One reason, the best reason, is to keep ourselves face-to-face with the reality of death. To live well is to live in the truth, without evasion. Trans-humanist and cryonic fantasies aside, death cannot be evaded. We remember the dead, then, for our own spiritual benefit.
Where they are, we will be. And soon enough. But people think they have plenty of time. They fool themselves. Don't put off until the eleventh hour your preparation for death. You may die at 10:30.
Another reason is because we owe the dead something: honor, remembrance, gratitude, care of their monuments, legacies and intentions. On Memorial Day and every day.
McCarthy knows this subject from the inside and sees things with blinding clarity:
. . . the challenge of Islam must be confronted head-on and without apology. That is unavoidable. You can’t flinch. It is a certainty that the Democrat-media complex — of which Islamist organizations are members in good standing — is going to smear you as a racist “Islamophobe.” (Yes, this is another race-obsessed “progressive” narrative, so Islam gets to be the “race,” so that defenders of the Constitution and Western culture can be cast as “the oppressor.”) You have to be content with knowing that you are not a racist, with knowing that you are defending religious liberty, including the religious liberty of pro-Western Muslims.
There is a single battle that must be won. American culture must be convinced that Islam, while it has plenty of diversity, has a mainstream strain — sharia supremacism — that is not a religion but a totalitarian political ideology hiding under a religious veneer.
Permit me a respectful quibble. (I say 'respectful' because McCarthy's qualifications in this area far exceed mine.) A more measured way of putting the point would be by saying that sharia supremacism is at once both a totalitarian political ideology and a religion. It is a hybrid ideology that blends the religious with the political. The religiosity of sharia supremacism is not a mere veneer. But this is a mere quibble since, either way, the practical problem remains and the goal of the "single battle" is the same: to keep sharia-based Islam out of the U. S. A.
Intellectually, this should not be a difficult thing to do. Sharia supremacism does not accept the separation of religion from political life (which is why it is lethally hostile to reform Muslims). It requires the imposition of classical, ancient sharia law, which crushes individual liberty (particularly freedom — of conscience, of speech, and in economic affairs). It systematically discriminates against women and non-Muslims. It is cruel in its enforcement. It endorses violent jihad to settle political disputes (since such disputes boil down to whether sharia is being undermined — a capital offense).
What I have just outlined is not a “theory.” Quite apart from the fact that sharia supremacism is the subject of numerous books, studies, public-opinion polls, and courtroom prosecutions, one need only look at life in Saudi Arabia and Iran, societies in which the regime imposes sharia. As I mentioned a few days ago, one need only look at the State Department’s warnings to Americans who travel to Saudi Arabia.
Nevertheless, what should be easy to establish intellectually is difficult as a practical matter. Sharia supremacists and their progressive allies maintain that Islam may not be parsed into different strains. For legal purposes, they insist it is a monolith that is protected by religious-liberty principles — notwithstanding that a) progressives are generally hostile to religious liberty and b) sharia supremacists themselves would destroy religious liberty. Perversely, then, they argue that the First Amendment is offended by national-security measures against anti-American radicals who would, given the chance, deep-six the First Amendment in favor of sharia.
This may well be the heart of the issue. If Islam is a religion like any other, then it is protected by religious-liberty principles. If so, any attempt to keep sharia-supporting Muslims out of the country would run counter to the values enshrined in the First Amendment, specifically, the first clause thereof. It would constitute discrimination on the basis of religion.
The issue, then, is whether Islam is a religion like any other. Clearly, it is not. If McCarthy is right, then it is a political ideology masquerading as a religion; if I am right, it is a hybrid ideology. Either way, it is a political threat to our political system which is premised on the separation of church/mosque/synagogue and state.
It is essential to win this debate over the political nature of sharia supremacism. Our law has a long constitutional tradition, rooted in the natural and international law of self-defense, of excluding aliens on the basis of radical, anti-American political ideology. Thus, if sharia supremacism is deemed a political ideology, we can keep out alien adherents of a cause that both inspires the terrorists of today and, wherever it is allowed to take root, produces the terrorists of tomorrow.
