Author: Bill Vallicella

Personal and Impersonal Uses of the First-Person Singular Pronoun

ButchvarovPanayot Butchvarov in his latest book claims that the first-person singular pronoun as it functions in such typical philosophical contexts as the Cartesian cogito is "a dangling pronoun, a pronoun without an antecedent noun."  (Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 40)  In this entry I will try to understand and evaluate Butchvarov's fascinating claim.  But first we must sort out some obscurity in Butchvarov's presentation of what I take to be a genuine problem, the problem of what, if anything, one refers to with 'I' when one says or thinks, 'I think therefore I am.'

If a dangling pronoun is one without an antecedent, then a non-dangling pronoun would be one with an antecedent.  But while some pronouns have antecedents, it is not clear that indexical uses of pronouns have antecedents.  This is relevant because the use of  ego or 'I' in the Cartesian cogito is an indexical use.  So what is the problem with this indexical use that lacks an antecedent?  Consider first a sentence featuring a pronoun that has an antecedent:

Peter always calls before he visits.

In this sentence, 'Peter' is the antecedent of the third-person singular pronoun 'he.'  It is worth noting that an antecedent needn't come before the term for which it is the antecedent:

After he got home, Peter poured himself a drink.

In this sentence 'Peter' is the antecedent of 'he' despite occurring after 'he' in the order of reading.  The antecedency is referential rather than temporal.  In both of these cases, the reference of 'he' is supplied by the antecedent.  The burden of reference is borne by the antecedent.  So there is a clear sense in which the reference of 'he' in both cases is not direct, but mediated by the antecedent.  The antecedent is referentially prior to to the pronoun for which it is the antecedent.  But suppose I point to Peter and say

He smokes cigarettes.

This is an indexical use of 'he.'  Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction.  Another part of what makes it an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference.  Now suppose I say

I smoke cigars.

This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is a purely indexical (D. Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration:  I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.'  And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.'  Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.

In fact, it seems that no indexical expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent.  Hector Castaneda puts it like this:

Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)

This seems right.  So if a dangling pronoun is one without a noun antecedent as Butchvarov maintains, then 'he' and 'I' in our last examples are dangling pronouns.  But this is not a problem.  What Butchvarov is getting at, however, is a problem.  So I suggest that what he really means by a dangling pronoun is not one without a noun antecedent, but a pronoun which cannot be replaced salva veritate in any sentence in which it occurs with a noun.

For example, in most ordinary contexts my  uses of 'I' refer to BV, a publicly identifiable person, and only to this person.  In these contexts  'I' can be replaced by 'BV'  salva veritate.  Although 'I live in Arizona' (when uttered by BV) and 'BV lives in Arizona' differ in sense, so that the replacement cannot be made salva significatione, the two sentences have the same truth-value, and presumably also the same truth-maker, BV's living in Arizona.

To put the point more generally, in most ordinary contexts tokens of 'I' are replaceable salva veritate in the sentences in which they occur with tokens of proper names or definite descriptions or demonstrative phrases.  Thus the following sentences have the same truth-value and are presumably made true by the same concrete fact or state of affairs:

I am a native Californian [uttered by BV]
BV is a native Californian
The best chess-playing philosopher in the Superstition Foothills is a native Californian
That man [with a pointing toward BV] is a native Californian.

Let us say that such ordinary uses of 'I' are  anchored (my term).  For in each case the 'I'-token is anchored or can be anchored in a non-indexical term such as a proper name or a definite description that refers to the same item that the 'I'-token refers to.  But we shouldn't confuse anchors and antecedents.  Every antecedent of a pronoun anchors that pronoun, but not every anchor of a pronoun is an antecedent of it.  Thus 'BV' anchors the 'I' in 'I am hungry' assertively uttered by BV; but 'BV' is not the antecedent of the 'I' in the sentence in question.  The 'I'-token in the sentence in question has, and needs, no antecedent.

