Month: August 2021

Almost Mugged in the Big Easy

I came close to being mugged in New Orleans' French Quarter in '90 or '91. I was there to read  a paper at an American Philosophical Association meeting.  Early one morning I left the hotel to sample the local color and grab some breakfast. Striding along Bourbon street, I noticed a couple of black dudes on the other side of the street.  I was wearing a beret, which may have suggested to the loiterers that I was a foreigner and an easy mark. One dude approached and commented on my shoes in an obvious attempt to distract me and throw me off my guard. My situational awareness saved me. That, together with my stern mien, height, leather jacket and purposeful stride.  I gave the punk a hard look, increased my pace, and blew him off.

Profiling is part of situational awareness. Profiling is just common sense, which is why 'progressive' fools oppose it. A couple of black youths loitering in a touristy area are probably up to no good. It is a well-known fact that blacks as a group and more criminally prone than whites as a group. There is nothing racist about pointing that out because a fact about race is not a racist fact.  It cannot be racist to speak the truth in situations where it is important that the truth be spoken. But if common sense and truth-telling make me a racist, then we should all be racists, including decent black folk. 

Bourbon Street Nawlins

Self-Admonitions

Arm yourself with your maxims as you quit your cell. They are as important as your EDC. The vexatious and worse are out and about. Avoid the near occasion of idle talk. Most of what anyone has to say is bushwa. Smile and greet, but pass on. Restrain the social need — if it is a need. Keep the past at mental arm's length.  Live in the present, relaxed, but situationally aware. Guard the mind. Protect the inner citadel from pointless and harmful invasions.

Good Relations and Deep Relations

Given the limitations of our postlapsarian predicament, good relations with others must needs be limited relations. Familiarity breeds contempt. Propinquity militates against politeness. Conservatives understand that a certain formality in our relations with others, both within and without the family, helps maintain respect. Formality helps keep in check the incivility bred of familiarity.  Reserve has a preservative effect.   Saying less more often accrues to our benefit than saying more. How often have you brought trouble upon your head by simply keeping your mouth shut? 

So much for good relations. Deep relations are another story. In them we court danger. We go deep, we probe, we 'let it all hang out' after midnight of the work-a-day round. You should run the risk from time to time.  Risk rejection and worse. Otherwise, when it comes time to die, you won't be able to say that you really squeezed the fruit of the lemon tree. 

Logical Form, Equivocation, and Propositions

A re-post with minor edits and additions from 4 September 2017.

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Ed Buckner wants to re-fight old battles. I'm game. The following post of his, reproduced verbatim, just appeared at Dale Tuggy's site:

The concept of logical form is essential to any discussion of identity, and hence to any discussion of the Trinity. Here is a puzzle I have been discussing with the famous Bill Vallicella for many years.

(Argument 1) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’

(Argument 2) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’

My puzzle [is] that the first argument is clearly not valid if the first ‘Cicero’ means the Roman, the second the American town, yet the argument seems to instantiate a valid form. Bill objects that if there is equivocation, then the argument really has the form ‘a is F, therefore b is F’, which fails to instantiate a valid form.

I then ask what is the form of. Clearly not of the sentences, since the sentences do not include the meaning or the proposition. Is it the form of the proposition expressed by the sentences? But then we have the problem of the second argument, where both ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid. But I think no one would agree that the second argument is valid.

So logical form does not belong to the sentences, nor to the propositions expressed by them. So what is it the form of?

Tully'sMy answer is that the logical form of the argument is the form of the Fregean propositions expressed by the sentences that make up the argument. Let me explain.

I agree with Ed that logical form is not the form of an array of sentence-tokens. It is rather the form of an array of propositions expressed by the sentences. (To be painfully precise: it is the form of an array of propositions expressed by the assertive utterance, and thus the tokening, of a series of sentence-types by a speaker or thinker on a given occasion. A sentence-token buried in a book does not express anything by itself!)

To solve Ed's puzzle we need to distinguish three views of propositions: the Aristotelian, the Fregean, and the Russellian. This would be a good topic for an extended post. Here I will be brief.  Brevity is the soul of blog.