Yet, we also have a strong commitment to religious freedom. If at the end of the debate — assuming we ever have the debate — our culture’s conclusion is that sharia supremacism equals Islam, equals religion, equals immunity from governmental protective measures, then the Constitution really will have become a suicide pact. We will have decided that anti-constitutional sharia radicals are just as welcome as any other Muslim.
Sharia supremacists are like communists: they use our values against us. They hypocritically invoke them to subvert them. If we allow them to do this we are fools and we deserve to perish. Our magnificent Constitution must not be allowed to become a suicide pact.
I will mention just the most obvious and most important one: severely curtail Muslim immigration. There is no right to immigrate, and correspondingly, we are under no obligation to let in subversive elements. We have a culture and a way of life to protect, and their culture and way of life are inimical to ours. Muslims who enter the USA should be forced to sign a statement in which they renounce Shari'a, and then they must be monitored for compliance.
This is not a religious test but a cultural-political test: do you share our values or not? Chief among these values is toleration.
I agree with you — it mainly comes down to value systems (I wrote a blog post on just this a couple of years ago). But a couple of points:
1. In my experience there are two types of Muslim immigrants to the West: educated graduates who have no interest whatever in Islam, and who sometimes actively hate it. I have worked with and have close friends fitting this description. The second are uneducated, and are far more likely to embody the kinds of values we mostly find repellent in the West; some of these people commit crimes against women and children thinking them to be normal privileges, and create cultural ghettos (however some have been victims of religious persecution). So I think curtailing Muslim immigration is too coarse a tool; I'd rather deprive totalitarian theocratic regimes of their better people, both for the sake of those individuals, and in the hope of keeping such regimes from gaining greater power (or perhaps their more courageous citizens overthrowing said dictatorships).
BV: The reader's idea is very interesting: take the best and brightest from Muslim countries, thereby causing a 'brain drain'; this will weaken totalitarian theocracies and possibly lead to their overthrow. And of course the reader is absolutely right that not every Muslim is a Sharia supremacist.
The difficulty, of course, is to separate the sheep from the goats (to employ a New Testament image for the sake of maximal political incorrectness). It's a problem of vetting. This is made difficult by the doctrine of taqiyya which justifies a Muslim's lying to non-Muslims. Practically, it will be very difficult to separate the assimilable Muslims from the non-assimilable ones.
Given this fact, it would be wise to curtail Muslim immigration, at least for the time being. 'Curtail' does not mean stop. It means reduce in extent or quantity. Or one could have a temporary total stoppage which is what a moratorium is. One of the questions that has to be asked, and that people are afraid to ask is this: what is the net benefit to a Western country of Muslim immigration? I am assuming, as any rational person must, that immigration can only be justified if it works to the benefit of the host country.
A second problem with the reader's suggestion is that it will have the effect of weakening the Muslim countries that suffer the 'brain drain.' But we want them to flourish, don't we? If they flourish, then they are less likely to practice and export terrorism. Happy people don't cause trouble. And happy people don't leave their homelands. Lefties such as Obama and Hillary are not entirely wrong: the more economically prosperous the Muslim lands, the lower the appeal of radical Islam.
2. I think one way to go about dealing with traditional Islam (which is the problem, not so-called 'political Islam' – Islam is inherently 'political') in the West is to find a way to legislate against the promotion of ideologies containing certain features – primarily those the conflict with our basic notions of human rights, i.e. freedom of thought and expression, non-discrimination on the basis of innate qualities (sex, race etc), and so on; ideologies that tend toward fascism. We need to think more on how we would deal with a serious movement of National Socialism or Italian Fascism today. No names of any religion or ideology need be mentioned, just the unacceptable features. Here 'legislate' probably doesn't mean in law, but by other means; it might even mean immigrants renouncing Sharia as you say. But unfortunately, the majority of Jihadist terrorism in Europe comes from citizens born into the cultural ghettos with their alternate value systems and deep resentments. No immigration policy can touch them.
It is interesting to note that we still have the absurd crime of blasphemy on the statute books in the UK, but there is nothing to protect our system of common law or values.
BV: I agree that Islam is inherently political: it is as much a political ideology as a religion. I call it a 'hybrid' ideology. People who speak of 'political Islam,' however, have in mind the project of a reform of Islam which would render it consistent with Western political principles and values. I am thinking of Zuhdi Jasser, for example. Part of his proposed reform is a separation of mosque and state. I fear that his proposal is utopian; if it could be achieved, however, Islam would cease to be the world-wide problem it is.
