Month: May 2022

Memorial Day?

What's to celebrate in a nation so decadent that it cannot preserve its monuments and memorials from leftist thugs and their globalist enablers, a nation so decadent that its 'leaders,' complicit in the erasure of history and the erosion of standards, have no plans to restore what has been destroyed?

Politicians who won't take action are not worthy to honor those who died in action.

Rand and Peikoff on God and Existence

Substack latest.

Wherein I analyze the Objectivist battle cry, "Existence exists!"

Ayn Rand is worth reading, mainly on political and economic topics: she is a corrective to the destructive lunacy of the collectivists. I am not suggesting that she is wholly correct, but that she is useful as a corrective, especially now, to the extremism of the clowns in control of the pathocratic Biden (mal)administration.

Denial of God, Denial of Nature

These are opposite poles of the world of woke-leftist lunacy. 

The metaphysical naturalist denies God and elevates nature, and in some cases make an idol of nature. The theist, while not denying nature, subordinates it to God. He may succumb to idolatry too if his concept of God is unworthy. 

Both naturalist and theist are in contact with reality.  They share the common ground of nature and can agree on much. They can and will agree, for example, that biological males should not be permitted to compete against biological females in female athletic events, and this for the simple reason that the biological stratum of nature is real, and thus in no way constructed by humans, and that therefore the biological differences of males and females are also real, which fact makes it unfair for biological males to compete against biological females.

The naturalist and the theist, then, are in contact with reality. They share a commitment to the reality of the natural world. My point remains unaffected by the fact that the theist, but not the naturalist, understands nature to be a divine creation.  And  it doesn't matter that there there is much more to reality for the theist than what the naturalist envisages.  Naturalist and theist agree that nature exists and that it is not a social construct.

The woke leftist, however, has lost contact with reality: everything becomes a social construct.  This is an absurd form of idealism. Ask yourself: are the social constructors themselves social constructs? I'll leave it to you to think it through. Why should I have to do all the work?

Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?

I return an affirmative answer.
 
If God creates ex nihilo, and everything concrete other than God is created by God, and God is a pure spirit, then one type of metaphysical realism can be excluded at the outset. This  realism asserts that there are radically transcendent uncreated concrete things other than God.  'Radically transcendent' means 'transcendent of any mind, finite or infinite.' On this view, radically transcendent items exist and have most of their properties independently of any mind, including the divine mind.  Call this realism-1. We could also call it extreme metaphysical realism.  
 
No classical theist could be a realist-1. For on classical theism, everything other than God is created by God, created out of nothing, mind you, and not out of Avicennian mere possibles or any cognate sort of item. God creates out of nothing, not out of possibilities. ('Out of nothing' is  a privative expression that means 'not out of something.') We also note that on classical theism, God is not merely an originating cause of things other than himself, but a continuing cause that keeps these things in existence moment-by-moment. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper. That would be deism, not classical theism. Whom do I have in mind? Thomas Aquinas for one. But I am not interested in playing the exegete with respect to his texts. I am thinking things through for myself. 
 
Corresponding to realism-1, as its opposite, is idealism-1.  This is the view that everything other than God is created ex nihilo by God, who is a pure spirit, and who therefore creates in a purely spiritual way.  (To simplify the discussion, let us leave to one side the problem of so-called 'abstract objects.')  It seems to me, therefore, that there is a very clear sense in which classical theism is a type of idealism.   For on classical theism God brings into existence and keeps in existence every concretum other than himself and he does so by his  purely mental/spiritual activity.  We could call this type of idealism onto-theological absolute idealism. It is the position that my A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002) defends. The book bears the embarrassingly 'high horse' subtitle: Onto-Theology Vindicated, which was intended as a swipe against Heidegger. But I digress.
 
I am not saying that the entire physical cosmos is a content of the divine mind; it is rather an accusative or intentional object of the divine mind.  Though not radically transcendent, the cosmos is a transcendence-in-immanence, to borrow some Husserlian phraseology. 
 
So if the universe is expanding, that is not to say that the divine mind or any part thereof is expanding.  If an intentional object has a property P it does not follow that a mind trained upon this object, or an act of this mind or a content in this mind has P.  Perceiving a blue coffee cup, I have as intentional object something blue; but my mind is not blue, nor is the perceiving blue, nor any mental content that mediates the perceiving.  If I perceive or imagine or recall or in any way think of an extended sticky surface, neither my mind nor any part of it becomes extended or sticky.  Same with God.  He retains his difference from the physical cosmos even while said cosmos is nothing more than his merely intentional object incapable of existing on its own.
 
