Bill Vallicella – Page 463 – Maverick Philosopher

Modal Axioms

Man is a metaphysical animal. We philosophers ought to encourage this tendency in our fellow mortals. This morning's mail brings me a long disquisition by a Spanish lawyer (abogado), Daniel Vincente Carillo, entitled "A New Argument on the Existence of God." It consists of numerous definitions, axioms, and theorems. I don't have time to comment on the whole thing, which can be found here, but I will remark critically, and I hope helpfully, on his modal axioms.

Axiom 1

An opposite of what is impossible is either possible and not necessary, impossible or necessary (what is impossible is opposed to everything).

Better: What is not impossible is either possible but not necessary, or possible and necessary.

Example: I am not impossible because I am possible but not necessary. God and the number 7 are possible and necessary.

Axiom 2

An opposite of what is possible and not necessary is either possible and not necessary or impossible (what is possible is opposed to everything, except to what is necessary).

Incoherent as it stands.

The possible is the opposite of the impossible. That is, x is possible iff x is not impossible. The possible divides into the necessary and the contingent. The contingent divides into the actual but possibly nonexistent and the nonactual but possibly existent.

For example, I am contingent and so is a talking donkey. The difference is that I am actual but possibly nonexistent while the talking donkey is not actual but possibly existent.

Of course, the modality in play here is broadly logical or metaphysical.

Axiom 3

An opposite of what is necessary is impossible (what is necessary is concomitant with what is possible and what is necessary, and only is opposed to what is impossible).

Incorrect. What is not necessary is either impossible or contingent. Possibility and impossibility are opposites. Necessity and impossibility are not opposites. Why not? Because the contingent is neither necessary nor impossible.

In the patois of 'possible worlds': the contingent is that which exists (or is true in the case of propositions) in some but not all possible worlds, whereas the necessary exists or else is true in all worlds and the impossible in none.

This patois is a very useful façon de parler for rendering modal relationships graphic.

Axiom 4

What is not necessary is contingent.

Incorrect. What is not necessary is either contingent or impossible. For example, I am not necessary because I am contingent. A round square is not necessary because it is impossible.

Axiom 5

What is contingent is either possible or impossible.

Incorrect. What is contingent is possible but not necessary. The impossible exists or else is true in no possible world whereas the contingent exists or else is true in some but not all possible worlds.

Or think of it this way. The contingent is either actual or unactual, and if actual, then possibly nonexistent, and if unactual, then possibly existent. For example, your humble correspondent is contingent and actual, hence possibly nonexistent, while a flying armadillo is contingent and unactual, hence possibly existent.

Axiom 6

What is not impossible is possible.

Correct!

Axiom 7

Everything that exists does so by itself or by another being.

Correct!

Axiom 8

God, the universe, and nothingness, if possible, are the only possible beings.

Incorrect or at least highly controversial. Many philosophers maintain, with good reason, that there are so-called 'abstract objects,' all or most of which are necessary beings. (Candidates: properties, propositions, numbers, sets.) Now everything necessary is possible. So these abstract objects are possible beings. Therefore, there are possible beings that are distinct from God and the universe.

Second, nothing is in no sense a being. Hence it cannot be a possible being. It is, however, at least a question whether there could have been nothing at all. I examine this question in the entry referenced below.

UPDATE 2/26: David Gordon writes,

You are of course right that nothing is both contingent and impossible; but this does not show that Axiom 5 is incorrect. "What is contingent is possible" is true; and from this "What is contingent is either possible or impossible" follows. If, as I gather from your account, Carillo denies that the class of impossible contingent things is empty, he is mistaken, but his axiom isn't. One can object to it that it isn't an axiom, as its truth depends on the truth of "What is contingent is possible." This is probably too trivial a point to have written to you about, but I pass it along anyway.

The problem is the ambiguity of Carillo's formulation. I took him to be saying that some contingent beings are possible while other are impossible — which is surely false.