An Aristotelian proposition is an assertively uttered meaningful sentence in the indicative mood that expresses a complete thought.  What makes such a proposition 'Aristotelian' as opposed to 'Platonic' is that the meaning of the sentence is not something that can subsist on its own apart from the assertive tokening of the sentence.  The meaning of the sentence depends on its being expressed, whether in overt speech or in thought, by someone. And this expression must be thoughtfully done and not mindlessly like a parrot or a voice synthesizer. If there were no minds there would be no Aristotelian propositions. And if there were no languages there would be no Aristotelian propositions. In this sense, Aristotelian propositions are linguistic entities.

In brief: An Aristotelian proposition is just a declarative sentence in use together with its dependent sense or meaning. Suppose I write a declarative sentence on a piece of paper. The Aristotelian proposition is not the string of physical marks on the paper, nor it is the producing of the marks; it is the marks as produced by a minded organism on a particular occasion together with the meaning those marks embody where meaning is first in the mind and only then embodied in the marks.

A Fregean proposition is a nonlinguistic entity that subsists independently of minds and language. It is the sense (Sinn) of a declarative sentence (Satz) from which indexical elements have been extruded. For example, 'I am blogging'  does not express a Fregean proposition because of the indexical 'I' and because of the present tense of the verb phrase.  But 'BV blogs at 10:50 AM PST on 4 September 2017' expresses a Fregean proposition.

Fregean senses are extralinguistic and extramental 'abstract' or 'Platonic' items. They are not in time or space even when the objects they are about are in time and space. This is what makes Fregean propositions 'Platonic' rather than 'Aristotelian.' Fregean propositions are the primary truth-bearers; the sentences that express them are derivatively true or false.  Likewise with the judgments whose content they are.

A Russellian proposition is a blurry, hybrid entity that combines some of the features of a Fregean truth-bearer and some of the features of a truth-maker. A Russellian proposition does not reside at the level of sense (Sinn) but at the level of reference (Bedeutung).  It is out there in the (natural) world. It is what some of us call a fact or 'concrete fact' (as in my existence book) and others, e.g. D. M. Armstrong,  a state of affairs.  

Now consider a singular sentence such as 'Ed is happy.'  For present purposes, the crucial difference between a Fregean proposition and a Russellian proposition is that, on the Fregean view, the subject constituent of Ed is happy is not Ed himself with skin and hair, but an abstract surrogate that represents him in the Fregean proposition, whereas in the Russellian proposition Ed himself is a constituent of the proposition!  

We needn't consider why so many distinguished philosophers have opted for this (monstrous) view.  But this is the view that seems to have Ed in its grip and that powers his puzzle above.

If we take the relatively saner (but nonetheless problematic) view that propositions are Fregean in nature, then the puzzle is easily solved.

Ed asks: What is the logical form the form of?  He maintains, rightly, that it cannot be the form of an array of sentences. So it must be the form of an array of propositions. Right again. But then he falls into puzzlement: 

. . . ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid.

The puzzlement disappears if we reject the Russsellian theory of propositions. A man cannot be contained in a proposition, and so it cannot be the same man in both propositions.

‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. Its form is: Rc, ergo Rt, which is an invalid form. If we adopt  either an Aristotelian or a Fregean view of propositions we will not be tempted to think otherwise.

‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’ is plainly valid. ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. The logical forms are different! If, on a Russellian theory of propositions, the forms are the same, then so much the worse for a Russellian theory of propositions!

Saturday Night at the Oldies: My Bob Dylan Top Ten

Hector C. asked me to name my top ten favorite Dylan songs. With pleasure.

Don't Think Twice.  I first heard this in the Peter, Paul, and Mary version circa 1962 or '63. Deeply moved by it, I bought the 45 rpm single and noted that the song was written by one B. Dylan. I pronounced the name to myself as 'Dial in' and had a sense that this songwriter was about to speak to me and my life.  And here he is still speaking to my 'lived experience' 60 years later.

She Belongs to Me

Chimes of Freedom.  With Joan Osborne, NOT Joan Baez!  Byrds' version.  No Dylan, no folk rock.

My Back Pages

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Farewell Angelina. Joanie's version. No Baez, no Dylan. She took the scruffy kid under her wing and introduced him to her well-established audience.  

