Can you dig it? Substack latest.
Author: Bill Vallicella
Nulla Dies Sine Linea
No day without a line. But why keep a journal?
The Manipulative Rhetoric of Garrett Epps
Keith Burgess-Jackson on a law professor gone amok:
Two years ago this past month, law professor Garrett Epps published a short essay entitled “Common-Good Constitutionalism Is an Idea as Dangerous as They Come” in a high-brow literary magazine, The Atlantic. That he published his essay in this organ rather than, say, a law review suggests that he was trying to reach non-specialists. The result, I am afraid to say, is a disaster. The essay is too simplistic to be of any use to his fellow law professors, but too arcane and abstract for many or most of the magazine’s readers.
No Takers Without Makers
You can't take wealth and 'redistribute' it unless someone makes it. But human nature is such that people need incentives to make things. People will work hard for themselves, their families, their friends, and their communities but not for something as nebulous as the 'common good' when, as inevitably is the case under socialism, the 'common good' is primarily the good of the central planners who then generously allow some 'trickle down' to the centrally planned. There can be no government-sponsored social programs without a robust economy, and no such economy without capitalism. That is the point of the graphic below.
But leftists, in the grip of utopian fantasies, do not understand human nature; worse, they deny that man has a nature, holding that humanity is itself a social product.
Still At It
This weblog turns 18 today. I won't repeat what I said on this date when she turned sweet sixteen though it still holds.
I thank you for reading.
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Callicles and the Marquis de Sade
Substack latest.
What is the Most Pernicious of the Left’s Errors?
Contemporary leftists (cultural Marxists) deny that there is a reality antecedent to our classifications and conceptualizations. (V. I. Lenin was of course an exception along with other classical Marxists.) Everything becomes a socio-political construct. How convenient for identity-political totalitarians! The bird of reality can be carved up in any way that suits the will to power of some interest group — because there is no bird to carve. Avis rara in excelsis!
Next stop: the Twilight Zone.
Rachel Dolezal is black. Elizabeth Warren is a Cherokee. Warren, a.k.a. 'Fauxcahontas,' despite her contribution of a recipe for lobster bisque to Pow Wow Chow, that must-have cookbook for the bien- pensant, is the Rachel Dolezal of American politics. Continuing in the alimentary mode, Warren cooked her own goose anent her presidential pretensions, and is now 'toast.'
But why can't a cooked goose 're-imagine' herself as toast?
To Provoke a Pre-Emptive Crap Storm?
Is that why it was leaked?
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A correspondent replies:
Yes, Bill, I believe so. Someone in Sotomayor's or Kagan's office.
It was a call to action. They weren't going to let their side be blindsided.
The leaker will either be protected or, if caught, then lionized. For them, the end of Roe is the end of the world. Roberts will do for Roe what he did for Obamacare. The homes of Alito et al. will be picketed, their occupants threatened to revise their opinion. The enemy's been planning for this as they have for the next election.
Sadly, our political opponents are indeed enemies. If you are one of us, broadly conservative and/or classically liberal, and you do not understand this, then you are a useful idiot. One of the reasons the destructive Left is so hard to defeat, despite the obvious lunacy of so many of their assertions and policies, is because of this very large group of useful idiots. It includes roughly half of the Republicans in government, and a large segment of rank-and-file Democrats who live in the past, or for some other reason are oblivious to the threat the 'woke' folk pose to them, their progeny, their beliefs, their security, and their way of life. If you are not on the hard Left and you voted for Biden, then you are a useful idiot. I have noticed, however, that people do not like being called idiots; adding the qualifier 'useful' does little to mitigate their umbrage. For they understand that they are being called useless to the cause of the Sane and the Reasonable.
Back to Time, Tense, and Existence
What follows is a comment by David Brightly which just came in but is buried in the comments to an old entry. I have added my responses in blue.
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I have just spotted that you quote EJL as saying,
This, of course, raises the question of how we can so much as talk about Caesar now that he no longer exists simpliciter — how we can speak about 'that which is not.'