In typical philosophical contexts, however, 'I' appears to be what Butchvarov confusingly calls a dangling pronoun, “a pronoun without an antecedent noun.” (40) If I say, “I was born in California,” I refer to the man BV, a transient chunk of the physical world, a bit of its fauna. The pronoun in this context is replaceable salva veritate by the proper name, 'BV.'  But when I thoughtfully say or write “I think therefore I am,” or “I doubt therefore I am” in the context of a search for something indubitable, something whose existence cannot be doubted, I cannot be taken to be referring to the man BV.  For the existence of this man can be doubted along with the existence of every other physical thing.  

Butchvarov is on to something, but he expresses himself in a confusing and confused way.  His point is not that the 'I' in 'I think therefore I am' lacks an antecedent, for this is also true in unproblematic sentences such as 'I am hungry.'  The point is that the ego of the cogito , the 'I' of the 'I think therefore I am' is not anchored, i.e., not replaceable salva veritate with  a proper name or definite description or demonstrative phrase in the way that the 'I' in 'I am hungry' when assertively uttered by BV can be replaced by a token of 'BV.'

The problem that Butchvarov is on to is that in the cogito situation we seem to have  a use of the word 'I' — a genuine  indexical use, not a quasi-indexical use or a quantificational use — that does not pick out the speaker or any physical thing.   What then does it pick out?

At this point you can and perhaps ought to ask: How could what is grammatically the first-person singular pronoun not function as an indexical term?  Well, suppose I am explaining Brentano's theory of intentionality to a student and I say,

1. I cannot be conscious without being conscious of something.

Clearly, what I am trying to convey to the student is not some fact about myself, but a fact, if it is a fact, about any conscious being.  The proposition I am trying to get across is more clearly put as follows:

2. For any x, if x is a person, and x is conscious, then x is conscious of something.

Curiously, 'I' can be used to mean anyone.  So I say a token of (1) features a quantificational use of 'I,' not an indexical use. The reference of an indexical term depends on the context of its deployment, use, tokening.  Thus the indexical 'I' used by BV refers to BV and cannot be used by BV to refer to anyone other than BV.  But the reference of 'I' in (1) does not vary with the persons who use it.  So 'I' in (1) is not an indexical.  It functions essentially like a bound variable.

Back to our problem.    What am I referring to when I enact the Cartesian cogito? Let's consider a second classical example to get the full flavor of the problem. 

What am I referring to when I enact the Augustinian Si fallor, sum?  (The City of God, XI, 26)"If I am mistaken, I am."  In my life I have been mistaken about many things.  Is there anything about which I can be certain that I am not mistaken?  If yes, then it is not the case that everything is open to doubt.  Thinking about this,  I hit upon the old insight of the Bishop of Hippo: If I am mistaken about this or that, or deceived about this or that,  then I am, whence it follows that there is at least one thing about which I cannot be mistaken, namely, that I exist.

What does 'I' refer to in the philosophical conclusions 'I cannot doubt that I exist' and 'I cannot be mistaken about my own existence'?  I agree with Butchvarov that these uses of 'I'  — call them philosophical uses to distinguish them from ordinary uses — cannot refer to the speaker or to any physical thing.   If they did, the question would be begged against the skeptic and no fundamentum inconcussum would have been reached.

At this point some will say that 'I' does not refer to anything, that it is a mere expletive, a bit of linguistic filler that functions like the 'it' in 'She made it clear that she would not tolerate her husband's infidelity' or like the 'it' in 'It is snowing' as opposed to the 'it' in 'It is a snow flake.'  Accordingly, 'I am thinking . . . .'  means ''There is thinking going on . . ..'  But I don't want to discuss this view at present.  I will  assume with Butchvarov that 'I' used philosophically as in the Cartesian and Augustinian cases  does have a referent just as the 'I' of ordinary contexts has a referent.  Unlike names and descriptions, indexical uses of 'I' have seemed to most theorists  to be guaranteed against reference failure and in a two-fold sense:  My uses of 'I' cannot fail to refer to something and indeed to the right thing.  I can't be a 'bad shot' when I fire an 'I'-token: I can't hit PB, say, instead of BV.