Visions of Johanna

Just Like a Woman.  Better than the Blonde on Blonde version.  

Tambourine Man

Few songs capture the 'magic' of the '60s like this one. But you had to have been there, of a certain impressionable age, with the right disposition, with an open mind, and an open heart, idealistic, a seeker, and at least a little alienated from the larger society and the quiet desperation and dead usages of parents and relatives . . . .

YouTuber comment:  "This Bob Dylan song brings me to tears and I don't know why. I'm 76 years old and remember when it was new. It still is." Comment on the comment:  "This is a nostalgic feeling for the passing of the time. A saudade of a time whose dreams seem  real. I know about it. I'm 71."

Not Dark Yet. YouTuber comment: "All my life, Dylan has been able to touch my soul. This is undoubtedly one of his best."

An alternative Dylan top ten next week.

Political Observations

The short statements below are from my Facebook page.  It is important to explain to the open-minded and politically uncommitted, in a pithy and non-polemical way, what American conservatives stand for.  The American conservative, as I use the term, is neither a throne-and-altar neo-reactionary, nor is he an alt-Right tribalist. His conservatism takes on board the best of classical liberalism. You could call him a paleo-liberal. And of course he is far from the yap-and-scribble, do-nothing 'cruise ship' pseudo-conservatives who are willing to accept political dhimmitude so long as their perquisites and privileges and invitations to the tonier Beltway salons remain intact.  
 
My 'voice' over at Facebook is usually polemical, unlike the shorts below. I tread the razor's edge between saying what needs to be said about incendiary topics and getting de-platformed.  Polemical discourse, including invective, mockery, and the rest are justified by the fact we are engaged in a war with the destructive Left over the soul of America.  You are welcome to join me, but just be sure to read the pinned post at the top of the page.
 
THE FIRST OBLIGATION OF GOVERNMENT
 
The main obligation of a government is to protect and serve the citizens of the country of which it is the government. It is a further question whether it has obligations to protect and benefit the citizens of other countries. That is debatable. But if it does, those obligations are trumped by the main obligation just mentioned. I should think that a great nation such as the USA does well to engage in purely humanitarian efforts such as famine relief. Such efforts are arguably supererogatory and not obligatory.
 
NATIONALISM AND 'FAMILIALISM'
 
America First is as sound an idea as that each family has the right to prefer its interests over the interests of other families. If my wife becomes ill, then my obligation is to care for her and expend such financial resources as are necessary to see to her welfare. If this means reducing my charitable contributions to the local food bank, then so be it. Whatever obligations I have to help others 'ripple out' from myself as center, losing claim to my attention the farther out they go, much like the amplitude of waves caused by a rock's falling into a pond diminishes the farther from the point of impact. Spouse and/or children first, then other family members, then old friends, then new friends, then neighbors, and so on.
 
The details are reasonably disputable, but not the general principle. The general principle is that we are justified in looking to our own first.
 
ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM
 
AMERICA FIRST does not mean that that the USA ought to be first over other countries, dominating them. It means that every country has the right to prefer itself and its own interests over the interests of other countries. We say 'America first' because we are Americans; the Czechs say or ought to say 'Czech Republic first.' The general principle is that every country has a right to grant preference to itself and its interests over the interests of other countries while respecting their interests and right to self-determination. America First is but an instance of the general principle. The principle, then, is Country First.
 
ENLIGHTENED NATIONALISM AND CHAUVINISM
 
America First has nothing to do with chauvinism which could be characterized as a blind and intemperate patriotism, a belligerent and unjustified belief in the superiority of one's own country. America First expresses an enlightened nationalism which is obviously compatible with a sober recognition of national failings. Germany has a rather sordid history; but Germany First is compatible with a recognition of the wrong turn that great nation took during a well-known twelve-year period (1933-1945) in her history.
 
 
NATIONALISM, NATIVISM, ISOLATIONISM
 
An enlightened nationalism is distinct from nativism inasmuch as the former does not rule out immigration. By definition, an immigrant is not a native; but an enlightened American nationalism accepts immigrants who accept American values, which of course are not the values of the Left or of political Islam.
 
An enlightened nationalism is not isolationist. What it eschews is a fruitless meddling and over-eager interventionism. It does not rule out certain necessary interventions when they are in our interests and in the interests of our allies.
 
