Month: August 2021

Ingredients of Happiness

What makes for happiness?

Acceptance is a good part of it: acceptance of self, of one's ineluctable  limitations, of others and their limitations, of one's lot in life, of one's place in the natural hierarchy of prowess and intellect and spiritual capacity, acceptance of the inevitable in the world at large. 

Gratitude is another ingredient in happiness: one cultivates gratitude for and appreciation of what one has here and now without comparisons to an idealized past, a feared future, or to the lots of others.  No regret, resentment, worry, or comparison.  Comparison breeds envy, one of the seven deadly sins. Be your incomparable self. If you are not yet incomparable, take up self-individuation as a life project. Realize yourself. Your life is more a task than a given, a task of transmuting givens into accomplishments.  It is the task of becoming actually the unique person you are potentially. But no hankering for what is out of reach. No false ideals. No consorting with the utopian.  No Lennon-esque imagining of the impossible. No dreaming impossible dreams. 

You were born somewhere in the natural hierarchy of physical endowment, moral and affective and aesthetic sensitivity, mental power, spiritual capacity, and strength of will. But your place in the hierarchy allows for development. Know your place but press against its upper limits.

But of course happiness is not just a matter of attitude and exertion but also rests on contingency and luck.  We need, but cannot command, the world's cooperation. Happenstance holds happiness hostage.  You were dealt a bad hand? Suck it up and play it the best you can for as long as you can.

Conservatives emphasize attitude and exertion, leftists happenstance. Both have a point.  "The harder I work, the luckier I become" is a conservative exaggeration, but a life-enhancing one.  It is however the foolish conservative who thinks he is self-made and not the beneficiary of a myriad of forces and factors far beyond his control.  There is truth in Phil Ochs' lament, "There but for fortune go you or I," but not such truth as to trump the conservative's exaggeration.  Weathering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I) he will slog on, per aspera ad astra.

Per aspera ad astra

 

Is the US Becoming the SU?

I've been warning of this for years. Ed West, America has become its own worst enemy. Excerpt:

Communists saw their political beliefs as so all-encompassing that even science was political: if science contradicted the goals of communism, it wasn’t science. In today’s United States the slow death of liberalism has resulted in the blatant politicisation of science, to the extent that as in Russia, scientists teach things which are obviously untrue because it supports the prevailing ideology. Then there is the media, much of which parrots the party line with almost embarrassing, “Comrade Stalin has driven pig iron to record production” levels of conformity. Once again, if you want to hear the truth, go to the BBC (until the young people who run the website take over).

America, once the most trusting of societies, is heading in the direction of Russia, one of the least trusting. Most disturbing of all is that, formerly the most demographically vibrant of western countries, today the United States has suffered a spectacular collapse in fertility. This is mostly down to stagnant wages among the middle class, who can no longer afford a family with one breadwinner, and a rapid decline of religious faith. But maybe people have also lost belief in themselves, and the ideals of their country.

The Soviet Union broke into 15 different pieces, and the transition was, as CNN might put it, mostly peaceful — although Gorbachev’s old dacha is now in Russia once again after some local unpleasantness.

Today it is the United States where people talk of secession, escaping a crumbling superpower ruled by geriatrics. This seems very unlikely to happen, more clickbait than reality, because why would you leave what has been for more than two centuries the richest, most impressive state on earth? But then a generation ago few would have foreseen the Soviet Union crumbling in a haze of alcoholic despair.

Commentary by Rod Dreher here.

The Characteristic Attitude of the Pyrrhonists

Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way, Oxford UP, 1996, p. 5: ". . . the characteristic attitude of the Pyrrhonists is one of aporia, of being at a a loss, puzzled, stumped, stymied."  Aporia is not doubt.  Doubt implies understanding, but aporia is a lack of understanding.  The modern skeptic may doubt, but not the ancient skeptic.

Connected with this is a distinction between epoché as the withholding of assent to the meaningfulness of a claim and suspension of judgment as to the truth or falsity of a claim.  (Meaningfulness is a necessary condition of a claims's being either true or false.) One can withhold assent from an assertion without granting that it makes sense; but if one suspends judgment then one has a clear propositional sense before one's mind which one neither affirms nor denies.  See Mates, p. 32.  A good distinction!  Add it to the list.