As for 'legislation' that is not achieved by passing laws, I just don't understand what that could be.
My reader suggests that no change in immigration policy will affect the jihadis that are born in cultural ghettos in our countries. But that is just false. Suppose that Muslim immigration into the U. K. were stopped. Then no jihadis could be born in the U. K. to the potential Muslim immigrants who would have been stopped. The young troublemakers already in the U. K. will grow old and become less troublesome.
Meanwhile, you just have to get ruthless with terrorists. That includes the swift and sure application of the death penalty. Do you love your country or not? Do you value your way of life? Are English values and ways worth defending? Or are you a bunch of decadents who don't care whether you live or die?
As an American who feels a certain piety toward the Mother Country, I hope you grow a collective pair before it is too late.
There is a lot of unsung talent out there in the Land of YouTube. Check out the 'classic' covers by this cutie who goes by the name of Sayaka Alessandra:
The Wanderer. A creditable version of the feminist anthem. Dion DiMucci's original. It takes a wop to sing this song right.
A Teenager in Love. Dion and the Belmonts' original. They guy has amazing staying power. He still looks and sounds good at 70+. I Wonder Why (2004). Wop, wop, wop, wop, wopwopwop. Is that why they call it 'do wop'?
My brand of conservatism is personalist, which may help explain why I find myself at loggerheads with those on the so-called 'Alternative Right.' And my brand of personalism is conservative which may help explain why I look askance at libertarianism and at 'mainstream conservatism' to the extent that the latter is libertarian and insufficiently attentive to the importance of national sovereignty and the right of a nation to preserve its culture from dilution and indeed subversion. The libertarian overemphasizes the economic. He is followed in this by the mainstream conservative. The alt-rightist rightly resists this overemphasis but runs the risk of falling into an excessive and morally obnoxious particularism. One form this particularism takes is in the alt-right's anti-egalitarianism. See here:
The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.
We are being told that there is no non-trivial sense in which human beings are equal. This, I take it, is a characteristic and defining Alt Right claim to which I oppose the Trad Right thesis that there is a sense in which all human beings are equal, namely, as persons. I suspect that this may be the main difference between the Alt and the Trad versions of conservatism. Or if not the main difference, then an important one.
But my concern is not to oppose the Alt Right, whatever exactly it is supposed to be, but to defend the thesis that human beings are equal, not as animals in nature, but as persons. Here, as elsewhere, my aim is clarity, not agreement. Agreement is out of reach, but clarification of differences is an achievable and worthwhile goal.
Empirical Inequality is a Fact
Empirical inequality cannot be denied: by the various empirical measures there is plenty of inequality among individuals and groups. (Trivial example: men on average are taller than women. Height is an example of an empirically measurable attribute.) So if human beings are taken solely in their empirical and material natures, or if human beings are nothing more than material beings, then talk of the equality of all human beings is either false or trivial. (That all human beings are equal in that they all have been born at or near the surface of the earth is empirically true, but trivially true.)
Let me make a couple more pedantic points just to make sure that the issue is clear. That we are not all empirically equal is of course consistent with two or more of us being equal in some measurable respect or even in all such respects. If it should turn out that Tim and Tom are alike in all empirical respects, that would be consistent with the denial that we are all empirically equal. A second point is that the denial that we are all empirically equally is not a normative, but a factual, claim and as such axiologically neutral. There is no implication that this is a bad, or a good, state of affairs. It is just a fact.
The Question
Given the plain fact of empirical inequality, is there any defensible sense in which human beings could be said to be equal and in possession of equal rights?
Equality is not a Matter of Abstraction
There is a misunderstanding that needs to be squelched at the outset. Talk of the equality of humans as persons does not involve abstraction from all the empirical differences that divide individuals and groups. No doubt there is the concept human being in general which every individual human animal falls under. We arrive at this concept by abstracting from all the differences between individuals to arrive at a determination common to them all. But to speak of persons is not to engage in such an abstraction. It is to refer to the unique subject of experience that each of us is, and to which each one of us can refer using the first-person singular pronoun. That to which I refer when I say 'I' is a unique personal reality, a concrete individual, not an abstraction.