Explaining the Obama Admin’s Refusal to Identify the Threat as Islamic

I can't do better than Victor Davis Hanson, but I can quote him. Why won't the current administration accurately label and expose the Islamic roots of global terrorism? Hanson proposes the following possible explanations:

I. Strategy

The Obama administration knows full well that the Taliban, ISIS, al Qaeda, Boko Haram and the rest of the pack draw their zeal from the Koran. But to say such might turn off two or three useful constituencies — the hard Left at home that hates any judgmentalism, “moderate” Muslims in the Middle East who are essential to nullifying the “radicals” in their midst, and the global community that is always suspicious when America goes to war against a particular group or ideology. The Obama administration with a wink-and-nod, then, accepts radical Islam as the problem, but for strategic reasons, and in the manner occasionally of the Bush administration, prefers euphemisms. Nonetheless, the administration goes on Predatoring thousands of suspected Islamic terrorists even as it won’t say what its targeted victims all have in common. Given that Americans know that the enemy is radical Islam, why turn off potential allies by reiterating that fact?

Continue reading “Explaining the Obama Admin’s Refusal to Identify the Threat as Islamic”

Could There Have Been Nothing at All?

As a matter of fact, things exist. But suppose I try to think the counterfactual state of affairs of there being nothing, nothing at all. Can I succeed in thinking pure nothingness? Is this thought thinkable? Is it thinkable that there be nothing at all? And if it is, does it show that it is possible that there be nothing at all? Could there have been nothing at all? If yes, then (i) it is contingent that anything exists, and (ii) everything that exists exists contingently, which respectively imply that both of the following are false:

1. Necessarily, something exists: □(∃x)(x exists).

2. Something necessarily exists: (∃x)□(x exists).

(1) and (2) are not the same proposition: (2) entails (1) but not conversely. If you confuse them you will be justly taxed with an operator shift fallacy.

Phylogenetically, this topic goes back to Parmenides of Elea. Ontogenetically, it goes back to what was probably my first philosophical thought when I was about eight or so years old. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny!) I had been taught that God created everything distinct from himself. One day, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, I thought: "Well, suppose God never created anything. Then only God would exist. And if God didn't exist, then there would be nothing at all." At this my head began to swim and I felt a strange wonder that I cannot quite recapture, although the memory remains strong 50 years later. The unutterably strange thought that there might never have been anything at all — is this thought truly thinkable or does it cancel itself in the very attempt to think it?

I am torn between two positions. On the one it is provable that necessarily something exists. On the other, it is not provable.

Here is one sort of argument for the thesis that necessarily something exists and that it is therefore impossible that there be nothing at all. The argument has the form of a reductio ad absurdum.

1. There are no propositions. (Assumption for reductio)

2. (1) is either true or false.

3. Whatever is either true or false is a proposition. (This is by definition. Propositions are truth-bearers or vehicles of the truth-values. They are whatever it is that is appropriately characterizable as either true or false.)

Therefore

4. If (1) is true, then there is at least one proposition. (2, 3)

Therefore

5. If (1) is false, then there is at least one proposition. (2, 3)

Therefore

6. Necessarily, there is at least one proposition.

Therefore

7. (1) is necessarily false.

Therefore

8. It is not possible that nothing exists.

Skeptical Rejoinder

I don't buy it. Had there been nothing at all, there would not have been any propositions, any states of affairs, any way things are, any properties, any truth, any Law of Non-Contradiction or Law of Excluded Middle or Principle of Bivalence, any distinction between true and false, any distinctions at all. There would have been just nothing at all. Your proof that this is impossible begs the question by assuming or presupposing the whole interconnected framework of propositions, truth and falsehood, etc., including your modal principles and other logical principles.

You can't prove that there must be something if you presuppose that there must be something. Circular arguments are of course valid, but no circular argument is a proof.

At the very most, what you demonstrate is that WE cannot operate without presupposing the Logical Framework — to give it a name. At the very most, you demonstrate that the Logical Framework (LF) is a transcendental presupposition of OUR discursive activities, in roughly the Kantian sense of 'transcendental.' You do not succeed in demonstrating that Being itself or any being exists independently of us. Your proof may have transcendental import, but it fails to secure ontological import. Why do you think that Being itself, independently of us, is such that necessarily something exists?

For example, you think that there must be a total way things are such that, if there were nothing at all, then that would be the way things are, in which case there would, in the end, be a way things are. But how do you know that? How do you know that your presupposition of a way things are is more than a merely transcendental presupposition as opposed to a structure grounded in the very Being of things independently of us?

I grant you that the LF is necessary, but its necessity is conditional: it depends on us, and we might not have existed. For all you have shown, there could have been nothing at all.

Why does it matter? What's at stake?