So 'I' deployed philosophically has a referent but not a physical referent.  This seems to leave us with only two options: 'I' used philosophically refers to a metaphysical self or it refers to something that is not a self at all.   I incline toward the first view; Butchvarov affirms the second. 

Well, why not say something like what Descartes and such latter-day Cartesians as Edmund Husserl either said or implied, namely, that the primary reference of the indexical 'I' is to a thinking thing, a res cogitans, a metaphysical self, a transcendental ego? One might argue for this view as follows. (This is my argument.)

a. Every indexical use of 'I' is immune to reference failure in a two-fold sense: it cannot fail to have a referent, and it cannot fail have the right referent.  (This point has been urged by P. F. Strawson.)

b. Every philosophical use of 'I' is an indexical use. 

Therefore

c. Every philosophical use of 'I' is immune to reference failure. (a, b)

d. Every indexical use of 'I' refers to the user of the  'I'-token.  (A user need not be a speaker.)

e. No philosophical use of 'I' refers to an item whose existence can be doubted by the user of the 'I'-token.

f. Every physical thing is such that its existence can be doubted.

Therefore

g. Every philosophical use of 'I' refers to a meta-physical item such as a Cartesian thinking thing. (c-f)

Butchvarov won't accept this argument.  One point he will make  is that the metaphysical self, if there is one, is an item that could be referred to only by an indexical.  "But would anything be an entity if it could be referred to only with an indexical?" (39)  A thinker that is only an I "borders on incoherence." (39) I take the point to be that nothing could count as an entity unless it is referrable-to in third-person ways.  So BV and PB are entities because, while each can refer to himself in the first-person way by a thoughtful deployment of an 'I'-token, each can also be referred to in third-person ways.  Thus anyone, not just PB, can refer to PB using his name and such definite descriptions as 'the author of Anthropocentism in Philosophy.'  Philosophical uses of 'I,' however, cannot be replaced by names or descriptions or demonstrative phrases having the same reference.  The philosophical 'I' is a dangling pronoun. There is no name or description that can be substituted for it.

For Butchvarov, there cannot be a pure subject of thought, a pure ego, ein reines Ich, etc.  Butchvarov would also point out that talk of such involves the monstrous transformation of pronouns into nouns as we speak of pure egos and ask how many there are.   He would furthermore insist Hume-fashion that no such item as a pure I is every encountered in experience, outer or inner.  If I replied that it is the very nature of the ultimate subject of thought and experience to be unobjectifiable, he would presumably revert to his point about the incoherence of supposing that any entity could be the referent of a pure indexical only.

I concede that Butchvarov has  a reasonable case against (g), though I do not think he has refuted it.  But let us irenically suppose that (g) is false.  Then which of the premises of my argument must Butchvarov reject?  If I understand him, he would reject (d):  Every indexical use of 'I' refers to the user of the  'I'-token.  His view is  that only some do and that the philosophical uses such as we have in the Cartesian and Augustinian examples do not refer to the user of the 'I'-token.  They do not refer to persons or anything at the metaphysical core of a person such as a metaphysical ego.

To what then do they refer?  Here is where things get really interesting.

Butchvarov's proposal is that the philosophical (as opposed to the ordinary) uses of the grammatically personal pronoun 'I' are logically impersonal: they refer not to persons but to views ("cognitions" in a broad sense) that needn't be the views of any particular person.   I take him to be saying that the philosophical uses of 'I' are indexical uses that are impersonal uses, as opposed to saying that the philosophical uses are  non-indexical impersonal uses. (1) above is an example of a non-indexical impersonal use of 'I.'  As I read him, Butchvarov is not saying that the philosophical uses are like (1).

