light of principles that are not themselves articulated in the Constitution. The Law of Non-Contradiction, for example, is not stated in the Constitution. We bring that principle to the text, and reasonably so.

Or consider the Principle of Charity in interpretation. To save keystrokes I won't formulate the principle. My astute readers know more or less what it is. Well, does "All men are created equal" in the Declaration have a plain meaning? There are benighted souls who think it implies the empirical equality of all human beings. But this violates the Principle of Charity since if the declaration in the Declaration were so interpreted it would come out false! The Charity principle, however, is not to be found in any of the founding documents; we bring it to the text and we do so reasonably.

There is no avoiding interpretation. The text does not have a plain meaning. The other extreme, however, is far worse. There are those who say that the Constitution means whatever SCOTUS says it means. But then there is no text; there is a tabula rasa upon which people in black robes write whatever they want. The most SCOTUS can do is decide upon an enforceable meaning among candidate possibilities that find support in the text. That alone is the reasonable view.

For example, are 2A rights collective or individual? It was decided that they are individual. SCOTUS in this decision came to the 'right' decision. Yes, my use of 'right' is tendentious. More on this problem below.

What I am saying, then, is that there is a text, not a tabula rasa; the text has a meaning; the meaning is not obvious; the meaning is subject to interpretation in the light of principles brought to the text.

But whose principles are these? Those of a reasonable person. But what constitutes reasonableness? Here is where the crunch comes, as my Canadian interlocutor fully appreciates. SCOTUS has the power to lay down the law and enforce an interpretation of the Constitution. But who has the power to decide what the principles of rationality are? Logically prior question: Are the principles of rationality matters of decision at all?

The Canadian concludes:

We might be back to a recurring deeper disagreement here. I don't think that any system of abstract principles and values is enough to provide a framework for a workable society. I think some kind of pre-rational or pre-conceptual horizon of meaning and practice and natural community is the basis; explicit principles and values have a role, but only when they're understood by everyone to operate within that specific cultural world. The principles of "no religious test" or "freedom of religion" were just fine when they were only being applied to a fairly small range of fairly similar religions, practiced by relatively similar people. (And, sure, there were always some who were not so similar–Africans, Amerindians–but they were small in number and had no real influence.) Once every religion on earth was included in American society, that was bound to create insoluble problems. Of course, one option is to simply say that there will be freedom of religion for a specific list of religions, and only those ones. But that seems contrary to other traditional American principles. I suspect that the very idea of "religion" that we in the west tend to take for granted is really an artefact of our specific religious and cultural heritage. There is probably no useful general account of "religion" across all human cultures. So it would be unwise to propose any kind of freedom for that kind of thing.

I agree that abstract principles and values are not enough. They have to reflect a (temporally) prior pre-conceptual shared understanding that is taken for granted. The principles and values cannot be imposed ab extra, but must be a sort of distillate or articulation on the conceptual plane of what is already tacitly understood and accepted at the pre-conceptual level. Otherwise we will argue about the principles.

Argument about first principles is the province of philosophy and is legitimate there. In philosophy, nothing is immune to scrutiny. I should think that 'nothing immune to scrutiny' is a constitutive rule of the philosophical 'game' or enterprise. But if our politics becomes a philosophical free-for-all, then we are in trouble.

There is no place for dogmas in philosophy. But in politics and religion we seem to need them. We need propositions that are unquestionably accepted.

For example, if we don't all accept that there is a sense in which we are all equal, equal as rights-possessors, then we are in deep trouble. And if we don't all accept that certain ideologies such as Islam are incompatible with the principles enshrined in the U. S. Constitution, then we are in deep trouble. Examples are easily multiplied.

I think we agree on why we are in the mess we are in. As you put it, "Once every religion on earth was included in American society, that was bound to create insoluble problems." But benign non-Christian religions such as Buddhism are not the problem. The problem is Islam. The solution is extreme vetting of immigrants from Muslim countries. "Of course, one option is to simply say that there will be freedom of religion for a specific list of religions, and only those ones. But that seems contrary to other traditional American principles."

I disagree. Which traditional American principle are you referring to? Don't tell me "freedom of religion." Islam is not a religion in a sense that could allow it to be on a list of acceptable religions given American principles.

Can a multi-cultural society flourish? There is reason to be skeptical. A society cannot flourish without shared principles and values. But the latter presuppose and grow out of a shared public culture. Acquiescence in and assimilation to that shared culture — Graeco-Roman and Judeo-Christian — must be demanded of all would-be immigrants. Otherwise we will break apart and become easy pickings for foreign aggressors.

I suspect it is already too late to turn things around peacefully. Civil war is a real possibility.