Bill Vallicella – Page 413 – Maverick Philosopher

God as Biblical Character and as Divine Reality

When Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza write about the God of the Old Testament, they write about numerically the same Biblical character using the same Latin word, Deus. They write about this character, refer to it, and indeed succeed in referring to it. But Aquinas and Spinoza do not believe in the same divine reality. Of course they both believe in a divine reality; but their conceptions of a divine reality are so different that it cannot be maintained — or so I argue here contra F. Beckwith — that it is one and the same reality that they believe in. Nor do they succeed in referring to the same reality. Since it cannot be the case that both divine realities exist, one of the two philosophers fails to refer to anything at all. It follows that they cannot be said to worship the same God: one of them worships an idol.

God, Adam, Moses, "and all them prophets good and gone" (Bob Dylan, Gospel Plow) actually exist qua characters in the Biblical narrative. But of course it does not follow that they exist 'outside' the narrative in reality.

A few months ago in the wake of the Wheaton contretemps we were much exercised over the question whether the God of the Christians is the same as the God of the Muslims. I wonder if the distinction between God as Biblical character and God as divine reality can help in that dispute. Perhaps some variants of the dispute arise from a failure to draw this distinction. Perhaps the following irenic proposal will be acceptable:

Christians and Muslims write about, talk about, and refer to one and the same Biblical character when they use 'God' and 'Allah.' In this sense, the God of the Christians and that of the Muslims is the same God. It is one and the same Biblical character, God. But Christians and Muslims do not refer to one and the same divine reality by their uses of 'God' and 'Allah.' This is because extralinguistic reference is conceptually mediated, not direct, and no one item can instantiate both the Christian and the Muslim conceptions of God. Nothing can be both triune and non-triune, to mention just one important different in the two conceptions.

So either the Christian is failing to refer to anything such that his worship is of an idol, or the Muslim is failing to refer to anything such that his worship is of an idol. The situation is strictly parallel to the Aquinas-Spinoza case. The two philosophers are clearly referring to the same Biblical character when they write Deus. But their conceptions of God are so different that they cannot be said to be referring to the same being in external reality.

My suggestion, then, is that some may have got their knickers in a knot for no good reason by failing to make the above-captioned distinction.

According to Ed Buckner over at Dale Tuggy's place,

. . . there is at least one sort of case where it is clear they [Aquinas and Spinoza] are using the name ‘God’ in exactly the same way, namely when they discuss the interpretation of the scriptures. Aquinas does this many times in Summa Theologiae, using the words of the Bible and the Church Fathers to support complex theological and philosophical arguments. Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise is an extensive commentary on the text of the Bible and its meaning, also supported throughout by biblical quotation. So when Thomas writes

According to Chrysostom (Hom. iii in Genes.), Moses prefaces his record by speaking of the works of God (Deus) collectively. (Summa TheologiaeIª q. 68 a. 1 ad 1)

and Spinoza writes

As for the fact that God [Deus] was angry with him [Balak] while he was on his journey, that happened also to Moses when he was setting out for Egypt at the command of God [Dei]. (Tractatus ch. 3, alluding to Exodus 4:24-26)

it is clear that they are talking about the same persons, i.e. they are both talking about God, and they are both talking about Moses. It is somewhat more complicated than that, because Spinoza has a special theory about what the word ‘God’ means in the scriptures, but more of that later. In the present case, it seems clear that whenever we indirectly quote the scriptures, e.g. ‘Exodus 3:1 says that Moses was setting out for Egypt at the command of God’, we are specifying what the Bible says by using the names ‘Moses’ and ‘God’ exactly as the Bible uses them. Bill might disagree here, but we shall see.

I agree that they are both talking about the same persons qua characters in the Old Testament. The fact that Ed puts 'God' and 'Moses' in italics suggests, however, that he thinks that there is more here than reference to Biblical characters: there is also reference to really existent persons, and that our two philosophers are referring to the same really existent persons. But here I suspect that Ed is attempting a reduction of bona fide extralinguistic reference to what I will call text- and discourse-immanent reference, whether intertextual (as in the present case) or intratextual (as in the case of back references within one and the same narrative). If Ed is proposing a reduction — or God forbid an elimination — of real extralinguistic reference in favor of some form of discourse-immanent reference, then I have a bone to pick with him.