To show  how a use of 'I' could refer to a view rather to a person, Butchvarov offers us this example:

3. I can't believe you left your children in the car unattended! (197) 

One who says this is typically not referring  to himself and stating a fact about what he can or cannot believe.  He is reasonably interpreted as using the sentence "to indicate the view that leaving children unattended in a car is grossly imprudent." (197)  Thus (3) is better rendered as

4. Leaving children unattended in a car is grossly imprudent. 

Now I grant that 'I' in (3) is impersonal in that it is not plausibly read as referring to the speaker of (3), or to any person.  But I fail to see how 'I' in (3) indicates (Butchvarov's word) a view or proposition, the view or proposition expressed by (4).  If a term indicates, then it is an indicator, which is to say that it is an indexical.  But 'I' in (3) is not an indexical.  I say it is an impersonal non-indexical use of 'I.'  If 'I' in (3) were an indexical, then different speakers of (3) would be referring to different views or propositions.  But if Manny, Moe, and Jack each assertively utter (3), they express the same proposition, (4).

Butchvarov sees that the philosophical uses of 'I' cannot refer to the speaker or to any innerworldly entity, on pain of begging the question against the skeptic.  For the existence of any intramundane entity can be doubted.  But he also insists, with some plausibility, that the philosophical uses of 'I' cannot refer to any transcendental or pre-mundane or extra-mundane entity.  Now if the referent of the philosophical 'I' is neither in the world nor out of it, what is left to say but that the referent is the world itself?  Not the things in the world, but the world as the unifying totality of these things.  And that is what Butchvarov says.  "In the philosophical contexts that would render reference to the speaker or any other inhabitant of the world question-begging, 'I' indicates a worldview and thus also the world." (198)

Now a crucial step in his reasoning to this conclusion is the premise that a view or "cognition" "need not be a particular person's cognition." (197)  Not every view is optical, but consider an optical view from the observation deck of the Empire State Building.  Butchvarov claims that it would be "absurd" to ask: Whose view is it?  One sees his point: that view is not 'owned' by Donald Trump, say, or by any particular person.  But it does not follow that there can be an optical view without a viewer.  Every view is the view of some viewer or other even if no view is tied necessarily to some particular person such as Donald Trump. So the question, Whose view is it? has a reasonable answer: it is the view of anyone who occupies the point of view.  The view into the Grand Canyon from the South Rim at the start of the Bright Angel Trail is the view of anyone who occupies that position, which is not to say that the view presupposes the existence of BV or PB or any particular person.  But an actual view does presuppose the existence of some viewer or other.  And so if the actual world is a (nonoptical) view, then it too has to be someone's view.  There can be a view from nowhere since not every view is optical, but I balk at a view by no one.  If I am right, Butchvarov has failed to solve the paradox of antirealism.  But to explain this would require a separate post.

As I see it, Butchvarov's argument trades on the confusion of 'No view is tied necessarily to some definite person' (true) and 'No view requires a viewer, some viewer or other.' (false)

Butchvarov further maintains that if a  proposition is described as true, it would be absurd to ask: Whose truth is it? (197)  In one sense this is right.  That 7 + 5 =12 is not my truth or your truth.  But it doesn't follow that truths can exist without any minds at all. Classically, truth is adequation of intellect and thing, and cannot exist without intellects, whether finite or divine. Truth is Janus-faced: it faces the world and it faces the mind.  Truth is necessarily mind-involving.  I suggest that truth conceived out of all relation to any mind is an incoherent notion.

This is even clearer in the case of knowledge.  Butchvarov claims that if physics is described as a body of knowledge, it would be absurd to ask: Whose knowledge is it?  Well of course it is not Lee Smolin's knowledge or the knowledge of any particular person. But if there were no physicists there would be no physics.  In general, if there were no knowers, here would be no knowledge.  Even if truths can float free of minds, it is self-evident that knowledge cannot.  Knowledge exists only in knowers even if truth can exist apart from any knowers.