So America First is not to be confused with chauvinism or nativism or isolationism.

Back to the Intentionality/Reference Discussion

Returning to the ongoing thread:

So to summarise the discussion so far. The doctrine of Reference and Identity is that empty names can refer. That is because the verb phrase ‘refers to’ is intentional. That is, “S refers to N” is consistent with “there is no such thing as N”. Contrast with “S touches N” which implies there is such a thing as N.

[. . .]

Do you see any problem with that position?

When you say, "empty names can refer," do you mean that some empty names refer and some empty names do not refer? Or do you mean that all empty names refer? (Compare: If I said that integers can be either odd or even, that would be equivalent to saying that  some integers are odd and some are even.)

I will assume that you mean that all empty names refer.  You say that this is because 'refers to' is intentional. It is intentional in the very same way that thinking-of is intentional. To think is to think of something. But 'A thinks of  N' is logically consistent with 'there is no such thing as N.'  If I am thinking of Asmodeus, it does not follow that I am thinking of something that exists.  So far, so good. Now I take it that you hold that the following are all logically equivalent where the substituends for 'N' are proper names such as 'Moses' and 'Asmodeus.' 

  • There is no such thing as N
  • There exists no such thing as N
  • It is not the case that there exists an x such that x = N
  • It is not the case that some existing thing is identical to N
  • It is not the case that something is identical to N
  • No existing thing is identical to N
  • Nothing is identical to N
  • N is not a member of the class K of existing things.
  • N is not a member of class K of things.  

You are making the following additional assumptions. Everything exists. (Quine contra 'Wyman.') 'Is' and 'exists' have the same sense. 'Existential quantifier' and 'particular quantifier' are two different names for one and the same quantifier.  'N does not exist' says just this: it is not the case that something is identical to N.

Your view implies a contradiction:

1) Empty names such as 'Asmodeus' refer. (R & I, 9-10)

2) To refer is to refer to something. (R & I, 9-10)

Therefore

3) 'Asmodeus' refers to something. (As you explicitly state, ibid.)

4) In the case of 'Asmodeus,' an empty name, 'Asmodeus'  refers to something that does not exist.

5) Everything exists.  (There are no nonexistent things. 'Something does not exist' is contradictory.)

Therefore

6) 'Asmodeus' refers to nothing.  (3, 4, 5)

Therefore

7) (3) and (6) are contradictories.

Therefore

8) One of your assumptions is false. 

Philosophers as Bad Drivers?

Reader Riccardo writes, 

I remember reading on your blog some time ago an hilarious post with an anecdote on Richard Swinburne. It was about the importance for philosophers of developing practical skills in addition to intellectual ones. In the same post you recounted how you and Swinburne were driving together to a conference and he was driving really really slow.
 
I tried many times and in many ways, but i can't find that post anymore. Have you deleted it? If you haven't, could you help me find it?

That entry, filed under Automotive, was published on 19 November 2016. Here it is again in a larger font, with Comments enabled. But it wasn't me and Swinburne who were driving together; had we been travelling together I would have insisted on driving.  I would have listened to him discourse on the body and the immortal soul while I did my damndest to keep them connected.

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Just over the transom:

C.J. F. Williams told me a [Richard] Swinburne story. Swinburne offered to give him a lift to some philosophy conference, but warned him ‘I only drive at 30 miles an hour’. Christopher thought he meant that he strictly abided by the urban 30 mph speed limit, and accepted the lift.

It turned out that Swinburne never ever drove more than 30 mph, even on the freeway, where in the UK the limit is 70 mph. It took a while to get to there.

Slow is not safe on freeways.  Swinburne is lucky to have lived long enough to be insulted by the Society of Christian Philosophers.

I have heard rumors to the effect that David Lewis was 'automotively challenged.'

My old friend Quentin Smith didn't drive at all.  

One of the reasons that philosophers from Thales on have been the laughingstock of Thracian maids and other members of hoi polloi is that many of them are incompetent in practical matters.  

Quentin was just hopeless in mundane matters. The tales I could tell, the telling of which loyalty forbids. 