The issues here are much trickier than one might suspect. They involve questions Ed and I have been wrangling over for years, questions about fiction and intentionality and existence and quantification and logical form and what all else.

Schadenfreude

How much of your righteous satisfaction at another's comeuppance is really just Schadenfreude?

The NeverTrump Mentality

Jonah Goldberg, 10 May 2016:

For conservatives, party unity is another way of saying “suicide pact.” I will never vote for Hillary Clinton because she believes things I can never support. I will never vote for Donald Trump because he’s a bullying fool who believes in nothing but himself. The conservative movement can wait out a Clinton presidency intact. But Perry was right. A Trump presidency is a ride straight to perdition, with a capital H.

The problem is wrapped in the sentence, "The conservative movement can wait out a Clinton presidency intact." How does Mr. Goldberg know this? George Will and other members of the 'bow-tie brigade' have said similar things recently. It seems rather unlikely to me. Hillarious appointments to SCOTUS will damage the country irrepararably. I am told there might be as many as three.

Suppose I am becoming weaker by the day and you are becoming stronger by the day. You are my sworn enemy and I must defeat you. Does it make sense for me to wait four years to fight you?

Goldberg seems to be making two assumptions predicated on wishful thinking. One is that in four years someone will arise in the conservative ranks who can prevail against the Dems and win the presidency. The other is that it won't be too late by then given four more years of leftist consolidation and government takeover.

By leftist consolidation I means things like four more years of the illegal immigration of 'undocumented Democrats.'

Goldberg, Will, and the rest of the bow-tie boys need to argue for the truth of those two assumptions.

I think the assumptions are worse than unargued; they are false. While Trump is admittedly awful, Hillary is worse. Conservatives must unite behind Trump. He is all we got. He alone has a chance of beating Hillary.

My position strikes me as the only reasonable one for a conservative to occupy. I am assuming that one is not prepared for the Benedict Option or other forms of withdrawal. See my Activism and Quietism category.

Can you budge me from my position? You will need arguments, something that Goldberg, Boot, Kristol, Will and the boys haven't provided as far as I know. What are those arguments?

Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis

The book has been recently translated.

Unfortunately, I find myself in agreement with Josef Pieper as to the 'unreadibility' of the book: "The unfinished, and hardly readable book, Analogia Entis (1932), which he himself declares is the quintessence of his view, in fact gives no idea of the wealth of concrete material he spread out before us in those days."

Of course, the book is not strictly unreadable: I am reading it and getting something out of it. But it has many of the faults of Continental writing and old-time scholastic writing.

To make a really good philosopher you need to start with someone possessing a love of truth, spiritual depth, metaphysical aptitude, and historical erudition. Then some nuts-and-bolts analyst needs to beat on him with the logic stick until he can express himself clearly and precisely. Such a thrashing would have done gentlemen such as E. Gilson and J. Maritain a world of good. Gallic writing in philosophy tends toward the flabby and the florid.

A Time to be Careful

It is admirable to speak the truth courageously in your own name, but the exercise of civil courage might cost you and yours dearly. So I feel duty-bound to warn my younger readers. This is a time to be very careful. The following from Journal of American Greatness:

Who Are We?

Who are you?

You mean in the Samuel Huntington sense? We are American patriots aghast at the stupidity and corruption of American politics, particularly in the Republican Party, and above all in what passes for the “conservative” intellectual movement.

No, literally—who are you guys?

None of your damned business.

Why won’t you tell us?

Because the times are so corrupt that simply stating certain truths is enough to make one unemployable for life.

That’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?

Ask Brendan Eich.

Paul Johnson on Political Correctness and Donald Trump

Article here. I reproduce it in toto so that you can read it in peace without being assaulted by advertising. Bolding added.