My understanding is that 'no longer' is a marker of a tensed verb. So Lowe appears to be using 'to exist simpliciter' as if it were tensed. This leaves me somewhat confused. I'm not at all sure that 'simpliciter' adds (or subtracts) anything here. Lowe's paragraph, minus the 'simpliciter', makes sense as ordinary tensed English.
BV: As you see it, David, 'Caesar no longer exists' and 'Caesar no longer exists simpliciter' express exactly the same thought. That same thought is expressed by 'Caesar existed but Caesar does not exist (present tense). 'Simpliciter' adds nothing to 'exists.'
I suppose that you will say that the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing — how can we speak about 'that which is not' when that which is not is not 'there' to be spoken of — is a pseudo-problem, at least when raised with respect to wholly past items. I suppose that you will say that we can now refer to Caesar because he existed, and that nothing more need be said. Your view, I take it, is that Caesar can, at the present time, be an object of successful reference and a logical subject of true predications without existing simpliciter or tense-neutrally. It suffices for successful reference to Caesar who is now nothing that he was something, i.e., that he existed. You might take it a step further and argue that the Platonic pseudo-problem arises from a failure to stick to ordinary tensed English, and that the 'problem' is dissolved (as opposed to solved) by simply using the tenses of our beloved mother tongue in their ordinary work-a-day ways and not allowing language to "go on holiday" (Wittgenstein).
To put words in your mouth: you are saying that there is no genuine problem about the reality of the past; said reality consists solely in the fact that we can use the past tense to make true statements, e. g., 'Churchill smoked cigars.'
Have I understood your position? If I have, then what we are really discussing is whether the debate that divides presentists and 'eternalists' is a genuine debate or instead a pseudo-debate sired by a misuse of language.
Also, further down you say,
However things stand with respect to the future, the past surely seems to have a share in reality.
Could you not have said '…the past seems to have had a share…'? Again,
The question is whether what WAS has a share in reality as opposed to being annihilated, reduced to nothing, by the passage of time. [my emphasis]
BV: I don't say it your way because I believe that 'existence simpliciter' has a specific, non-redundant use. I believe that one can sensibly ask whether what exists (present tense) exhausts what exists simpliciter. I believe that both of the following are substantive claims:
a) Only what exists (present tense) exists!
b) It is not the case that only what exists (present tense) exists!
For me, (a) is not a tautology, and (b) is not a contradiction. Why not? Because, for me, if x exists simpliciter, it does not follow that x exists (present tense). So if (a) is true, it is true as a matter of metaphysics, not as a matter of formal logic. And if (a) is false, it is not false as a matter of formal logic but as a matter of metaphysics.
You, David, do not admit the distinction between what exists (present tense) and what exists simpliciter. For you, 'exists simpliciter' collapses into 'exists' (present tense).
You then return to the truthmaker objection. It seems to me quite natural and unproblematic to say that the past both had a share in reality and has been reduced to nothing. Problems only appear when we say the past both has a share in reality and has been reduced to nothing.
BV: But of course I don't say that. It is contradictory to say that the past has a share in reality and has been reduced to nothing. I say that there are very good reasons to hold that the past is not nothing, that is is real (actual, not merely possible; factual not fictional) but merely lacks temporal presentness.
Suppose that a certain building B has been completely demolished. On your view B has been reduced to nothing. All will agree that B is now nothing. But you want to say more. You want to say that what is now nothing is nothing sans phrase (without qualification). You want to say that what is nothing now is nothing without any temporal qualification. Can you prove that? Can you refute the view that wholly past items, which by definition are nothing now, have (tenselessly) a share in reality? Can you prove that the past — past times, past events, processes, continuants, etc. — are simply nothing as opposed to nothing now?
The past is arguably actual, not merely possible, and factual, not fictional. If so it is (tenselessly) real, and therefore not nothing. The passage of time does not consign what has become wholly past to nothingness. Can you refute this view? I grant that it has its own problems. The main problem, as it seems to me, is to specify what it means to say that a temporal item — an item in time — exists tenselessly.
My view is that these problems about the relation of time and existence are genuine but insoluble. Your view, I take it, is that the problems are pseudo-problems susceptible of easy dissolutions if we just adhere to ordinary ways of talking.