Now this is a highly abstract and abstruse debate. Does it matter practically or 'existentially'?

If there could have been nothing at all, then all is contingent and no Absolute exists. An Absolute such as God must be a necessary being. An Absolute functions as the real-ground of the existence, intelligibility, and value of everything distinct from it. If there is no Absolute, then existence is absurd, i.e., without ultimate ground (source and reason), without sense and intelligibility. Now if existence is absurd, then human existence is absurd. So if there could have been nothing at all, then human existence is absurd. This is why our question matters. It matters because it matters whether our existence is absurd.

Mike Valle on Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

Could everything have come into being without a cause? Mike Valle tells me about an annoying interlocutor who thinks it certain that this is impossible because it is certain that ex nihilo nihil fit: from nothing nothing comes. Mike, if I understand him, doubts the certainty of the principle. He reasons: had there been nothing at all, then there would have been nothing to prevent something from arising. In particular, had there been nothing at all, there would have been no such truth as ex nihilo nihil fit.

Mike's reasoning presupposes that it is possible that there be nothing at all. So his suggestion comports well with the Skeptical Rejoinder above.

As for myself, I am left with the thought that is reasonable to hold that there must be something — after all I argued the matter out rigorously — but also reasonable to hold the opposite. This seems to suggest that here we have a question that reason cannot decide. So how do we decide it? By personal decision? By mystical intuition? By acceptance of divine revelation? In some other way? In no way?

Why the Firestorm? Rudy Spoke the Truth that Hurts and Punctured the Obama Myth

Why the furiously intemperate ranting over Rudy's remarks? After all, the distinguished former mayor of New York City merely articulated what vast numbers of us have suspected or believed for years. Giuliani had the temerity to speak truth to power and this enraged the Left. (Lefties think they alone own dissent and the right to speak truth to power.) Fred Siegel:

The ranting has obscured the reasons why so many Americans take Giuliani’s remarks to heart. Starting with his June 2009 speech in Cairo, when he apologized for American actions in the Middle East, Obama has consistently given credence to Islamic grievances against America while showing reluctance to confront Islamic terrorism. In 2009, after Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 American soldiers and wounded 40 others at Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akhbar,” the administration labeled the killings workplace violence. In recent months, the pace of evasions has quickened. Obama was the only major Western leader absent from the massive Paris march held in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings. Worse yet, Obama referred to the killings in a Jewish supermarket in Paris as “random” acts of violence.

But this was only the beginning of a string of curious comments and loopy locutions made by the president or his spokespeople in the weeks that followed. While ISIS rampaged across the Middle East, the president told a Washington prayer breakfast that Christians shouldn’t get on their “high horse,” because they were guilty of the Crusades, among other crimes. Not only were the Crusades many centuries past, but they were also a complicated matter in which both sides behaved barbarically.

But that is to understate the matter. Both Siegel and Giuliani failed to mention a crucial fact, namely, the Crusades were defensive wars, wars in response to Muslim aggression and conquest.

Continue reading “Why the Firestorm? Rudy Spoke the Truth that Hurts and Punctured the Obama Myth”

If You Deny that There is Political Correctness . . .

. . . do you also deny that American talk radio tilts decidedly to the Right? If you deny either of them then I am the present king of France.

Citizens Lynching Citizens

Imagine a history teacher who tells his students that in the American South, as late as the 1960s, certain citizens lynched certain other citizens. Would you say that the teacher had omitted something of great importance for understanding why these lynchings occurred? Yes you would. You would point out that the lynchings were of blacks by whites, and that a good part of the motivation for their unspeakable crimes was sheer racial animus. In the case of these crimes, the races of the perpetrators and of their victims are facts relevant to understanding the crimes. Just to describe the lynchings accurately one has to mention race, let alone to explain them.

I hope no one will disagree with me on this.

Or consider the case of a history teacher who reports that in Germany, 1933-1945, certain German citizens harassed, tortured, enslaved, and executed other German citizens. That is true, of course, but it leaves out the fact that the perpetrators were Nazis and (most of) the victims Jews. Those additional facts must be reported for the situation to be properly described, let alone explained. Not only that, the Nazis were acting from Nazi ideology and the Jew were killed for being Jews.