The Concept of Person
A person, then, is a concrete subject of experience. By 'subject,' I don't just mean something that has or supports experiences as in the Aristotelian notion of a substrate or hypokeimenon, but something that is an initiator or enactor or source of experiences. Analogously as rays of light emanate from a light source, 'rays' of intentionality emanate outward from the subject (in the modern sense) toward objects. A person is a subject in both of these ancient and modern senses.
To unpack it a bit: a person is a conscious and thus sentient individual, capable of self-consciousness, possessing feeling and will and memory and the capacity to reason and plan and seek the truth about itself and everything else. I have just limned the concept of person in the descriptive sense of 'person.' We may now add the normative sense. A person in the normative sense is a rights-possessor which, in virtue of having rights, induces in other persons various duties. For example, my right to life induces in you the duty to refrain from taking my life, and your duty derives from my right. In this sense rights and duties are correlative.
Equality of Persons, not of Animals
So when I speak of the equality of persons, that does not mean that all human animals are empirically equal, either as individuals or as groups, which is plainly false, nor does it mean that all human animals are equal just insofar as they are instances of the concept human being. The latter is true of course: each instance of human being is the same as, and equal to, every other such instance qua instance. But while true it misses the point, namely, that each human being is a unique person.
We need to distinguish among: (a) All humans are empirically equal, which is false; (b) All humans are equally instances of the concept human being, which is true but trivial; (c) Each human being is a unique person.
My claim, then, is that we are all equal as persons in the descriptive sense, and therefore all equal in the normative sense. That is, if any one of us is a rights-possessor in virtue of being a descriptive person, then every one of us is a rights-possessor in virtue of being a descriptive person. And all of this regardless of sex, race, age, and any other empirical feature. We are equal as persons even if my will is stronger than yours and my intellect more penetrating. We are equal as persons even if you are more compassionate than me.
The point, then, is that equality is grounded in personhood, not in animal constitution. To clarify this, we need to think some more about the relation of persons and human beings or human animals when the latter are viewed from the angle of the natural sciences of biology and anthropology.
Persons and Human Animals
The above definition of 'person' allows for persons that are not human beings and human beings (genetic humans) that are not persons, as well as persons that are human beings. In the following Venn diagram, A = persons and B = humans. The intersection C represents persons who are human. God, angels, demons, and pre-embodied and disembodied Platonic souls are examples of persons that are not human. They are not human because they are not animals at all, but pure spirits. Also examples of persons that are not human are embodied persons whose personhood is realized in non-human material stuff, e.g. extraterrestrials and persons realized, not in living matter, but in computers. Examples of humans that are not persons, on my definition of 'person,' would be anencephalic human neonates. They would not be persons because of their lack of capacity to develop language and reasoning skills. (For more on the anencephalic business, see Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons, the comments to which were good.) But these anencephalic individuals are nonetheless genetically human as the offspring of human parents.
To repeat, our equality is grounded in our shared personhood despite our considerable empirical differences. Personhood cannot be understood in natural-scientific terms.
I am not commited to saying that we can exist as persons without animal embodiment. I am committed to saying that persons cannot be reduced to animals.
Equality in the Declaration of Independence
The first sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence reads, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Clearly, on a charitable interpretation, what this affirms is not (a) or (b) but something in the vicinity of (c). We are equal as persons, as subjects of experience and as rights-possessors, not as animals in nature. As objects in the natural world having natural and empirically detectable properties, we are obviously not all equal.
Our equality is grounded in our being, not objects in the world, but subjects for whom there is a world. Subjectivity looms large on the personalist conception. It is only as conscious and self-conscious subjects that we are purposive beings who pursue things, including happiness, and have a right to the sort of life that conscious beings enjoy. This is life via intentional acts emanating from a personal center and not life in a merely biological sense. Human living cannot be exhaustively understood biologically, and this despite the plain fact that we are animals in nature.
That empirical equality is not at issue should also be obvious from the talk of a Creator. We are said to be created equal. If we are created equal, but are at the same time plainly unequal empirically speaking, then the respect in which we are created equal cannot be an empirical respect. We are not equal as specimens of a biological species, but equal in some other respect. What respect could that be?