Actually, what I just wrote is only an approximation to what I really want to say.  For just as God is sui generis, the relation between God and the world is also sui generis, and as such not an instance of the intentional relation with which we are familiar in our own mental lives.  The former is only analogous to the latter.  If one takes the divine transcendence seriously, as classical theism does, then God cannot be a being among beings; equally, God's relation to the world cannot be a relation among relations.  If we achieve any understanding in these lofty precincts, it is not the sort of understanding one achieves by subsuming a new case under an old pattern; God does not fit any pre-existing pattern, nor does his 'relation' to the world fit any pre-existing pattern.  God is the Absolute and the Absolute cannot be a token of a type. If we achieve any understanding here it will be via various groping analogies.  These analogies can only take us so far.  In the end we must confess the infirmity of finite reason in respect of the Absolute that is the ontologically simple Paradigm Existent.
 
God's relation to the world (the realm of creatures), then, cannot be just another relation.  There is also the well-known problem that the intentional 'relation' is not, strictly speaking, a relation.  It is at best analogous to a relation.  So it looks as if we have a double analogy going here.  The God-world 'relation' is analogous to something analogous to a relation in the strict sense.  Let me explain.  
 
Necessarily, if x stands in relation R to y, then both x, y exist.  But x can stand in the intentional 'relation' to y even if y does not exist in reality.  'Exist in reality' is harmless pleonasm; it underscores the fact that, strictly speaking, to exist is to exist in reality. It is a plain fact that we sometimes have very definite thoughts about objects that do not exist, the planet Vulcan, for example.  What about the creating/sustaining 'relation'? The holding of this 'relation' as between God and Socrates cannot presuppose the existence in reality of both relata.  It presupposes the existence of God no doubt, but if it presupposed the existence of Socrates then there would be no need for the creating/sustaining ex nihilo of Socrates. Creating is a producing, a causing to exist, and indeed moment by moment.
 
For this reason, creation/sustaining cannot be a relation, strictly speaking.  It follows that the createdness of a creature cannot be a relational property, strictly speaking. (Mundane example: if a cat licks my arm, then my arm has the relational property of being licked by a cat.)  Now the createdness of a creature is its existence or Being.  So the existence of a creature cannot be a relational property thereof; it is at most  like a relational property thereof.
 
What I have done so far is argue that classical theism is a form of idealism, a form of idealism that is the opposite of an extreme from of metaphysical realism, the form I referred to as 'realism-1.'  If you say that no one has ever held such a form of realism, I will point to Ayn Rand. (See Rand and Peikoff on God and Existence.)
 
Moderate  Realism (Realism-2)
 
Realism holds with respect to some of the objects of finite minds.  Not for merely intentional objects, of course, but for things like trees and mountains and cats and chairs and their parts.  They exist and have most of their properties independently of the mental activity of finite minds such as ours. We can call this realism-2.
 
Kant held that empirical realism and transcendental idealism are logically compatible and he subscribed to both.  Now the idealism I urge is not a mere transcendental idealism, but a full-throated onto-theological absolute idealism; but it too is compatible, as far as I can see, with the empirical reality of most of the objects of ectypal intellects such as ours.  (God's intellect is archetypal; mine is ectypal.) The divine spontaneity makes the objects of ectypal intellects  exist thereby rendering them  them available to the receptivity of such intellects.  Realism-2 is consistent with idealism-1. 
 
My thesis, then, is that classical theism is a type of idealism; it is onto-theological absolute idealism.  If everything concrete is created originally and sustained ongoingly ex nihilo by a purely spiritual being, an Absolute Mind, and by purely spiritual activity, then this is better denominated 'idealism' than 'realism.'  Is that not obvious?
 
But trouble looms as I will argue in the next entry in this series.  And so we will have to consider whether the sui generis, absolutely unique status of God and his relation to the world is good reason to withhold both appellations, 'realism' and 'idealism.'

An INDIVIDUAL Right to Keep and Bear Arms

>>In District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court held in 2008 that the District’s handgun ban violated the individual right to keep and bear arms. The opinion clarified that to “bear arms” means to “carry arms” and has no exclusive militia context. And it rejected the view that the right could be dismissed or diminished by judge-made interest-balancing tests.<<
 
Of course it is an individual right: my right to life is my individual, not collective, right to life and said right entails my individual right to defend my individual life. And of course if I have the right to bear arms, then I have the right to be armed outside my domicile. Obviously, I have a greater need for self-defense outside my domicile than within it.
 
Will leftists say that this is now 'settled law'? Or will they say that the 2008 ruling can be overturned?  If they say the latter, will they also say that Roe v. Wade can be overturned?