According to recent reports, some Muslim jihadis beheaded some Egyptian Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach. Now beheading is not lynching. And religion is not the same as race. But just as race is relevant in the lynching case, religion is relevant in the beheading case. That the perpetrators of the beheadings were Muslims and the victims Christians enters into both an adequate description and an adequate explanation of the evil deeds of the former.

This is especially so since the Muslims were acting from Islamic beliefs and the Christians were killed for their Christian beliefs. It was not as if some merely nominal Muslims killed some merely nominal Christians in a dispute over the ownership of some donkeys.

Bear in mind my distinction between a 'sociological' X and a 'doctrinal' X.

What did Barack Obama say about this? He said: “No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence and terrorism."

Now that is a mendacious thing to say. Obama knows that the behavior of people is influenced by their beliefs. For example, he knows that part of the explanation of the lynchings of blacks by whites is that the white perpetrators held racists beliefs that justified (in their own minds) their horrendous behavior. And of course he knows, mutatis mutandis, the same about the beheading case.

He knows that he is engaging in a vicious abstraction when he sunders people and their beliefs in such a way as to imply that those beliefs have no influence on their actions.

Why then is Obama so dishonest? Part of the explanation is that he just does not care about truth. (That is a mark of the bullshitter as Harry Frankfurt has pointed out.) Truth, after all, is not a leftist value, except insofar as it can be invoked to forward the leftist agenda. It is the 'progressive' agenda that counts, first, and the narrative that justifies the agenda, second. (Karl Marx, 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." Truth doesn't come into it since a narrative is just a story and a story needn't be true to mobilize people to implement an agenda.

There's more to it than that, but that's enough for now. This is a blog and brevity is the soul of blog as some wit once observed.

What is to be done? Well, every decent person must do what he or she can to combat the lying scumbags of the Left. It is a noble fight, and may also be, shall we say, conducive unto your further existence in the style to which you have become accustomed.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Weights and Measures

The Band, The Weight

The Byrds, Eight Miles High

The Rolling Stones, Moonlight Mile

The Who, I Can See for Miles

Cannonball Adderley, 74 Miles Away. So titled because it is In 7/4 time.

Dave Brubeck, Take Five. So titled because it is in 5/4 time.

Cream, Spoonful. Heavy, man.

The Lovin' Spoonful, Six O'Clock

Gene Pitney, 24 Hours from Tulsa

Beach Boys, 409. With a four-speed manual tranny, dual quad carburetors (before fuel injection), positraction (limited slip differential), and 409 cubic inches of engine displacement. Gas was cheap in those days.

ZZ Top and Jeff Beck, 16 Tons. Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1955 #1 version.

Justin Timberlake, et al., 500 Miles. (From Inside Llewyn Davis)

Bobby Bare, 500 Miles Away from Home

UPDATE 2/23:

Lovin' Spoonful, Full Measure. Undeservedly obscure.

The God of Christianity and the God of Islam: Same God? (2015)

For Dave Bagwill, who posed some questions in the near vicinity of the ones I will be addressing. This is a heavily revised version of a 2011 post. The MavPhil doctrine of abrogation is in effect. This is a hairy topic; expect a hard slog. If you prefer a 'leiter' read, a certain gossip site suggests itself.

…………..

One morning an irate C-Span viewer called in to say that he prayed to the living God, not to the mythical being, Allah, to whom Muslims pray. The C-Span guest made a standard response, which is correct as far as it goes, namely, that Allah is Arabic for God, just as Gott is German for God. He suggested that adherents of the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) worship the same God under different names. No doubt this is a politically correct thing to say, but is it true?

Our question, then, is precisely this: Does the normative Christian and the normative Muslim worship numerically the same God, or numerically different Gods? (By 'normative Christian/Muslim' I mean an orthodox adherent of his faith who understands its content, without subtraction of essential tenets, and without addition of private opinions.) Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic. So if Christian and Muslim worship different Gods, and a monotheistic God exists, then one is worshipping a nonexistent God, or, if you prefer, is failing to worship the true God.

1. Let's start with the obvious: 'Allah' is Arabic for God. So if an Arabic-speaking Coptic Christian refers to God, he uses 'Allah.' And if an Arabic-speaking Muslim refers to God, he too uses 'Allah.' From the fact that both Copt and Muslim use 'Allah' it does not follow that they are referring to the same God, but it also does not follow that they are referring to numerically different Gods. So we will not make any progress with our question if we remain at the level of words. We must advance to concepts.