Talk of a creator brings a purely spiritual being, God, into the picture. In the context of Christianity, which is the context in which the Founders operate, that means that we are created in the image and likeness of God. And what that means is that we too are spiritual beings possessing free will and the dignity and worth that comes with it, despite our embodiment in nature.
On this scheme, political equality and equality of rights rest on a metaphysical foundation, namely the metaphysics of persons, where persons are spiritual individuals with a destiny that transcends their animal mortality. We are all equal as creatures of the same Creator.
Interim Conclusion
Our problem was to explain how how humans could be said to equal when they are manifestly unequal empirically speaking. The classical theist will have no trouble answering. We are more than animals. We are spiritual individuals created by God in his image and likeness. As such we are equal in dignity and worth and equal in rights, whether tall or short, white or black of brown or yellow, male or female young or old, etc.
If it is essential to the Alt Right to deny that there is any sense in which humans are equal that is not either false or trivial, then the Alt Right view excludes classical theism and conversely.
An Objection and a Reply
Correspondent Jacques raises the following objection:
Let's agree it's ["All men are created equal"] a normative claim to the effect that all 'persons' have certain 'rights'. What then entitles all of them to these rights? A normative fact like that doesn't float free from all empirical facts. There's got to be some reason why all normal human adults have these rights but chickens or pencils don't, some empirical property of these beings only that generates or confers certain rights. Is it the shared property of being a person? Or the shared property of being human? Something else? I suspect that any of the candidate properties will be either morally irrelevant, even by liberal-leftist standards, or else relevant but distributed so unequally that it will be hard to understand how it could be the basis for 'equal' rights.
This is a fair question. We do not ascribe rights such as a right to life to chickens. We raise them to eat them. We treat them as mere means to our ends, even if we treat them humanely. Why is it morally permissible to eat chickens but not to eat humans? Why is it morally permissible to force animals to work for us but impermissible to enslave humans? What grounds the normative properties?
I agree with Jacques that normativity does not "float free": it needs anchorage in the non-normative. But the non-normative need not be observable by the senses. The non-normative is not equivalent to the empirical. It is open to me to say that the moral impermissibility of eating humans is grounded in the non-normative fact of their being persons in the descriptive sense. Humans are persons while chickens are not; this factual difference grounds the normative difference. It also explains why it is permissible to make a beast of burden of a donkey, but not of a man. I may agree to carry your load, but if you force me to carry it, then you violate my normative personhood which is grounded in my descriptive personhood.
Jacques also asks, "Why should we think there is any suitable empirical basis for the normative claim that 'all men are equal' or that such normative claims could be true regardless of any empirical facts?" I agree that there is no empirical basis for the normative claim. But it doesn't follow that it has no basis. The normative claim has a metaphysical basis in the nature of persons.
One has to stand in awe at the intellectual power and wisdom of the leading ladies of the Democrat Party. I am thinking of Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren and now, Chelsea Clinton. The latter has recently opined that racism, sexism . . . and yes, even jingoism are not opinions.
If you are a regular reader you know how I would respond to this scurrilous nonsense. So I won't waste any time on it. (But see related articles below.)
Why the post then? It is merely to keep you informed of the direction in which the cultural indicators are pointing, and, possibly, to inspire you to do your bit to flush the liberal-left scum from positions of power, or, in the case of Chelsea, to keep this twerp from gaining any.
I wrote this last year. Its reposting, slightly redacted, is appropriate in the wake of Manchester. I explain the main thing that must be done if the West is to survive as the West.
………………………
Things are coming to a head. We cannot tolerate as a 'new normal' another Islamist slaughter of innocents every six months or so. So what is to be done? What prophylactic measures do we need to take to protect the USA and the rest of the West from the Islamist virus?
London Ed writes,
What kind of public policy, if any, would you advocate to improve the currently dire relations between the Islamic communities in the West, and their neighbours? All Muslims I know (not many, however) are horrified by extremism, and do not see it as Islamic. ‘They are just thugs’, said one of them. Most immigrant communities have ended up assimilating in some way. My first encounter with Islam was in Turkey, where a nice ex-policeman showed us round some mosques and explained Islam. He told me a moving story about a Turkish earthquake where a badly injured man, crushed under some concrete, begged him to shoot him. The policeman refused, saying it was for God to make those kind of decisions about life and death. The man died an hour later. Here we are talking about ‘ordinary Muslims’. It is a fact that all religions have extremists, and that such extremists tend to hold disproportionate power. Is there any way of redressing the balance? I.e. if you were home secretary or the US equivalent, what measures would you be taking?