Trinity diagramConsider, for example, this statement of the doctrine of the Trinity: "There is one God in three divine persons." The epochist, to give him a name, takes no stand on the question whether the doctrinal formulation makes sense.  He neither affirms nor denies that there is a proposition that the formula expresses.  Propositions are the vehicles of  the truth-values; so by practicing epoché our epochist takes no stand on the question whether the doctrinal sentence expresses anything that is either true or false.  The suspender of judgment, by contrast, grants that the sentence expresses a proposition but takes no stand on its truth or falsity.

So, strictly speaking, aporia is not doubt and epoché is not suspension of judgment.  Close but not the same.  One in the psychological state of aporia may or may not go on to practice epoché. Suppose I am stumped by what you say. I might just leave it at that and not take the further step of performing epoché.

The aporia Mates describes is an attitude. But there is another  sense of the term, a non-attitudinal sense, and I use it in this other propositional sense: an aporia is a propositional polyad, a set of two or more propositions that are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent. 

I also distinguish broad and narrow sub-senses of aporia in the second, the propositional, sense.  What I just described is a propositional aporia in the broad sense. In the narrow, balls-to-the-wall sense, an aporia is an absolutely insoluble problem set forth as a set of collectively inconsistent propositions each of which makes such a strong claim on our acceptance that it cannot be given up.

Alles klar? No way!

The Third Way of the Ostrich

  In a comment, the Ostrich writes,

Some early analytic types, including Russell, tried to analyse proper names as disguised descriptions, but Kripke put a lid on that. Thus, on what Devitt calls the Semantic Presupposition, namely that there are no other possible candidates for a name’s meaning other than a descriptive meaning, or the bearer of the name itself, the mainstream analytic position is that the meaning of a proper name is the bearer of the name. The target of Reference and Identity is the Semantic Presupposition.

So far, so good. I agree that with respect to proper names, demonstratives, and indexicals, both description theories and direct reference theories fail.  So it makes sense to investigate whether the Semantic Presupposition is a false alternative. But the Third Way of the Ostrich raises questions of its own and they incline me to think that it too leads to an impasse and is in the end No Way, a-poria.  

Consider the proper name, 'Moses.' It does not refer to the expression 'the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt.'  It refers to a man, not an expression. (9) Thus "'Moses' refers to a man" is true. But what makes it true?  One might think that it is true in virtue of a relation that connects the name to a particular man, and thus to something extra-linguistic. But the Ostrich denies that there is an "external reference relation" that relates the name to something extra-linguistic.  (9)  What makes true the reference statement — "'Moses' refers to a man" — is "an internal relation between the reference statement and some textual or uttered antecedent." (9) It is not clear what this means since it is not clear how the reference statement can have an antecedent. I know what the antecedent of a pronoun is, but what is the antecedent of a sentence or statement?  I also know that a statement can be the antecedent of a term.  For example, "Snow is white.  This everyone agrees to."  In this example, the demonstrative 'this' has a statement as an antecedent. What I don't understand is how a statement can have an antecedent. But let that pass.

It is clear what the Ostrich wants to say:  there is reference but all reference is intra-linguistic.  That contrasts with what I am inclined to say, namely, that while some reference is intra-linguistic, not all reference is.  The reference of 'he' is parasitic on the reference of 'Tom' in 'Tom enjoyed the massage he received' and so there is a sense in which the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic; but 'Tom,' if it refers at all, refers extra-linguistically. In which precise sense is the reference of 'he' in our sample sentence intra-linguistic? Surely the pronoun 'he' does not refer to the name 'Tom'; the pronoun refers to the same item to which 'Tom' refers. So to say that the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic is just to say that it picks up the reference of its antecedent and would not refer otherwise.  Pronoun and noun are co-referential which is to say that they refer to the same item if they refer to anything. But the burden of objective reference is shouldered by the noun, not the pronoun.  Or so say I.

The Ostrich's idea here is that "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)*  Interpreting, one could say that reference is constituted by co-reference which is always an intra-linguistic matter.  This would seem to issue in an objectionable linguistic idealism.

Asmodeus-380x240'Asmodeus,' we are told, refers to Asmodeus, so the name refers to something. It refers to a demon, not an expression, similarly as 'Moses' refers to a man, not an expression.   But from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that something exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.' (10)  That is surely true. But it is also true that from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that nothing exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.'  So the referent of 'Asmodeus' may or may not exist.  

I now put the question to the Ostrich: what is it for the referent to exist? We are assuming that there is no such demon as Asmodeus.  And yet 'Asmodeus' refers to something.   There is a difference between referring to something that does not exist and not referring to anything. Now the Ostrich told us that 'Asmodeus' refers to something.  But then something is such that it does not exist, and we are in Meinongian precincts — which is precisely where an ostrich will not stray if he can help it.