The problem with Johnson's article is that he does not define 'political correctness' and seems dangerously close to conflating politically incorrect speech with "vigorous, outspoken, raw and raucous speech" and politically incorrect behavior with "vulgar, abusive, nasty, rude, boorish and outrageous" behavior. See below. But this would be to ignore the important point I made the other day, namely, that to be politically incorrect is not to engage in offensive speech or behavior but to oppose the Left.

……………………………………

THE MENTAL INFECTION known as “political correctness” is one of the most dangerous intellectual afflictions ever to attack mankind. The fact that we began by laughing at it–and to some extent, still do–doesn’t diminish its venom one bit.

PC has an enormous appeal to the semieducated, one reason that it’s struck roots among overseas students at minor colleges. But it also appeals to pseudo-intellectuals everywhere, since it evokes the strong streak of cowardice notable among those wielding academic authority nowadays. Any empty-headed student with a powerful voice can claim someone (never specified) will be “hurt” by a hitherto harmless term, object or activity and be reasonably assured that the dons and professors in charge will show a white feather and do as the student demands. Thus, there isn’t a university campus on either side of the Atlantic that’s not in danger of censorship. The brutal young don’t even need to impose it themselves; their trembling elders will do it for them.

The insidious thing about PC is that it wasn’t–and isn’t–the creation of anyone in particular. It’s usually the anonymous work of such Kafkaesque figures as civil servants, municipal librarians, post office sorters and employees at similar levels. It penetrates the interstices of society, especially those where the hierarchies of privilege and property are growing. To a great extent PC is the revenge of the resentful underdog.

Nowhere has PC been more triumphant than in the U.S. This is remarkable, because America has traditionally been the home of vigorous, outspoken, raw and raucous speech. From the early 17th century, when the clerical discipline the Pilgrim Fathers sought to impose broke down and those who had things to say struck out westward or southward for the freedom to say them, America has been a land of unrestricted comment on anything–until recently. Now the U.S. has been inundated with PC inquisitors, and PC poison is spreading worldwide in the Anglo zone.

For these reasons it’s good news that Donald Trump is doing so well in the American political primaries. He is vulgar, abusive, nasty, rude, boorish and outrageous. He is also saying what he thinks and, more important, teaching Americans how to think for themselves again.

No one could be a bigger contrast to the spineless, pusillanimous and underdeserving Barack Obama, who has never done a thing for himself and is entirely the creation of reverse discrimination. The fact that he was elected President–not once, but twice–shows how deep-set the rot is and how far along the road to national impotence the country has traveled.

Under Obama the U.S.–by far the richest and most productive nation on earth–has been outsmarted, outmaneuvered and made to appear a second-class power by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. America has presented itself as a victim of political and economic Alzheimer’s disease, a case of national debility and geopolitical collapse.

TIME FOR A SCARE

None of the Republican candidates trailing Trump has the character to reverse this deplorable declension. The Democratic nomination seems likely to go to the relic of the Clinton era, herself a patiently assembled model of political correctness, who is carefully instructing America’s most powerful pressure groups in what they want to hear and whose strongest card is the simplistic notion that the U.S. has never had a woman President and ought to have one now, merit being a secondary consideration.

The world is disorderly and needs its leading nation to take charge and scare it back into decency. Donald Trump fits the bill. Other formidable figures, including Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, have performed a similar service in the past. But each President is unique and cast in his own mold. Trump is a man of excess–and today a man of excess is what’s needed.

More on Political Correctness

Jacques comments and I respond in blue:

A few ideas about your recent post on defining political correctness. First, there's a questionable suppressed premise in the argument below:

"To be politically correct, then, is to support the leftist worldview and the leftist agenda. It follows that a conservative cannot be politically correct. P.C. comes from the C.P. The P. C. mentality is a successor form of the Communist mentality. To be politically correct is to toe the party line. It is to support leftist positions and tactics, including the suppression of the free speech rights of opponents."