Me?  I'm an excellent driver, a good cook, a pretty good shot, competent in elementary plumbing, electrical, and automotive change-outs and repairs, and well-versed in personal finance.  

A life well-lived is a balanced life.  You should strive to develop all sides of your personality: intellectual, spiritual, artistic, emotional, and physical. 

Addenda

Here is an obituary of C. J. F. Williams by Richard Swinburne.

It came as news to me that Williams spent most of his life in a wheelchair.  It testifies to the possibilities of the human spirit that great adversity for some is no impediment to achievement.  I think also of Stephen Hawking, Charles Krauthammer, and FDR.

So stop whining and be grateful for what you have. You could be in a bloody wheelchair!

Related: C. J. F. Williams' Analysis of 'I Might Not Have Existed'

UPDATE (11/21/2016).

J. H. writes,

Your blog post "Philosophers as Bad Drivers?" brought back to memory a philosophy professor that I had as an undergrad and a story he told us about himself.

Dr. Ken Ferguson told us a story one day about his time in one of the branches of the military.  While serving, an officer instructed him to move a jeep.  Ferguson says he objected and explained to the officer that he simply could not drive.  The officer wasn't sympathetic to his excuse and doubled down on his request.  Ferguson said that he attempted to follow the orders and ended up wrecking the jeep and some other equipment.  He was not asked to drive again.

Ferguson said that he simply does not drive.  Multiple times I remember seeing him walking down one of the main streets leading to campus in what I suspect was a distance of at least over two miles in the morning, and while always wearing a full suit at that!

Thanks for the story!  Ferguson is a counterexample to the famous Stirling Moss quotation:  “There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.”

One of the reasons philosophy and philosophers get such bad press among the general public  is because of the high number of oddballs and incompetents in philosophy. Your former professor might have had a number of good reasons for never learning how to drive.  But I would argue that there are certain things every man ought to know how to do and they include knowing how to drive cars and trucks of various sizes and operate a stick shift. Like it or not, we are material beings in a material world and knowing how to negotiate this world  is important for us and those with whom we come into contact.

We should develop ourselves as fully and many-sidedly as possible so as to be worthy acolytes of our noble mistress, fair Philosophia. We represent her to the public.

On Death: Objective and Subjective Views

Death viewed objectively seems normal, natural, and 'acceptable.' And not evil. Is it evil that the leaves of deciduous trees fall off and die in the autumn? There are more where they came from. It is nature's way.  Everything in nature goes the way of the leaves of autumn. If this is not evil, why is it evil when we fall from the Arbor Vitae?  Are we not just bits of nature's fauna? Very special bits, no doubt, but wholly natural nonetheless.

Viewed subjectively, however, the matter looks decidedly different. Gaze at someone you love at a moment when your 'reasons' for loving the person are most in evidence. Then give unblinkered thought to the proposition that the dearly beloved child or spouse will die and become nothing, that the marvellous depth of interiority that has revealed  itself as unique to your love will be annihilated, utterly blotted out forever, and soon. 

Now turn your thought back on yourself  and try to confront in all honesty and without evasion your upcoming annihilation as a subject of experience and not as just another object among objects. Focus on yourself as a subject for whom there is a world, and not as an object in the world.  Entertain with existential clarity the thought that you will not play the transcendental spectator at your demise and cremation.

The horror of nonexistence from which Epicurus wanted to free us comes into view only when we view death subjectively:  I as subject, not me as object, or as 'one.'  No doubt one dies. But it is not possible that one die unless it is is possible that I die or you die, where 'you' is singular.  Viewing myself objectively, I am at a distance from myself and thus in evasion of the fact I as subject  will become nothing. 

That the self as subject should be annihilated ought to strike one as the exact opposite of normal, natural, and acceptable. It should strike one as a calamity beyond compare. For there are no more where the dearly beloved came from.  The dearly beloved, whether self or other, is unique, and not just in the 0ne-of-kind sense. For there is no kind whose instantiation is the dearly beloved.  

Which view is true? Can either be dismissed? Can they be 'mediated' by some dialectical hocus-pocus?  These are further questions. 

But now it is time for a hard ride as Sol peeps his ancient head over the Superstition ridge line.

Wittgenstein on Death Bed