So the Ostrich cannot mean that 'Asmodeus' refers to something that does not exist; he must mean that 'Asmodeus'  is an empty/vacuous name, i.e., one that does not refer at all, one without a referent. Again, there is a plain difference between a term's having a non-existing referent and a term's  having no referent at all.   

The trouble with saying that 'Asmodeus' is an empty name, however, is that it conflicts with his theory according to which "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)* There is a conflict with the theory because 'Asmodeus' is a member of a chain of co-referring terms, which implies that 'Asmodeus' has a semantic value, an object, an object which exists simply in virtue of being an object.  So Asmodeus exists after all.

The demon cannot both exist and not exist.  One might say that that the demon does not exist in reality (outside language) but that it does exist in a language-immanent, 'internal' way as an object constituted by "its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." But if the demon does not exist in reality, then Moses does, in which case the reference statement — "'Moses' refers to a man" — must have an external reference relation as part of its truth maker.

If that is denied and reference is intra-linguistic only, then how account for the difference between the existent Moses and the nonexistent Asmodeus? After all, both names belong to chains of co-referring terms.  Each name belongs to a narrative.

Is our Ostrich a POMO bird in the end?

 

__________________________

*I suspect that the Ostrich is using 'semantic value' in the way Gareth Evans uses it, namely, as equivalent to Frege's Bedeutung. Accordingly, the semantic value of  a proper name is an object, that of a concept-word (Begriffswort) is a function, and that of a sentence (Satz) is a truth value (Wahrheitswert).

Every Generation Faces a Barbarian Threat in its Own Children

David Horowitz, Radical Son:

Irving Kristol, who had second thoughts before me, has observed that every generation faces a barbarian threat in its own children, who need to be civilized. This is the challenge perennially before us: to re-teach the young the conditions of being human, of managing life's tasks in a world that is and must remain forever imperfect. The refusal to come to terms with this reality is the heart of the radical impulse and accounts for its destructiveness, and thus for much of the bloody history of our age. (Emphasis added)

The world is imperfect, and it cannot be perfected by us either individually or collectively. This is a defining truth of conservatism. The conservative stands on the terra firma of a reality antecedent to his hopes, dreams, and desires, a reality from which he must learn what is possible and what is not. The conservative is not opposed to such  piecemeal ameliorations as are possible, but he does not conflate the possible with what he can dream up or imagine.  He is rightly unmoved by the utopian imaginings of a leftist like John Lennon in his song Imagine, imaginings that presuppose human perfectibility and the possibility of a quasi-religious immanentization of the eschaton. But of course Lennon's leftist imaginings are not mere imaginings but veiled prescriptions for such destructive actions as the suppression and ultimate eradication of religion together with the eradication of the belief that we as individuals have a spiritual origin and destiny; the spread of a smiley-faced half-way nihilism, that of Nietzsche's Last Man ("noting to kill or die for") which, while denying genuine transcendence does not reject this life but degrades it to a life of self-indulgence; the levelling of all differences and the ultimately futile assault on natural hierarchies which of course reassert themselves in the end. In short:

  • Humans are imperfect. They are structurally flawed and in such a way as to disallow any possibility of perfection.
  • Being imperfectible, they cannot be improved in any fundamental ways by human effort whether individual or collective.
  • The failure of leftists to understand these truths and their consequent misguided attempts at perfecting the imperfectible have led to an over-all worsening of the human condition. And that is to put it mildly: in the 20th century alone communist governments murdered over 100 million. That is a lot of eggs to break for an impossible omelet.
  • Leftists are reality-deniers who refuse the tutelage of experience.

 

True For and True

There are expressions that should be avoided by those who aim to think clearly and to promote clear thinking in others. Expressions of the form, ‘true for X’ are prime examples. In a logically sanitized world, the following would be verboten: ‘true for me,’ ‘true for you,’ ‘true for Jews,’ ‘true for Arabs,’ ‘true for the proletariat,’ ‘true for the bourgeoisie,’ ‘true for our historical epoch,’ and the like. Such semantic prophylaxis would disallow such sentences as ‘That may be true for you but it is not true for me.’