2. We need to distinguish between our word for God, the concept (conception) of God, and God. God is not a concept, but there are concepts of God and, apart from mystical intuition and religious feelings such as the Kreatur-Gefuehl that Rudolf Otto speaks of, we have no access to God except via our concepts of God. Now it is undeniable that the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God partially overlap. The following is a partial list of what is common to both conceptions:

a. There is exactly one God.
b. God is the creator of everything distinct from himself.
c. God is transcendent: he is radically different from everything distinct from himself.
d. God is good.

Now if the Christian and Muslim conceptions of God were identical, then we would have no reason to think that Christian and Muslim worship different Gods. But of course the conceptions, despite partial overlap, are not identical. Christians believe in a triune God who became man in Jesus of Nazareth. Or to put it precisely, they believe in a triune God the second person of which became man in Jesus of Nazareth. This is the central and indeed crucial (from the Latin, crux, crucis, meaning cross) difference between the two faiths. The crux of the matter is the cross.

So while the God-concepts overlap, they are different concepts. (The overlap is partial, not complete.) And let's not forget that God is not, and cannot be, a concept (as I am using 'concept'). No concept is worship-worthy or anyone's highest good. No concept created the world. Whether or not God exists, it is a conceptual truth that God cannot be a concept. For the concept of God contains the subconcept, being that exists apart from any finite mind. It is built into the very concept of God that God cannot be a concept.

It is clear then, that what the Christian and the Muslim worship or purport to worship cannot be that which is common to their respective God-conceptions, for what is common its itself a concept.

We could say that if God exists, then God is the object of our God-concept or the referent of our God-concept, but also the referent of the word 'God.'

3. Now comes the hard part, which is to choose between two competing views:

V1: Christian and Muslim can worship the same God, even though one of them must have a false belief about God, whether it be the belief that God is unitarian or the belief that God is trinitarian.

V2: Christian and Muslim must worship different Gods precisely because they have different conceptions of God. So it is not that one of them has a false belief about the one God they both worship; it is rather that one of them does not worship the true God at all.

There is no easy way to decide rationally between these two views. We have to delve into the philosophy of language and ask how reference is achieved. How do linguistic expressions attach or apply to extralinguistic entities? How do words grab onto the (extralinguistic) world? In particular, how do nominal expressions work? What makes my utterance of 'Socrates' denote Socrates rather than someone or something else? What makes my use of 'God' (i) have a referent at all and (ii) have the precise referent it has?

4. It is reasonable to hold, with Frege, Russell, and many others, that reference is routed through, and determined by, sense: an expression picks out its object in virtue of the latter's unique satisfaction of a
description associated with the referring expression, a description that unpacks the expression's sense. If we think of reference in this way, then 'God' refers to whatever entity, if any, that satisfies the definite description encapsulated in 'God' as this term is used in a given linguistic community.

Given that God is not an actual or possible object of (sense) experience, this seems like a reasonable approach to take. The idea is that 'God' is a definite description in disguise so that 'God' refers to whichever entity satisfies the description associated with 'God.' The reference relation is one of satisfaction. A grammatically singular term t refers to x if and only if x exists and x satisfies the description associated with t. Now consider two candidate definite descriptions, the first corresponding to the Muslim conception, the second corresponding to the Christian.

D1: 'the unique x such that x is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, created the world ex nihilo and is unitarian'

D2: 'the unique x such that x is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, created the world ex nihilo, and is triune.'

Suppose that reference is not direct, but routed through sense, or mediated by a description, in the manner explained above. It is easy to see that no one entity can satisfy both (D1) and (D2). For while the descriptions overlap, nothing can be both unitarian and triune. So if reference is routed through sense, then Christian and Muslim cannot be referring to the same being. Indeed, one of them is not succeeding in referring at all. For if God is triune, nothing in reality answers to the Muslim's conception of God. And if God is unitarian, then nothing in reality answers to the Christian conception.

And so, contrary to what Miroslav Volf maintains, the four points of commonality in the Christian and Muslim conceptions listed above do NOT "establish the claim that in their worship of God, Muslims and Christians refer to the same object." (Allah: A Christian Response, HarperCollins 2011, p. 110.) For if reference to God is mediated by a conception which includes the subconcept triune or else the subconcept unitarian, then the reference cannot be to the same entity.