Have I located the bone of contention? Or have I 'dislocated' it? (A pun I couldn't resist.)
The Consolations of Philosophy
Substack latest. A Boethian-Hegelian rumination.
Miracles: Some Preliminary Points
It can't hurt to back up a bit to examine some definitions, make some distinctions, nail down some terminology, and catalog some questions. See how much you agree with.
1) A little girl falls into a mine shaft but is pulled out three days later alive and well. People call it a 'miracle.' That is a misuse of language because the unlikelihood of an event does not justify labelling it miraculous.
2) David Hume's two-part definition has dominated subsequent discussions. The gist of his definition is that a miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity . . . ." (Enquiry, sec. x, part i)
3) Hume's definition raises a number of questions. What is a law of nature? What is it to 'transgress' or violate a law of nature? Could a violation of a law of nature occur without supernatural agency? If so, would it count as a miracle? If a supernatural agent such as God brings about something by an act of will, but without violating any natural law, is that a miraculous bringing-about? If God ("the Deity") is involved in every miracle, what attributes must God have to be so-involved? The God of Aquinas could be a miracle worker, but what about the deus sive natura of Spinoza?
4) Laws of nature must not be confused with laws in the political-legal realm. And this despite the use of 'transgression,' 'violation,' and 'law' with respect to both kinds of law, and despite talk of laws of nature 'governing' this or that phenomenon and of phenomena 'obeying' laws. Two differences come immediately to mind: legal laws, unlike laws of nature, are enacted by legislatures and need enforcement. Kepler's laws of planetary motion, for example, were neither enacted by a legislature nor do they need enforcement. There is no need for an 'astro-cop' to make sure that the planets keep to their elliptical orbits, or to ensure that no signal exceeds the cosmic speed limit, 186,282 mi/sec. This ties in with another apparent difference. Legal laws are prescriptive, permissive, or proscriptive statements; statements of laws of nature are merely descriptive: they merely codify what happens. And even if they codify what must happen, the necessity involved is not legal but nomological or nomic. This point leads to a further distinction.
5) A legal law is just a statement that states either what is legally required, or legally permitted, or legally prohibited. There is no distinction between a legal law and something in the world of nature that makes its true. But in the case of laws of nature we need to distinguish between law statements and the laws themselves. Let me explain.
On one theory of laws, the regularity theory, a law is just an exceptionless regularity, a repeatable pattern of event sequences. A sample of pure water at sea-level is heated to 212 deg. Fahrenheit. That is one event token. It is followed by a second spatiotemporally contiguous event token: the beginning to boil of the same sample of water. The two event tokens make up an event sequence. What makes it a causal sequence is its instantiation of a pattern which, formulated in a statement, would go like this: "Whenever pure water at sea level is heated to 212 Fahrenheit, it boils." What makes this universal generalization true is the underlying pattern of heating-boiling events 'out there in the world.'
A statement of a law of nature, therefore, must be distinguished from the law that it states. The latter exists whether or not the former does. If Coulomb's law is true it was true long before the birth of Charles-Augustin de Coulomb.
6) Now what is a transgression of a law of nature? I should think that a law of nature is more than an exceptionless regularity in that laws support counterfactual conditionals. But without going into this, we can confidently say the following. Whatever a law of nature is, it either is or entails an exceptionless regularity. A transgression/violation of a law would then be an exception to the regularity, i.e., a counterexample thereto. But then it would seem to follow that miracles as Hume understands them are not just impossible, but logically impossible. Try this argument on for size:
1) A miracle is an exception to a law of nature.
2) Every law of nature is an exceptionless regularity.
Therefore
3) A miracle is an exception to an exceptionless regularity. But:
4) An exception to an exceptionless regularity is logically impossible.
Therefore
5) Miracles are logically impossible.
This argument seems to show that if miracles are to be logically possible, then they cannot be understood as violations of laws of nature. How then are they to be understood? Please note that (2) merely states that whatever a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity. Thus (2) does not commit one to a regularity theory of laws according to which laws are identified with exceptionless regularities. The idea is that any theory of (deterministic) laws would include the idea that a law is an exceptionless regularity.