The trouble with expressions like these is that they blur the distinction between truth and belief. To say that a proposition p is true for S is just to say that S believes or accepts or affirms that p. This is because one cannot believe a proposition without believing it to be true. Of course, S’s believing that p, and thus S’s believing that p is true, does not entail that p is true. This is obvious if anything is. There are true beliefs and false beliefs, and a person’s holding a belief does not make it true. If you want to say that S believes that p, then say that. But don’t say that p is true for S unless you want to give aid and comfort to alethic relativism, the false and pernicious doctrine that truth (Gr. aletheia) is relative.  'Woke' folk love such obfuscatory expressions, but you don't want to give aid and comfort to them, do you?


Truth ScrutonA belief is always someone’s belief. This relativity of beliefs to believers explains why one person’s believing that p and another person’s believing that ~p is unproblematic. But truth is non-relative, or absolute. This is why it cannot be the case that both p and ~p. If you have truth, you have something absolute. There is no such thing as relative truth. Relative truth is not truth any more than negative growth is growth or a decoy duck is a duck or artificial leather is leather or faux marble is marble. In the expression, ‘relative truth,’ ‘relative’ functions as an alienans (as opposed to a specifying) adjective: it alienates or shifts the sense of ‘truth.’ Just as it makes no sense to say that there are two kinds of leather, real and artificial, it makes no sense to say that there are two kinds of truth, relative and absolute. Suppose someone sets out to list the kinds of leather. “Well, you got your horse leather, cow leather, alligator leather, artificial leather, real leather, artificially real leather, naugahyde, Barcalounger covering . . . .” One can see what is wrong with this.

The word ‘absolute’ scares some people. But the only reason I use it is to undo the semantic mischief caused by ‘relative truth’ and ‘true for X.’ In a logically perfect world, it would suffice to say ‘true’ or ‘leather.’ There would be no need to say ‘absolutely true’ or ‘real leather’ – “This here jacket a mahn is REAL leather, boy . . . .” If ‘relative’ and ‘artificial’ are (in the above examples) alienating adjectives, then ‘absolute’ and ‘real’ could be called de-alienating: they restore their rightful senses to words that semantic bandits divested them of.

One reason ‘absolute’ scares people is that it suggests dogmatism and infallibilism. Thus if I say that truth is absolute, some people think I am saying that the propositions I affirm as true I affirm as unquestionably or undeniably true. But that’s to confuse an ontological statement about the nature of truth with an epistemological statement about the way in which I accept the propositions I accept. It is consistent to maintain that truth is absolute while being a fallibilist, where a fallibilist holds that either no proposition held to be true, or no member of some restricted class of propositions held to be true, is known with certainty.

In sum, my point is that ‘true for X’ should be avoided since it gives aid and comfort to the illusion that truth is relative. But why exactly is that an illusion? I’ll leave that question for a separate post.

Could Scollay Square be a Meinongian Nonexistent Object?

Scollay Square novelBill, newly arrived in Boston,  believes falsely that Scollay Square exists and he wants to visit it. Bill asks Kathleen where it is. Kathleen tells him truly that it no longer exists, and Bill believes her. Both use 'Scollay Square' to refer to the same thing, a physical place, one that does not exist. To exist is to exist in reality.  'In reality' means outside the mind; it does not mean in the physical world.  

So both Bill and Kathleen use 'Scollay Square' to refer to a physical place that does not exist. The two are not using (tokens of) 'Scollay Square' to refer to Fregean senses or to any similar abstract/ideal item.* Scollay Square is not such an item.  It is concrete, i.e., causally active/passive.  After all, it was demolished. 

Now it could be that reference is routed through sense as Frege maintained. Perhaps there is no road to Bedeutung except through Sinn. Whether or not that is so, when Bill and Kathleen think and talk about Scollay Square, they are not thinking and talking about an abstract object that mediates reference, whether it be thinking reference or linguistic reference.  They are thinking and talking about a concrete, physical thing that does not exist.

 

We also note that Bill and Kathleen are not thinking or talking about anything immanent to consciousness such as a mental content or a mental act. They are referring to a transcendent physical thing that does not exist.  Scollay Square is not in the head or in the mind; if it were, it would exist! If memory serves, it was the illustrious Kasimir Twardowski who first made this point, leastways, the first in the post-Brentano discussion. 

Therefore, some transcendent physical things do not exist. Copley Square is an example of a transcendent physical thing that does exist.

But you don't buy it do you? Explain why. (I don't buy it either.)

_______________

*Anglosophers use 'abstract'; Eurosophers sometimes use 'ideal.' Same difference (as a redneck student of mine used to say.)