And so a worldview that is not anyone's view is a notion hard to credit.  And that a philosophical use of 'I' could indicate a worldview is even harder to understand. 

Summary

Butchvarov is trying to understand the philosophical uses of 'I' as we find them in the well-known Augustinian, Cartesian, Kantian, and Husserlian contexts.  He is trying to find a way to reconcile the following propositions:

5.  These philosophical uses of the first-person singular pronoun are referential.
6.  These uses are indexical.
7.  These uses do not refer to thinking animals or to any objects in the world.
8.  These uses  do not refer to Augustinian souls or Cartesian thinking things or Kantian noumenal selves or Husserlian transcendental egos.

Butchvarov reconciles this tetrad by adding to their number:

9. These uses are impersonal and refer to the world. (192)

In a subsequent post I will try to show that Butchvarov is entangled in essentially the same problem that Kant encounters when he tries to understand the unity of experience, the unity of the phenomenal world, in terms of the "'I think' that must be able to accompany all my representations."  (CPR B131)  The mystery is how the words 'I' and 'think' which have clear ordinary uses are appropriate to express the unity of experience when these words used philosophically cannot designate any items IN experience or OUT of experience.

How Not to Define ‘Atheism’

Atheism as lack

Nonsense, say I.

Note first that atheism cannot be identified with the lack of theistic belief, i.e., the mere absence of the belief that God or a god exists, for that would imply that cabbages and tire irons are atheists.  Note second that it won't do to say that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons, for there are persons incapable of forming beliefs.  Charitably interpreted, then, the idea must be that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons capable of forming and maintaining beliefs.

But this cannot be right either, and for a very simple reason.  Atheism is something people discuss, debate, argue for, argue against, draw conclusions from, believe, disbelieve, entertain, and so on.  Atheism, in other words, is a PROPOSITION: it is something that can be either true or false, that can be the object of such propositional attitudes as belief and disbelief, that can stand in such logical relations to other propositions as entailment, consistency, and inconsistency.  But one cannot discuss, debate, argue for, . . . believe, etc. a lack of something.  Atheism redefined as the lack of theistic belief is a PROPERTY of certain persons. Now a proposition is not a property.  Atheism is a proposition and  for this reason cannot be redefined as a property.

Someone who understands this might nevertheless maintain that 'negative atheism' is a proposition, namely, the proposition that there are people capable of forming and maintaining beliefs who simply lack the belief that God exists.  Admittedly, one could use 'atheism' as the label for the proposition that there are such people.  But then atheism so defined would be trivially true.  After all, no one denies that there are people capable of beliefs who lack the belief that God exists.  Furthermore, if 'atheism' is so defined, then theism would be the view that there are persons capable of belief who have the belief that God exists.  But then theism, too, would be trivially true.  And if both are true, then they cannot be logical contradictories of each other as they must be if the terms are to mean anything useful.

Now what is the point of the terminological mischief perpetrated by these 'negative atheists'?  It is terminological mischief because we have just seen it ruin two perfectly good words, 'atheism' and 'theism.'  If atheism and theism are worth discussing, then atheism is the view that no gods exist and theism is the view that one or more gods exist.

The point of the cyberpunk definition is to avoid being pinned down, to avoid being committed to a positive thesis.  But of course the claim that there is no God is a positive claim about Reality, namely, the claim that Reality is godless.  And so our cyberpunk commits himself nolens volens.

‘Homophobia’ and ‘Carniphobia’

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal!  I've made this point before but it bears repeating. We conservatives should never acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism. Battles in the culture war are often lost and won on linguistic   ground. So we ought to oppose resolutely the Left's attempts at linguistic corruption.

Take 'homophobia.'