A mundane example (adapted from Kripke) will make this more clear. Sally sees a handsome man at a party standing in the corner drinking a clear bubbly liquid from a cocktail glass. She turns to her companion Nancy and says, "The man standing in the corner drinking champagne is handsome!" Suppose the man is not drinking champagne, but mineral water instead. Has Sally succeeded in referring to the man or not?

Argumentative Nancy, who knows that no alcohol is being served at the party, and who also finds the man handsome, says, "You are not referring to anything: there is no man in the corner drinking champagne. The man is drinking mineral water or some other bubbly clear beverage. Nothing satisfies your definite description. There is no one man we both admire. Your handsome man does not exist, but mine does."

Now in this example what we would intuitively say is that Sally did succeed in referring to someone using a definite description even though the object she succeeded in referring to does not satisfy the description. Intuitively, we would say that Sally simply has a false belief about the object to which she is successfully referring, and that Sally and Nancy are referring to and admiring the very same man.

But note how this case differs from the God case. Both women see the man in the corner. But God is not an object of possible (sense) experience. We don't see God in this life. Hence the reference of 'God' cannot be nailed down perceptually. A burning bush is an object of possible sense experience, and God may manifest himself in a burning bush; but God is not a burning bush, and the referent of 'God' cannot be a burning bush. The man in the corner that the women see and admire is not a manifestation of a man, but a man himself.

Given that God is not literally seen or otherwise sense-perceived in this life, then, apart from mystical experience, the only way to get at God is via concepts and descriptions. And so it seems that in the God case what we succeed in referring to is whatever satisfies the definite description that unpacks our conception of God.

5. My tentative conclusion, then, is that (i) if we accept a description theory of names, the Christian and Muslim do not refer to the same being when they use 'God' or 'Allah' and (ii) that a description theory of names is what we must invoke given the nonperceivability of God. Christian and Muslim do not refer to the same being because no one being can satisfy both (D1) and (D2) above: nothing can be both triune and not triune any more than one man can both be drinking champage and not drinking champagne at the same time.

If, on the other hand, 'God' is a logically proper name whose reference is direct and not routed through sense or mediated by a definite description, then what would make 'God' or a particular use of 'God' refer to God?

One might propose a causal theory of names.

The causal theory of names of Saul Kripke et al. requires that there be an initial baptism of the target of reference, a baptism at which the name is first introduced. This can come about by ostension: Pointing to a newly acquired kitten, I bestow upon it the moniker, 'Mungojerrie.' Or it can come about by the use of a reference-fixing definite description: Let 'Neptune' denote the celestial object responsible for the perturbation of the orbit of Uranus. In the second case, it may be that the object whose name is being introduced is not itself present at the baptismal ceremony. What is present, or observable, are certain effects of the object hypothesized. (See Saul Kripke Naming and Necessity, Harvard 1980 p. 79, n. 33 and p. 96, n. 42.)

As I understand it, a necessary condition for successful reference on the causal theory is that a
speaker's use of a name be causally connected (either directly or indirectly via a causal chain)) with the object referred to. We can refer to objects only if we stand in some causal relation to them (direct or indirect). So my use of 'God' refers to God not because there is something that satisfies the definite description or disjunction of definite descriptions that unpack the sense of 'God' as I use the term, but because my use of 'God' can be traced back though a long causal chain to an initial baptism, as it were, of God by, say, Moses on Mt. Sinai.

A particular use of a name is presumably caused by an earlier use. But eventually there must be an initial use. Imagine Moses on Mt. Sinai. He has a profound mystical experience of a being who conveys to his mind such locutions as "I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt not have false gods before me." Moses applies 'God' or 'YHWH' to the being he believes is addressing him in the experience. But what makes the name the name of the being? One may say: the being or an effect of the being is simply labelled or tagged with the name in an initial 'baptism.'

But a certain indeterminacy seems to creep in if we think of the semantic relation of referring as explicable in terms of tagging and causation (as opposed to in terms of the non-causal relation of satisfaction of a definite description encapsulated in a grammatically proper name). For is it the (mystical) experience of God that causes the use of 'God'? Or is it God himself who causes the use of 'God'? If the former, then 'God' refers to an experience had by Moses and not to God. Surely God is not an experience. But if God is the cause of Moses' use of 'God,' then the mystical experience must be veridical. (Cf. Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God, Cambridge UP, 1991, p. 11.)