Let me first take issue, not with the truth, but with the import, of the claim that all religions have extremists. The claim is true, but it is misleading unless various other truths are brought into proximity with it. It is not enough to tell the truth; you must tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There is a mode of mendacity whereby one tells truths with the intention of deceiving one's audience. See How to Tell the Truth without being Truthful .
Here is a second truth: the raw number of Islamic extremists (terrorists and those who foment terrorism) is vastly greater than the number of Buddhist extremists. So one cannot use the truth that all religions have extremists to downplay the threat of Islam, or to suggest that there is a moral equivalence between Buddhism and Islam.
So when a leftist says, "There are Buddhist terrorists too!" force him to name one that that was involved in a terror attack in London or Madrid or Paris or New York or Orlando or San Bernardino or . . . . Not only are there very few Buddhist terrorists, they are not a threat to us, meaning chiefly: the USA, the UK, and Europe.
There is another important point that Ed the philosopher will appreciate, namely, the distinction between being accidentally and essentially a terrorist. Suppose there is a Buddhist monk who is a terrorist. Qua Buddhist monk, he cannot be a terrorist because there is nothing in Buddhism that supports or enjoins terrorism. What makes him a Buddhist does not make him a terrorist or predispose him toward terrorism. Our Buddhist monk is therefore accidentally a terrorist. His committing terrorist acts is accidental to his being a Buddhist. He is a Buddhist monk and a terrorist; but he is not a terrorist because he is a Buddhist. Muslim terrorists, however, commit terrorist acts because their religion supports or enjoins terrorism. Their terrorism flows from their doctrine. This is not the case for Buddhism or Christianity. No Christian qua Christian is a terrorist.
Of course, not every Muslim is a terrorist; but every Muslim has at the ready a religious doctrine that enjoins and justifies terrorism should our Muslim decide to go that route. There are many more potential Muslim terrorists than actual Muslim terrorists.
Note also that a Muslim does not have to commit terrorist acts himself to aid and abet terrorists. He can support them monetarily and in other ways including by refusing to condemn terrorist acts. Their silence is deafening.
While not every Muslim is a terrorist, almost every terrorist at the present time is a Muslim. We ought to demand that leftists admit the truth of both halves of the foregoing statement. But they won't, which fact demonstrates (a) their lack of intellectual honesty, (b) their destructive, anti-Western agenda, and (c) their ignorance of their own long-term best interest. As for (c), liberals and leftists have a pronounced 'libertine wobble' as I like to call it. They are into 'alternative sexual lifestyles' and the defense of pornography as 'free speech,' and such. They would be the first to be slaughtered under Shari'a. Or have they forgotten Orlando already?
London Ed tells us that in Turkey he met "ordinary Muslims" who were fine people. Well, I lived in Turkey for a solid year, 1995-1996, and met many Muslims, almost all of them very decent people. These "ordinary Muslims," some of them secularists, and others of them innocuously religious, are not the problem. The jihadis are the problem, and there are a lot of them, not percentage-wise, but in terms of raw numbers. It is irrelevant to point out that there are good Muslims. Of course there are. We all know that. But they are not the problem.
So what measures should we in the West take?
I will mention just the most obvious and most important one: severely curtail Muslim immigration. There is no right to immigrate, and correspondingly, we are under no obligation to let in subversive elements. We have a culture and a way of life to protect, and their culture and way of life are inimical to ours. Muslims who enter the USA should be forced to sign a statement in which they renounce Shari'a, and then they must be monitored for compliance.
This is not a religious test but a cultural-political test: do you share our values or not? Chief among these values is toleration. If not, stay home, in the lands whose inanition and misery demonstrate the inferiority of Islamic culture and Islamic values. The main reason for carefully vetting Muslims who aim to immigrate into the USA is political rather than religious, as I explain in the following companion post:
I cite yet another example of liberal erosion of standards. But that's to put it too mildly. Contemporary liberals have lost their minds.
Harvard libraries will no longer charge 50 cent per day fees on overdue books.