That PC involves supporting leftism implies that conservatives cannot be politically correct only if conservatives cannot support leftism. But if conservatives are those people who are nowadays usually called 'conservatives', the suppressed premise is probably false. Conservatives (in that sense) often support at least some of the same general principles and policies and institutions as leftists. Mainstream conservatives today support general principles of non-discrimination and equality, for example, which naturally lead to key elements of 'the leftist worldview and the leftist agenda'. I will bet you anything that in just a few years mainstream Republicans will tend to agree that it's wrong for men and women to have separate bathrooms. Just as many of them now think that gay marriage is fine, or that, at any rate, it would be pointless to argue against it. Just as they now accept views on sex and race and immigration that were considered far left just a few decades ago. So as a matter of fact these people just do seem to support the leftist worldview and agenda up to a point and in some respects, and they seem generally to move ever more to the left and never more to the right. They do toe the party line, much of the time, and they tend to police those who reject leftism at a more fundamental level; consider what happened to John Derbyshire at NR, for example. Alternatively we might say that no true conservative can be politically correct, and also say that most of those called 'conservatives' are not true conservatives. Or we might say that PC involves toeing the leftist party line to some very high *degree* at a given time, such that conservatives toe the line and support leftism to some degree but not to that very high degree.

BV: We need to distinguish among true conservatives, conservatives-in-name-only (CINOs, my coinage, to be pronounced chee-nos), and members of the Republican Party. Most Republicans are CINOs. Lindsey Graham, for example, attacked Donald Trump as a 'xenophobe' for proposing a moratorium on Muslim immigration. Of course, Trump's reasonable proposal and his call for a wall on the southern border do not make him a xenophobe. Graham's attack was no different in content from what a leftist like Elizabeth Warren would say. As you rightly guessed, when I said that conservatives cannot be politically correct, I was referring to true conservatives. We agree on this.

What exactly a true conservative is and whether such an animal can take on board any idea of the classical liberals is a further question, and one on which I fear we will disagree. You will recall that we clashed over the role of toleration in our political life.

For my four or so John Derbyshire entries, see here. As for the NR boys, I refer to them as the 'bow-tie brigade.' High-level talk, erudite discussion, but no action. They are establishment types, urbane, gentlemanly, who want to be liked and respected, which is why they distance themselves from the likes of Derbyshire, Buchanan, and Trump. They desperately fear being called racists, xenophobes, nativists, sexists, isolationists, bigots, etc. though they of course will be called some of those names by leftists.

Second quibble: Do leftists really practice a double standard when they insist on their own free speech while denying the free speech rights of others? I'm not sure that the real hardcore leftists believe in free speech rights in the first place. Some of them are even pretty open about it. They think the 'oppressed' and 'marginal' should be free to speak, but they don't think that everyone has that right. (Or they think that everyone will have it only when some impossible scenario of total equality and non-oppression has been achieved.) I suspect the double standard is present only in the slightly less extreme liberal-leftism of institutions and ordinary people who do have some semi-conscious belief in the right to free speech.

BV: Are you saying that hard-core leftists do not insist on free speech rights for themselves? That's news to me. Any references? Most leftists are not 'oppressed' and 'marginal' — I approve of your sneer quotes by the way – they are in fact highly privileged and yet they surely will insist on their right to speak what they think is true, while working to suppress the free speech of their opponents. So there is a double standard at work here.

Cultural Appropriation

Let's make a deal.

We'll stop appropriating your food when you stop appropriating our mathematics, science, technology, and high culture generally including our superior political arrangements, not to mention our superior methods of cooking food.

Do we have a deal? If not then STFU.

The Differences Between Me and You

I'm sensitive, you're touchy. I'm firm, you are pigheaded. Frugality in me is cheapness in you. I am open-minded, you are empty-headed. I am careful, you are obsessive. I am courageous while you are as reckless as a Kennedy. I am polite but you are obsequious. My speech is soothing, yours is unctuous. I am earthy and brimming with vitality while you are crude and bestial. I'm alive to necessary distinctions; you are a bloody hairsplitter. I'm conservative, you're reactionary. I know the human heart, but you are a misanthrope. I love and honor my wife while you are uxorious. I am focused; you are monomaniacal.