So if we set aside mystical experience and the question of its veridicality, it seems we ought to adopt a description theory of the divinenames with the consequences mentioned in (i) above. If, on the other hand, a causal theory of divine names names is tenable, and if the causal chain extends from Moses down to Christians and (later) to Muslims, then a case could be made that Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all referring to the same God when they use 'God' and such equivalents as 'Yahweh' and 'Allah.'

So it looks like there is no easy answer to the opening question. It depends on the resolution of intricate questions in the philosophy of language.

Legal Insurrection

My post, Leftists and Civility, was tagged as post of the day today at Legal Insurrection. I return the compliment by naming it Blog of the Day.

Grammar School

Time was when one actually learned grammar in grammar school. How many today can distinguish an adverb from an adjective, let alone a gerund from a participle? Grammar is propadeutic to logic. It is logical pre-school, a sovereign prophylactic against the nonsense of . . .

I feel a rant coming on. I think I'll stop.

Ten Ways Men Oppress Women With Their Everyday Behavior

One of them, and one I am guilty of, is

Broplimenting. This is when a guy says something nice to you without asking for your consent first. Men should always ask. “Do you consent to me complimenting you?” before saying anything nice or else it’s assault. No, nonverbal cues don’t count – he still has to ask for explicit consent before offering that kind of affection.

I'll have to work on that. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence. This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't. If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist. That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.

More here.

You Are Going to Die.

Yesterday I quoted Christopher Hitchens. He's dead. In Platonic perspective, what no longer exists never truly existed. So here we have a man who never truly existed but who denied the existence of the Source of his own ephemeral quasi-existence. Curious.

The ACLU and Mardi Gras

Fat Tuesday, coming as it does the day before Ash Wednesday, derives its very meaning from the beginning of Lent. The idea is to get some serious partying under one's belt just before the forty-day ascetic run-up to Easter. So one might think the ACLU would wish to lodge a protest against a celebration so religious in inspiration. Good (contemptible?) lefties that they are, they are ever crusading against religion. Perhaps 'crusade' (L. crux, crucis) is not the right word suggestive as it is of the cross and Christianity; perhaps 'jihad' would be better especially since many loons of the Left are curiously and conveniently ignorant of the threat of militant Islam and much prefer going after truly dangerous outfits like the Boy Scouts.

The schizoid Left: anti-religious in general, but not when it comes to religion's most virulent subspecies, the fanatic fundamentalism of the Islamo-head-chopper-offers.

If you are going to take umbrage at the creation of a Catholic town, why tolerate Mardi Gras? Why tolerate a celebration which originated in a Catholic town for a purpose that is obviously tied to religion? Inconsistency, or is it the pagan excess that the ACLU types want to celebrate? We can't have prayer or a moment of silence in schools, but drunkenness and debauchery in the streets is de rigueur. Interestingly enough, in 2002, The ACLU sued when a Mardi Gras celebration in San Luis Obispo was denied a parade permit.

Stop Whining, Bostonians: The Great Blizzard of ’78 was Worse

I was there. The Great Blizzard of '78 Remembered

That it was worse.

That the NYT's alarmist predictions of no snow are risible given how much of the stuff is visible.

By the way, I loved my years in Boston-Cambridge. Boston was my Mecca, the hub of the universe. But I was a young guy, liberal as the young are wont to be, who hadn't yet thought hard and long and in an experience-informed way about political and social questions. I owned nothing and I paid no taxes. Quite the contrary: I received food stamps. I was scraping by on a very low stipend in a very expensive city. So I applied for, and received, public assistance. I had no qualms about doing so at the time. The food stamps allowed me to quit my awful and dangerous job as a taxi driver. (The only thing worse than a Boston driver is a Turkish driver.) I used my time well and kept my nose to the philosophy grindstone. But the point is that I was able-bodied and should not have been allowed on welfare. Welfare programs breed dependency and lack of self-reliance, among other ills — which is not to say that there should be no such programs.

What Does It Mean to Say that Nothing is Sacred?

Yesterday I quoted Christopher Hitchens as saying that nothing is sacred. I now ask what it means to say that nothing is sacred. I think it means something like the following. Nothing, nothing at all, is holy, venerable, worthy of worship; nothing is an appropriate object of reverence. (One cannot appropriately revere one's spouse, 'worship the ground she walks on,' etc.) If nothing is sacred, then nothing is so far above us in reality and value as to require our submission and obedience as the only adequate responses to it.