Interim conclusion: If miracles are possible, then they cannot be construed as Hume construes them. And now: modus ponendo ponens? Or modus tollendo tollens?
(To be continued)
7) Humean miracles are violations ("transgressions") of laws of nature by divine agency. But are miracles Humean? William Lane Craig thinks not:
That is, I think, an untenable definition of what a miracle is . . . . Miracles are not violations of the laws of nature. The laws of nature describe what would happen in a particular case assuming that there are no intervening supernatural factors. They have what are called ceteris paribus clauses implicit in them – namely, all [other] things being equal, this is what will happen in this situation. But if all [other] things are not equal, the law isn’t violated. Rather, the law just doesn’t apply to that situation because there are other factors at work. In the case of a miracle, God doesn’t violate the laws of nature when he does a miracle. Rather, there will be causal factors at work, namely God, which are supernatural and therefore what the laws of nature predict won’t happen because the laws of nature only make predictions under the assumption that there are no intervening supernatural factors at work. So a miracle, I think, properly defined, is an event which the natural causes at a time and place cannot produce at that time and place. Or, more succinctly, a miracle is a naturally impossible event – an event which the natural causes at a certain time and place cannot bring about. It is beyond the productive capacity of nature. (Emphases added)
‘Equity’
'Equity' as currently used by wokesters refers to equality of outcome.
It could be achieved in a footrace by attaching weights to runners so as to insure that they all cross the finish line at the same time. One would thereby purchase the benefit of envy-free equality of result at the cost of excellence and high achievement. Would it be worth it?
And then there is the question of who would attach the weights and how they would go about doing so. Would they not have to be unequal in power and authority to those equalized to bring about the latter's equality of result? I suspect that those who support 'equity' imagine themselves as among the equalizers and not the equalized, just as those who are for central planning think of themselves as among the central planners and not the centrally planned.
The means to the achievement of 'equity' are far worse than 'equity' is good.
A Warning from Elon Musk
There is no political solution, not only for the reasons that Musk gives, but also because it is not the best who rise in politics but often the very worst. That is certainly true in the USA at present. The current administration is characterized by blatant mendacity, corruption, sheer stupidity, and mental incompetence.
So What’s up with the Metaphilosophy Book?
I was happy to find the following item in the mailbag the other morning:
Hi Bill,
I recall (however, I can't find exactly where) that you mentioned in an old blog post your intention to publish a work on metaphilosophy at some point in the future. I am curious, is this still a goal of yours? If so, is it in progress? I would be delighted to read it, but I understand if you've chosen not to pursue that project.Your grateful reader,Chandler
Thank you for your inquiry, Chandler. Yes, the metaphilosophy book is in progress, and has been for longer than I care to reveal. Why am I taking so long with it?
I gave the following dissertation advice a few posts ago:
. . . finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic. Finish it before your standards become too exacting. Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish.
My current predicament is the opposite. I am now old and my standards have become as exacting as they ever will be. I'm under time pressure but it's of a different sort than the young person's. The young philosopher needs to 'make it' and secure a space within which he can pursue his vocation. He has to solve 'the problem of the belly.' He may also be driven by worldly ambition. I have secured the space, solved the problem of livelihood, and I have renounced all worldly ambition in line with Wittgenstein's 1948 observation, "Ambition is the death of thought." (Ehrgeiz ist der Tod des Denkens, Culture and Value, p. 77)
So now I can afford to set high standards. Trouble is, they slow you down. That's good in one way. I take to heart the advice of Wittgenstein and Brentano. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80: Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!" "This is how philosophers should greet each other: 'Take your time!'"
A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this: Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft. "One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis."
On the other hand, the clock is running, the flag will fall, and the time control is sudden death. There is no secondary or tertiary control; nor can one take an 'incomplete' when the Grim Reaper comes knocking, his scythe glistening in the rays of the setting sun.
‘Unthinkable’ Used Thoughtlessly
Not every test is a litmus test. So why do people refer to any old test as a litmus test? Same explanation. Not every record is a track record. Not every list is a laundry list. I could continue with the examples. And you hope I won't. Don't be a linguistic lemming. The mind you save may be your own.
Language matters. The subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.
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