A phobia is a fear, but not every fear is a phobia. A phobia is an  irrational fear. One who argues against the morality of homosexual practices, or gives reasons for opposing same-sex marriage is precisely — presenting arguments, and not expressing any phobia. The arguments  may or may not be cogent. But they are expressive of reason, and are intended to appeal to the reason of one's interlocutor. To dismiss them as an expression of a phobia show a lack of respect for reason and for the persons who proffer the arguments.

There are former meat-eaters who can make an impressive case against the eating of meat. Suppose that, instead of addressing their arguments, one denounces the former carnivores as 'carniphobes.' Can you see what is wrong with that? These people have a reasoned position. Their reasoning may be more or less cogent, their premises more or less disputable. But the one thing they are not doing is expressing an irrational fear of eating meat. Many of them like the stuff and dead meat inspires no fear in them whatsoever.

The point should be obvious: 'homophobia' is just as objectionable as 'carniphobia.' People who use words like these are attempting to close off debate, to bury a legitimate issue beneath a crapload of PeeCee jargon. So it is not just that 'homophobe' and 'homophobia' are question-begging epithets; they are question-burying epithets.

And of course 'Islamophobia'  and cognates are other prime examples.  Once again, a phobia is an irrational fear.  But fear of radical Islam is not at all irrational.  You are a dolt if you use these terms, and a double dolt if you are a conservative.

Language matters.

Why does language matter?  Because clear thinking matters, and language is the medium of thought.

Why does clear thinking matter?  Because clear thinking is truth-conducive.

Why does truth matter?  Because living according to the truth is conducive to human flourishing.

What It Takes to Be Happy

FlaubertAttributed to Gustave Flaubert:  "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."

Witty, but false.  Comparable and  less cynical is this saying which I found attributed to Albert Schweitzer on a greeting card: Happiness is nothing more than good health and a poor memory.  (Whether the good Schweitzer ever said any such thing is a further question; hence my omission of quotation marks.)

I am inclined to agree with both gentlemen that good health is a necessary condition of happiness, at least for most of us.  But happiness does not require a poor memory, it requires the ability to control one's memory, and the ability to control one's mind generally.  I am happy and I have an excellent memory; but I have learned how to distance myself from any unpleasant memories that may arise. 

An unhappy intellectual may think that stupidity is necessary for happiness, but then he is the stupid one.  A keen awareness of the undeniable ills of this world is consistent with being happy if one can control his response to those ills.  There is simply no necessity that one dwell on the negative if this dwelling destroys one's equanimity.  But this non-dwelling is not ignorance.  It is mind control. 

As for selfishness, it is probably true that its opposite is more likely to lead to happiness than it.

The temptation to wit among the literary often leads them astray.

‘Islamophobia’ and ‘Hoplophobia’

My argument against the use of these and related terms is simple and straighforward.  A phobia, by definition, is an irrational fear.  (Every phobia is a fear, but not every fear is a phobia, because not every fear is irrational.)  Therefore, one who calls a critic of the doctrines of Islam or of the practices of its adherents an Islamophobe is implying that the critic is in the grip of an irrational fear, and therefore irrational. This amounts to a refusal to confront and engage the content of his assertions and arguments.

This is not to say that there are no people with an irrational fear of Muslims or of Islam.  But by the same token there are people with an irrational fear of firearms.

Suppose a defender of gun rights were to label anyone and everyone a hoplophobe who in any way argues for more gun control.  Would you, dear liberal, object?  I am sure you would.  You would point out that a phobia is an irrational fear, and that your fear is quite rational.  You would say that you fear the consequences of more and more guns in the hands of more and more people, some of them mentally unstable, some of them criminally inclined, some of them just careless.

You, dear liberal, would insist that your claims and arguments deserve to be confronted and engaged and not dismissed.  You would be offended if a conservative or a libertarian were to dismiss you as a hoplophobe thereby implying that you are beneath the level of rational discourse.

So now, dear liberal, you perhaps understand why you ought to avoid 'Islamophobia' and its variants except in those few instances where they are legitimately applied.

Perhaps.

Why Forgive?