If nothing is sacred, then man is the measure of all things; he is not measured by a standard external to him. Man is autonomous: he gives the law to himself. Human autonomy is absolute, the absolute. There is nothing beyond the human horizon except matter brute and blind. There is nothing that transcends the human scale. If so, then it makes sense for Hitchens to maintain that the right to free expression is absolute, subject to no restrictions or limitations: "the only thing that should be upheld at all costs and without qualification is the right of free expression."

The right to mock and deride religious figures such as Muhammad follows. For if nothing is sacred, then there is no God, no Allah, and hence no prophets of God. And of course no Son of God. If nothing is sacred and there is no God, then there is no revelation of God in any form, not in nature, not in a human person such as Jesus of Nazareth, and not in any scripture. If there is no God, then the Koran and the Bible are not the word of God; they are books like any other books, wholly human artifacts, and subject to criticism like any other books. And the same goes for physical objects and places. There are no holy relics and holy sites. Mecca and Jerusalem are not holy because, again, nothing is sacred. If there is nothing that is originally sacred, then there is nothing that is derivatively sacred either.

One obvious problem with Hitchens' position is that it is by no means obvious that there is nothing sacred. I should think that something is originally sacred if and only if God or a suitably similar transcendent Absolute exists. No God, then nothing originally sacred. Atheism rules out the sacred. And if nothing is originally sacred, then nothing is derivatively sacred either. If there is no God, then there are no prophets or saints or holy relics or holy places or holy books. And of course no church of God either: no institution can claim to have a divine charter.

I reject the position of Hitchens. I reject it because I reject his naturalism and atheism. They are reasonably rejected . But I also reject the position of those — call them fundamentalists — who think that there are people and books and institutions to which we must unconditionally submit. Here is where things get interesting.

I do not deny the possibility of divine revelation or that the book we call the Bible contains divine revelation; but I insist that it is in large part a human artifact. As such, it is open to rational criticism. While man cannot and must not place himself above God, he can and must evaluate what passes for the revelation of God — for the latter is in part a human product.

God reveals himself, but he reveals himself to man. If the transmitter is perfect, but the receiver imperfect, then one can expect noise with the signal. Rational critique aims to separate the signal from the noise. To criticize is to separate: the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable, the genuine from the specious.

I insist that religion must submit to rational critique. Religion is our affair, not God's. God has no religion. He doesn't need one. He needs religion as little as he needs philosophy: he is the truth in its paradigm instance; he has no need to seek it. Since religion is our affair, our response to the Transcendent, it is a human product in part and as such limited and defective and a legitimate object of philosophical examination and critique.

It is reasonable to maintain, though it cannot be proven, that there is a transcendent Absolute and that therefore there is something sacred. But this is not to say that what people take to be embodiments of the sacred are sacred. Is Muhammad a divine messenger? That is a legitimate question and the right to pose it and answer it negatively must be upheld. To answer it negatively, however, is consistent with holding that something is sacred. Is Jesus God? That is a legitimate question and the right to pose it and answer it negatively must be upheld. To answer it negatively, however, is consistent with holding that something is sacred.

My position is a balanced one. I reject the New Atheist extremism of Hitchens & Co. These people are contemptible in a way in which many old atheists were not: their lack of respect for religion, their militant hostility to any and every form of religion, shows a lack of respect for the unquenchable human desire for Transcendence. Religion is one form of our quest for the Absolute. This quest is part of what makes a human. This quest, which will surely outlast the New Atheists and their cyberpunk acolytes, must not be denigrated just because many of the concrete manifestations of the religious impulse are fanatical, absurd, and harmful.

One ought not mock religion, and not just for the prudential reason that one doesnot want to become the target of murderous Muslim fanatics. One ought not mock religion because religion testifies to man's dignity as a metaphysical animal, as Schopenhauer so well understood. Even Islam, the sorriest and poorest of the great religions, so testifies.

But while I reject the extremism of Hitchens and Co., an extremism that makes an idol of free expression, I agree that what passes for religion, the concrete embodiments of same, must submit to being hauled before the bench of Reason, there to be interrogated, often rudely. Reason, in its turn, must be open to what lies beyond it. It must be open to revelation.