[. . .]
“We have witnessed firsthand the stress that overdue fines can cause for students,” [Steven] Beardsley continued. “Eliminating standard overdue fines and standardizing loan periods across Harvard’s libraries should help students focus on their scholarship, rather than worrying about renewing library books every 28 days in order to avoid fines.”
I'm not making this up. Click on the link and see for yourself.
And did you know that wood paneling is sexist and racist?
As I have been saying for years, there is no idea so crazy that some liberal-left loon won't embrace it. These idiots do not need refutation; they need therapy.
At the root of the problem is that liberals do not understand human nature. They do not understand that people are much more likely to behave properly under the influence of various incentives and disincentives.
He has been called "rock's greatest songwriter." A better description is "America's greatest writer of popular songs." Bar none. We can discuss the criteria later, and consider counterexamples. Maybe this Saturday night. His earliest four or five albums are not in the rock genre. I'll permit quibbling about #5, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), but Bob Dylan (1962), The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963) , The Time's They Are A'Changin' (1964), and Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964) are better classified as folk, not that they sit all that comfortably in this niche.
These early albums are studded with lasting contributions to Americana. This is music with meaning that speaks to the mind and the heart. No Rat Pack crooner Las Vegas lounge lizard stuff here. Two lesser-known compositions both from The Times They Are a'Changin' (1964):
North Country Blues. Written from the point of view of a woman and so appropriately sung by the angel-throated Joan Baez.
D. A. Pennebaker on the making of Don't Look Back. I saw it in '67 when it first came out. I just had to see it, just as I had to have all of Dylan's albums, all of his sheet music, and every article and book about him. I was a Dylan fanatic. No longer a fanatic, I remain a fan.
May he die with his boots on. It ain't dark yet, but it's gettin' there. When his 30th album Time Out of Mind came out in 1997, twenty years ago now, I was amazed to discover that Dylan could still tap back into that magic mood he achieved in the mid-60s.
Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.
I was born here and I'll die here, against my will I know it looks like I'm movin' but I'm standin' still
Every nerve in my body is so naked and numb I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from Don't even hear the murmur of a prayer It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.
Sinatra is supposed to have said that a pro is one who can play it the same way twice. (Where?) Dylan rarely plays it the same way twice. Here is a version of "Just Like a Woman" which is lyrically and in other minor ways different from the Blonde on Blonde version.
UPDATE: Dave Bagwill recommends this outstanding extended version (Freewheelin' outake 2, 1962) of "The Ballad of Hollis Brown." Move over, Stephen Stills! The harp fills don't quite make it, however, in this minor-keyed tune.
Question: Is it my brain that feels and thinks when I feel and think?
Argument A. Meat can't think. My brain is meat. Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.
A in Reverse: What thinks in me when I think is my brain. My brain is meat. Therefore, meat can think.
The proponent of A needn't deny that we are meatheads. Of course we are. We are literally meat (and bone) all the way through. His point is that the res cogitans, that in us which thinks, cannot be a hunk of meat.
Both arguments are valid, but only one is sound. The decision comes down to the initial premises of the two arguments. Is there a rational way of deciding between these premises?
A materialist might argue as follows. Although we cannot at present understand how a hunk of living meat could feel and think, what is actual is possible regardless of our ability or inability to explain how it is possible. The powers of certain configurations of matter could remain hidden for a long time from our best science, or even remain hidden forever. What else would be doing the thinking and feeling in us if not our brains? What else could the mind be but the living and functioning brain well-supplied with oxygen-rich blood? The fact that we cannot understand how the brain could be a semantic engine, an engine productive of and sensitive to meanings, is not a conclusive reason for thinking that it is not a semantic engine.
It is worth noting that the reverent gushing of the neuro-scientistic types over the incredible complexity of the brain does absolutely nothing to reduce the unintelligibility of the notion that it is brains or parts of brains that are the subjects of intentional and qualitative mental states. For it is unintelligible how ramping up complexity could trigger a metabasis eis allo genos. Are you telling me that meat that means is just meat that is more complex than ordinary meat? You might as well say that the leap from unmeaning meat to meaning meat is a miracle. Some speak of 'emergence.' But that word merely papers over the difficulty, labeling the problem without solving it. You may as well say, as in the cartoon, "And then a miracle occurs." But then it's Game Over for the materialist.