In me there is commitment, in you fanaticism. I'm a peacemaker, you're an appeaser. I'm spontaneous, you're just undisciplined. I'm neat and clean; you are fastidious. In me there is wit and style, in you mere preciosity. I know the value of a dollar while you are just a miser. I cross the Rubicons of life with resoluteness while you are a fool who burns his bridges behind him. I do not hide my masculinity, but you flaunt yours. I save, you hoard. I am reserved, you are shy. I invest, you gamble. I am a lover of solitude, you are a recluse.

I have a hearty appetite; you are a glutton. A civilized man, I enjoy an occasional drink; you, however, must teetotal to avoid becoming a drunkard. I'm witty and urbane, you are precious. I am bucolic, you are rustic. I'm original, you are idiosyncratic. I am principled, you are doctrinaire. I am precise, you are pedantic.

And those are just some of the differences between me and you.

Socratic Equality

We are not all equally ignorant, but we are all equal in being ignorant, though unequal in our appreciation of the fact.

Righteous Indignation

Is your righteous indignation perhaps only envy in disguise?

Righteous Anger

That there is more anger than righteousness in our righteous anger is no argument against it.

A Mistaken Definition of ‘Political Correctness’ and a ‘Correct’ Definition

One often reads the following definition of political correctness. "Someone who is politically correct believes that language and actions that could be offensive to others, especially those relating to sex and race, should be avoided." Here. Merriam-Webster, Wikipedia, and other sources offer similar definitions.

This is not at all what 'political correctness' means when used by people in the know. The above definition conflates being politically correct with being polite, civil, and respectful of others and it conflates being politically incorrect with being rude, offensive, and disrespectful of others. For example, Donald Trump was not being politically incorrect when he made his vile comments about Megan Kelly and Carly Fiorina. He was being rude and offensive in a politically foolish display of misogyny.

It is worth noting that in some cases rude and offensive speech is justified as a response to same. Justified or not, the politically incorrect and the rude/offensive/disrespectful are separate categories. A Venn diagram may help where the A region below contains politically incorrect statements and behaviors, the B region contains rude/offensive/disrespectful statements and behaviors, and the intersection of the two classes contains statements and behaviors that are both. For example, suppose someone says, 'Broads do not belong in the Navy SEALs or the Army Rangers.' This statement is both rude/offensive/disrespectful and politically incorrect while 'Women do not belong in Navy SEALs or the Army Rangers' is politically incorrect but not (objectively) offensive. Of course, one might take inappropriate offense at the second statement, but that is his or her problem. People, cry bullies and liberals especially, take offense at the damndest things!

One way to define a term is extensionally by giving a list of the items to which it applies. These are the items that fall within the extension of the term. I will now provide a list of some politically incorrect statements and then ask what they have in common. This will allow us to pin down the intension of the term 'politically incorrect,' and from there the intension of 'politically correct.' Here then are some politically incorrect statements:

Blacks are incarcerated in proportionally greater numbers than whites because they commit proportionally more crimes.
Not only do black lives matter; all lives matter including the lives of law enforcement agents and the lives of the unborn.
While Muslims qua Muslims ought not be barred from political office, Sharia-supporting Muslims ought to be.
The killing of innocent human beings is a grave moral evil, and this includes the killing of pre-natal human beings.
At the present time, the majority of terrorists in the world derive their ideological support from one religion, Islam.
The Crusades were defensive wars.
The purpose of taxation is to raise monies to cover the costs of governance, not to redistribute wealth.
Free market economies under the rule of law are more likely to lead to human flourishing than socialist economies.
There was no moral equivalence between the USA and the USSR.
Women are 'underrepresented' in philosophy, not because of 'sexism' or a male conspiracy to exclude them, but because of the following factors: women as a group are not as interested in philosophy as men are; the feminine nature is averse to the argumentative and occasionally 'blood sport' aspect of philosophy; women as a group are just not as good at philosophy as men, where exceptions such as Elizabeth Anscombe prove the rule.
Apart from the STEM disciplines, the universities of the land have become leftist seminaries, hotbeds of leftist indoctrination. They have lost touch with their noble ideals and traditions.
Equality of opportunity is no guarantee of equality of outcome, and it is fallacious to argue from inequality of outcome to sexism or racism as the cause.
Political correctness is a major threat to the values of the West including the West's commitment to open debate, toleration, and free inquiry.