2A and the Origin of Rights

Your right to defend your life with appropriate means is not conferred by the State and would not be affected by repeal of 2A. That right is no more conferred by the State than the right to life from which the right to self-defense follows.

The same holds for all of the rights specified in the Bill of Rights.

Many conservatives say that our rights "come from God." I don't deny it. But in terms of political  tactics, it is probably a mistake to affirm it. It is enough to say that our rights do not come from the State. For if you bring God into the discussion, you risk alienating those atheists who are otherwise open to persuasion. 

If I want to persuade you of something, I will get nowhere if I employ premises that you do not accept. So if my otherwise open-minded interlocutor gets the impression that the affirmation of natural rights will commit him to the existence of God, if he gets the impression that if  rights do not come from the State, then they must come from God, then we risk losing an ally in the fight against our political enemies.

We need all the allies we can get. The Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable must be broad and big-tented  to defeat the forces of nihilism.  

Tactically, it suffices to say that our rights are rooted in rerum natura, in the nature of things, and leave it to the philosophers to wrestle with the question as to what exactly this means and whether there can be natural rights without divine support.

Are Philosophical Problems Soluble?

Edward Buckner writes, 

In my PhD thesis I argued that philosophical problems cannot be resolved. I think you still take the same view. My thinking today is that while the problems exist in some sense, they cannot be coherently stated in logical form. I.e. “The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”

I do indeed consider the central problems of philosophy to be insoluble. But I don't agree that the problems cannot be coherently stated in logical form. And I don't agree that a problem to be genuine must be soluble.  Consider the following antilogism:

1. All genuine problems are soluble.

2. No problem of philosophy is soluble.

3. Some problems of philosophy are genuine.

The above inconsistent triad is a clear and coherent presentation in logical form of a philosophical problem, namely, the meta-problem of whether only soluble problems are genuine.  The problem is obviously genuine (as opposed to pseudo), but not obviously soluble.  Hence it is reasonably held to be insoluble. 

If you disagree, tell me which of the three propositions you will reject, and why it must be rejected. For example, you might tell me that (3) is to be rejected and its negation accepted. The negation of (3) is:

    ~3. No problems of philosophy are genuine.

Now prove (~3).  You won't be able to do it.

Nominalism and Being

Ed Buckner is threatening to write a book on the history of philosophy from the perspective of nominalism. I encourage him to do so for his sake and ours. One of the things he will have to do early on is to define 'nominalism' as he will use the term given its varied use in the history of philosophy. The following redacted re-post from over ten years ago (7 March 2012) may help him focus his thoughts.

……………………………………

Today I preach on an old text of long-time commenter and sparring partner, London Ed:

Nominalism is the doctrine that we should not multiply entities  according to the multiplicity of terms. I.e., we shouldn't  automatically assume that there is a thing corresponding to every  term. Das Seiende is a term, so we shouldn't automatically assume there is a thing corresponding to it. Further arguments are needed to show that there is or there isn't. A classic nominalist strategy is to rewrite the sentence in such a way that the term disappears.

My first concern is whether this definition of 'nominalism' is perhaps too broad, so broad that it pulls in almost all of us. Does anyone think that every term has a referent? (No) Don't we all hold that there can be no automatic assumption that every occurrence of a term in a stretch of discourse picks out an entity? (Yes) For example, one would be hard pressed to find a philosopher who holds that 'nothing' in

   1. Nothing is in the drawer

refers to something. (Carnapian slanders aside, Heidegger does not maintain this, but this is a separate topic about which I have written a long unpublished paper.) Following Ed's excellent advice, the apparently referential 'nothing' can be paraphrased away:

   2. It is not the case that there is something in the drawer.

This then goes into quasi-canonical notation as

   2*. ~(∃x)(x is in the drawer).

In (2*) the tilde and the particular quantifier are syncategorematic elements. On the face of it, then, there is no call to be anything other than a nominalist about 'nothing,' using 'nominalism' as per the suggestion above.

Whether there is call to be a nominalist about 'being' is another matter. Before proceeding to it, consider the following example:

   3. Peter and Paul are blond

which could be parsed as

   3*. Peter is blond and Paul is blond.

Now I rather doubt that anyone maintains that every word in (3*) — or rather every word in a tokening of this sentence-type whether via utterance or inscription or some other mode of encoding — has an entity corresponding to it. This suggests a taxonomy of nominalisms:

Mad Dog Nominalism: No word has an existing referent, not even 'Peter' and 'Paul.' (I write 'existing referent' to disallow Meinongian objects as referents. The waters are muddy enough without bringing Meinong into the picture — please pardon the mixed metaphors.)

Extreme Nominalism: The only words that have existing referents are names like 'Peter' and Paul'; nothing in reality corresponds to such predicates as 'blond.' And a fortiori nothing corresponds to copulae and logically connective words such as 'and' and 'or.'