Because we ourselves need to be forgiven.

"But I have never done anything that requires forgiveness."  Really?  Then please forgive me for considering you either a liar, or deeply self-deceived, or an amnesiac, or insane, or a joker, or someone unfamiliar with the English language . . . .

Lawrence Krauss

His latest outburst sullies the pages of The New Yorker. When readers brought it to my attention, I thought I might write a response, but then thought better about wasting my time, once again, on a fool and his foolishness.  And now I see that my efforts are unnecessary: Edward Feser has done the job in the pages of Public Discourse.

Ed is uncommonly gifted at polemic.  He characterizes Krauss as a "professional amateur philosopher."   I wish I had come up with that brilliancy.  But now that I have the phrase you can expect me to use it.

Here are some anti-Krauss entries of mine.

Equality and Affirmative Action

"Equality, I spoke the word as if a wedding vow; ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now."

Bob Dylan, My Back Pages

Reader Jacques spots an error of mine in a recent entry and goes on to make points with which I agree:

In your recent post on "sloppy liberal thinking about equality" you seem to be thinking a little sloppily yourself.  (No offense!  I admire your philosophical writing and I've learned a lot from your blog.)

You say that equality of opportunity is necessary but not sufficient for equality of outcomes, but in fact it's neither sufficient nor necessary.  It is clearly possible to have unequal opportunities, in pretty much any sense that we can give to that term, and equal outcomes.  In fact the denial of equal opportunity might often be necessary for equal outcomes.  If many As are criminals and very few Bs are, the only way to equalize the outcomes for As and Bs with respect to incarceration (for example) will be to deny them equal opportunities.  Maybe we give Bs many more opportunities to shape up than we give to As, for example.  Or maybe we sentence As more harshly than Bs for the same offences. 

Or imagine a more extreme scenario:  all As but no Bs are competent philosophers.  Universities might then arrange to have 'equal outcomes' for As and Bs with respect to admission to graduate studies in philosophy only by making their 'opportunities' grossly unequal in relevant respects.  For example, they might choose to set absurdly high standards for any A who seeks admission to a graduate program while setting absurdly low standards for any B, thus ensuring that exactly equal numbers of As and Bs are admitted.  Or they might choose to introduce new criteria for admission which have no systematic relationship to anyone's interest or ability in philosophy, but which can be expected to be met by most Bs and only a few As.  (Perhaps almost all Bs are left-handed or good at Scrabble, and these traits are very rare among As.  The universities declare that being a left-handed Scrabble player contributes something vital and deep and vibrant to the philosophical culture, and that, therefore, those who can enrich the culture in this respect, just by being who they are, and that, therefore, they should always be preferred to other candidates in relation to whom they are 'relatively equal' in other respects.)

Of course, this is pretty much how 'equal outcomes' are achieved, or approximated, in our actual society under the rule of Leftism.  Since people and groups are in fact radically unequal in their abilities and interests and in pretty much every way that matters, the desired equality of outcomes must always be achieved by denying opportunities to some people and creating special opportunities for others.  This is how 'affirmative action' works, for example.  If the relevant 'opportunities' were really equal, there would be far fewer women and racial minorities in philosophy than there are at present.  And usually it's quite obvious that women, for example, are being hired or promoted on the basis of qualifications or achievements that would not count for much if they were men.  (Not to suggest, of course, that no or few women are capable or competent philosophers; the point is that if they are their capabilities and competence are almost always rated far more highly than they would be if they were men.)  Women and minorities are routinely given a kind of 'opportunity' that is denied to others:  the opportunity to have their achievements and abilities assessed under less demanding standards.