Our materialist would do better to insist that unintelligibility to us does not entail impossibility. Our inability to explain how X is possible does not entail that X is not possible.
My response would be that while unintelligibility does not entail impossibility, it is excellent evidence of it. If you tell me that a certain configuration of neurons is intrinsically object-directed, directed to an object that may or may not exist without prejudice to the object-directedness, then you are saying something unintelligible. It is as if you said that .5 volts intrinsically represents 1 and .7 volts intrinsically represents 0. That's nonsense. Or it as if you said that a pile of rocks intrinsically indicates the direction of the trial. (See The Philosophizing Hiker: The Derivative Intentionality of Trail Markers.)
No rock pile has intrinsic meaning or intrinsic representational power. And the same goes for any material item or configuration of material items no matter how complex. No such system has intrinsic meaning; any meaning it has is derived. The meaning is derived either from an intelligent being who ascribes meaning to the material system, or from an intelligent being whose purposes are embodied in the material system, or both.
Thus I am rejecting the view that meaning could inhere in material systems apart from relations to minds that are intrinsically intentional, minds who are original Sinn-ers, if you will, original mean-ers. We are all of us Sinn-ers, every man Jack of us, original Sinn-ers, but our Sinn-ing is not mortal or venial but vital. Intrinsic, underived intentionality is our very lifeblood as spiritual beings.
So if the materialist says that the brain means, intends, represents, thinks, etc., then I say that makes no sense given what we understand the brain to be. The brain is a material system and the physical, chemical, electrical, and biological properties it and its parts have cannot be meaningfully predicated of mental states. One cannot speak intelligibly of a voltage drop across a mental state any more than can one speak intelligibly of the intentionality of synapses or of their point of view or of what it is like to be one.
Of course, the materialist can pin his hope on a future science that understands the brain in different terms, terms that could be sensibly attached to mental phenomena. But this is nothing more than an empty gesturing towards a 'possibility' that cannot be described except in the vaguest terms. It is nothing but faith, hope, and hand-waving.
There is also the dogmatism of the materialist who insists that the subject of thinking must be the functioning brain. How does he know that? He doesn't. He believes it strongly is all.
So I give the palm to Argument A: Meat can't think. My brain is meat. Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.
I do not absolutely foreclose on the abstract possibility that there be thinking meat. For I grant that unintelligibility to us is not invincible proof of impossibility. But when I compare that vaguely described abstract possibility with the present certainty that matter as we know it cannot think due to the very unintelligibility of the idea, then the present certainty wins over the abstract possibility and over the faith and hope of the materialist.
If you need to pin your hopes on something, pin them on the possibility that you are more than meat.
That there are still a few influential people such as Dershowitz with the civil courage to speak out supplies a slim basis for hope in the midst of the current madness.
Back story here. The e-mail message that got him in trouble:
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2017 4:26 PM To: Anathea Portier-Young Cc: Divinity Regular Rank Faculty; Divinity Visiting Other Faculty Subject: Re: Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training–March 4-5
Dear Faculty Colleagues,
I’m responding to Thea’s exhortation that we should attend the Racial Equity Institute Phase 1 Training scheduled for 4-5 March. In her message she made her ideological commitments clear. I’ll do the same, in the interests of free exchange.
I exhort you not to attend this training. Don’t lay waste your time by doing so. It’ll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid: there’ll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty. When (if) it gets beyond that, its illiberal roots and totalitarian tendencies will show. Events of this sort are definitively anti-intellectual. (Re)trainings of intellectuals by bureaucrats and apparatchiks have a long and ignoble history; I hope you’ll keep that history in mind as you think about this instance.
We here at Duke Divinity have a mission. Such things as this training are at best a distraction from it and at worst inimical to it. Our mission is to think, read, write, and teach about the triune Lord of Christian confession. This is a hard thing. Each of us should be tense with the effort of it, thrumming like a tautly triple-woven steel thread with the work of it, consumed by the fire of it, ever eager for more of it. We have neither time nor resources to waste. This training is a waste. Please, ignore it. Keep your eyes on the prize.
Paul
——————– Paul J. Griffiths Warren Chair of Catholic Theology Duke Divinity School