So there you have a baker's dozen of politically incorrect statements. There are plenty more where those came from. I would say that each is true, though I will grant that some are rationally debatable. But whether true or false, rationally defensible or indefensible, they are all clear examples of politically incorrect statements.

Now what do they have in common in virtue of which they are all instances of political incorrectness? The most important common feature is that each opposes the contemporary liberal or leftist or 'progressive' worldview. To be politically correct, then, is to support the leftist worldview and the leftist agenda. It follows that a conservative cannot be politically correct. P.C. comes from the C.P. The P. C. mentality is a successor form of the Communist mentality. To be politically correct is to toe the party line. It is to support leftist positions and tactics, including the suppression of the free speech rights of opponents. Essential to leftism is the double standard. So while the politically correct insist on their own free speech rights, they deny them to their opponents, which is why they routinely shout them down.

The Narrative: The Origins of Political Correctness

Denying that There is Political Correctness . . .

Indexicality and an Argument against Omniscience

Patrick Grim gives something like the following argument. What I know when I know that

1. I am making a mess

is an indexical fact that no one else can know. At most, what someone else can know is that

2. BV is making a mess

or perhaps, pointing to BV, that

3. He is making a mess.

Just as no one except BV can refer to BV by tokening the first-person singular pronoun, no one except BV has access to the indexical fact that, as BV would put it to himself, I am BV. Only BV is privy to this fact; only BV knows himself in the first-person way. Now an omniscient being knows everything that can be known. But although I am not omniscient, there is at least one proposition that I know — namely (1) — that is not known by any other knower, including an omniscient knower. So an omnisicent being is impossible: by its very definition it must know every fact that can be known, but there are indexical facts that it cannot know. God can know that BV is making a mess but he cannot know what I know when I know that I am making a mess. For any subject S distinct from God, the first-person facts appertinent to S are inaccessible to every mind distinct from S, including God's mind. That is what I take to be Grim's argument.

I suppose one could counter the argument by denying that there are indexical facts. But since I hold that there are both indexical propositions and indexical facts, that response route is not available to me. Let me see if I can respond by making a distinction between two senses of 'omniscience.'

A. X is omniscient₁=_df X knows every fact knowable by some subject or other.

B. X is omniscient[2] =df X knows every fact knowable by some one subject.

What indexical facts show is that no being is or can be omniscient in the first sense. No being knows every indexical and non-indexical fact. But a failure to know what cannot be known does not count against a being's being omniscient in a defensible sense of this term any more than a failure to do what cannot be done counts against a being's being omnipotent. A defensible sense of 'omniscience' is supplied by (B). In this second sense, God is omniscient: he knows every fact that one subject can know, namely, every non-indexical fact, plus all facts pertaining to the divine subjectivity. What more could one want?

Since no being could possibly satisfy (A), (A) is not the appropriate sense of 'omniscience.' Compare omnipotence. An omnipotent being cannot be one who can do just anything, since there are both logical and non-logical limits on what any agent can do. So from the fact that it is impossible for God to know what is impossible for any one being to know, it does not follow that God is not omniscient.

To sum up. There are irreducible first-personal facts that show that no being can be omniscient in the (A)-sense: Patrick Grim's argument is sound. But the existence of irreducible first-personal facts is consistent with the truth of standard theism since the latter is committed only to a being omniscient in the (B)-sense of 'omniscience.'

Resilience

The sufficiently resilient and adaptable can turn most of life's unanticipated slings and arrows to their advantage.