BEATific October Again

Kerouac friendsAnd no better way to kick off Kerouac month than with 'sweet gone Jack'  reading from "October in Railroad Earth" from Lonesome Traveler, 1960.  Steve Allen provides the wonderful piano accompaniment.  I have the Grove Press Black Cat 1970 paperback edition. Bought it on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, 12 April 1973.  I was travelling East by thumb to check out East Coast graduate schools where I had been accepted, but mostly  I 'rode the dog' (Greyhound bus), a mode of transport I wouldn't put up with today: two guys behind me chain-smoked  and talked all the way from Los Angeles to Phoenix.  New Orleans proved to be memorable, including the flophouse on Carondelet I stayed in for $2.  It was there that Lonesome  Traveler joined On the Road in my rucksack.  I never before had seen Tabasco bottles so big as on the tables of the Bourbon Street bars and eateries.  Exulting in the beat quiddity of the scene, I couldn't help but share my enthusiasm for Nawlins with a lady of the evening, not sampling her wares, but just talking to her on the street, she thinking me naive, and I was. 

Here is a long  excerpt (7:10), which contains the whole of the first two sections of the piece, pp. 37-40, of the Black Cat edition.

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Could I Support a Muslim for President?

It would depend on the Muslim.

Consider first a parallel question: Could I support a Christian for president?  Yes, other things being equal, but not if he or she is a theocrat.  Why not?  Because theocracy is incompatible with the principles, values, and founding documents of the United States of America.

Similarly, I could easily support a Muslim such as Zuhdi Jasser for president (were he to run) because he is not a theocrat or a supporter of Sharia. To be precise: Jasser's being a Muslim would not count for me as a reason not to support him, even though I might have other reasons not to support him, for example, unelectability.  

When Dr. Ben Carson said he could not support a Muslim for president what he meant was that he could not support a Muslim who advocated Sharia.  That was clear to the charitable among us right from the outset.  But he later clarified his remarks so that even the uncharitable could not fail to understand him.

Some dismissed this clarification as 'backtracking.'  To 'backtrack,' however, is to say something different from what one originally said.  Carson did not 'backtrack'; he clarified his original meaning.

Nevertheless, CAIR has absurdly demanded that Carson withdraw from the presidential race.

Is there anything here for reasonable people to discuss?  No.  Then why is this story still in the news?  Because as a nation we are losing our collective mind.

It's like Ferguson.  What's to discuss?  Nothing.  We know the facts of the case.  Michael Brown was not gunned down by a racist cop seeking to commit murder under the cover of law.  Brown brought about his own demise.  On the night of his death he stole from a convenience store, assaulted the proprietor, refused to obey a legitimate command from police officer Darren Wilson, but instead tried to wrest the officer's weapon from him.  He acted immorally, illegally, and very imprudently.  He alone is responsible for his death.

So there is nothing here for reasonable and morally decent people to discuss.  But we are forced to discuss it because of the lies told about Ferguson by the Left.  The truth does not matter to leftists; what matters is the 'empowering' narrative.  A narrative is a story, and a story needn't be true to be a good story, an 'empowering' story, a  story useful for the promotion of the Left's destructive agenda.

Another pseudo-issue  that deserves no discussion except to combat the lies and distortions of the Left:  photo ID at polling places.

Exercise for the reader: find more examples.   

Sloppy Liberal Thinking About Equality

Equality of opportunity is one thing, equality of outcome quite another.  The former is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition of the latter.  Yet many liberals think that any lack of equality of outcome for a given group argues an antecedent lack of equality of opportunity for that group.  This is a non sequitur of the following form:

P is necessary for Q

Ergo

~Q is sufficient for ~P.

This is an invalid argument form since it is easy to find substitutions for ‘P’ and ‘Q’ that make the premise true and the conclusion false.  For example, being a citizen is necessary to be eligible to vote; ergo, not being eligible to vote is sufficient to show that one is not a citizen.  The conclusion is false, since there might be some other factor that disqualifies one from voting such as being a felon, or being under age.  Similarly, an unequal outcome is not sufficient to show discrimination or unequal opportunity for the simple reason that there might be some other factor that explains the unequal outcome, such as a lack of competitiveness, an inability to defer gratification, or a lack of ability.