Nominalism Proper: Particulars (unrepeatables) alone exist: there are no universals (repeatables). This view allows that something in reality corresponds to predicates such as 'blond.' It is just that what this predicate denotes is not a universal but a particular, a trope say, or an Aristotelian accident.  I am using particular to refer to any unrepeatable item, whether concrete or abstract. Thus Socrates is a particular while his whiteness is an abstract particular, where 'abstract' is being used in the traditional as opposed to the new-fangled Quinean way.  Both are particulars because neither is repeatable in the way in which a universal is repeatable.   Thus the whiteness of Socrates is numerically distinct from the whiteness of Plato. 

Methodological Nominalism: This is just Ed's suggestion that we not assume that for each word there is a corresponding entity.

I hope no one is crazy enough to be a mad-dog nominalist, and that everyone is sane enough to be a methodological nominalist. The two middle positions, however, are subject to reasonable controversy. What I am calling Extreme Nominalism has little to recommend it, but I think Nominalism Proper is quite a reasonable position.  There has to be something extralinguistic (and extramenal) corresponding to the predicate in 'Peter is blond,' but it is not obvious that it must be a universal.  

If I understand Ed's position, he holds that all reference is intra-linguistic.   That makes him a linguistic idealist. Is that a 'mad dog' position? 

Now let's think about whether we should be nominalists with respect to words like das Seiende, that-which-is, the existent, beings, and the like. Heidegger has been known to say such things as Das Seiende ist,  or

   4. That-which-is is. (Beings are.)

Now is there anything in reality corresponding to 'that-which-is' and 'beings'? Well of course: absolutely everything comes under 'that-which-is.' There is nothing that is named by 'Nothing.' And if I met nobody on the trail, that is not to say that I met someone named 'Nobody.' But absolutely everything falls under 'a being,' 'an existent,' ein Seiendes, das Seiende.

So I see no reason to have any nominalist scruples about the latter expressions. I don't see any problem with forming the substantive das Seiende from the present participle seiend.  But you will be forgiven if you balk at the transformation of the infinitive sein into the the substantive das Sein and take the latter to refer to Majuscule Being.

The Orwellian Abuse of Approbatives: ‘Democracy’

An approbative word or phrase is one the conventional use of which indicates an approving or appreciative attitude on the part of the speaker or writer.  The opposite is a pejorative.  'Democracy' and 'racism' as currently used  in the USA and elsewhere in the Anglosphere are examples of the former and the latter respectively. If we distinguish connotation from denotation, we can say that approbatives have an axiologically positive, and pejoratives an axiologically negative, connotation. 

Approbatives are like honorifics, except that the latter term is standardly used in reference to persons.

You will have noticed by now that the hard Left, which has come to dominate the once-respectable Democrat Party, has become infinitely abusive of the English language as part of their overall strategy of undermining what it has taken centuries to build. They understand that the subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.

And so these termitic Orwellians take the word 'democracy,' and while retaining its approbative connotation, (mis)use it to denote the opposite of its conventional referent. They use it to mean the opposite of what it standardly or conventionally means.  What they mean by it is either oligarchy or in the vicinity thereof. Hillary Clinton, for example, regularly goes on about "our democracy." But of course, in violation of the Inclusion plank in the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion  (DEI) platform, "our democracy" does not include what Hillary calls "deplorables" or what Barack Obama calls "clingers." Whom does it include? Well, her and her globalist pals.

A clever piece of linguistic chicanery. Take a word or phrase with a positive connotation and then apply the Orwellian inversion algorithm. Use 'democracy' in such a way that it excludes the people.

Crossposted at Substack.

Not Dark Yet

 Tomorrow, Bob Dylan turns 81.

Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door. The scrawny Jewish kid from Hibbing Minnesota, son of an appliance salesman, was an unlikely bard, but bard he became. He's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.

A tip of the hat to Bro Inky for sending me to Powerline where Scott Johnson has a couple of celebratory pieces with plenty of links to Dylan covers. Here's one and here's the other. An excerpt from the first:

In his illuminating City Journal essay on Pete Seeger — “America’s most successful Communist” — Howard Husock placed Dylan in the line of folk agitprop in which Seeger took pride of place. Husock’s essay is an important and entertaining piece. Dylan is only a small part of the story Husock has to tell, however, and Husock therefore does not pause long enough over Dylan to observe how quickly Dylan burst the confines of agitprop, found his voice, and tapped into his own vein of the Cosmic American Music. Looking back on his long career, one can discern his respect for the tradition as well as his ambition to take his place at its head.