Bill Vallicella – Page 510 – Maverick Philosopher

How to ‘Derive’ Ought from Is

I demanded an argument valid in point of logical form all of whose premises are purely factual but whose conclusion is categorically (as opposed to hypothetically or conditionally) normative. Recall that a factual proposition is one which, whether true or false, purports to record a fact, and that a purely factual proposition is a factual proposition containing no admixture of normativity.

My demand is easily, if trivially, satisfied.

Ex contradictione quodlibet. From a contradiction anything, any proposition, follows. This is rigorously provable within the precincts of the PC (the propositional calculus). As follows:

1. p & ~p
2. p (from 1 by Simplification)
3. p v q (from 2 by Addition)
4. ~p & p (from 1 by Commutation)
5. ~p (from 4 by Simplification)
6. q (from 3, 5 by Disjunctive Syllogism)

Now plug in 'Obama is a liar' for p and 'One ought to be kind to all sentient beings' for q. The result is:

Obama is a liar
Obama is not a liar
Ergo
One ought to be kind to all sentient beings.

My demands have been satisifed. The above is an argument valid in point of logical form whose premises are all purely factual and whose conclusion is categorically normative.

I am demanding too little!

Ashes to Ashes . . .

. . . dust to dust.

My Epitaph

Here he lies old blogger Bill
Whose thoughts once did the aether fill
But permalinks proved no exception
To the gen'ral rule of imperfection.

Book Notice: Elmar J. Kremer, Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller’s Approach to God

I recall a remark by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his Philosophische Lehrjahre to the effect that the harvest years of a scholar come late. That was certainly true in the case of the Australian philosopher Barry Miller (1923-2006). His philosophical career culminated in a burst of productivity. In roughly the last decade of his long life he published a trilogy in philosophical theology: From Existence to God (1992), A Most Unlikely God (1996), and The Fullness of Being (2002). I reviewed the first two in the journals and made substantial comments on a manuscript version of the third. Miller kindly acknowledged my help at the end of the preface of the 2002 book. So I was pleased to be of some small service on Miller's behalf by refereeing Kremer's manuscript for Oxford UP and supplying the blurb below when it was accepted by Bloomsbury.

Reviews of Analysis of Existing

“Barry Miller’s philosophical theology clearly shows how a philosopher can think rigorously about God without caving into fashionable and facile refutations of theism. In this study of his writings, Elmar Kremer provides an exemplary account of his sophisticated arguments while discussing their value and cogently defending them against a number of objections. Kremer’s welcome book is both a fine introduction to Miller and a significant contribution to philosophy of religion.” – Brian Davies, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University, USA,

“Barry Miller was a brilliant philosophical theologian with an original argument for, and development of, the Thomist idea of God as the entity whose essence is existence. Unfortunately Miller's ideas have not been given the attention they deserve. In part this is because he made few concessions to the reader. In this book Elmar J. Kremer provides the 'clear, well-developed exposition' that Miller's ideas deserve. I recommended it highly to all interested in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, or theology.” – Peter Forrest, Retired Professor of Philosophy, University of New England, Australia,

“Barry Miller's penetrating work in philosophical theology has not received the attention it deserves. It is therefore with pleasure that I recommend the first book-length treatment of Miller's work, Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God.” – William F. Vallicella, Retired Professor of Philosophy, USA,

“Kremer's book consists of philosophically acute, painstaking scholarship. It is a very fine introduction to Miller’s highly original work on the metaphysics of theism.” – Bruce Langtry, Senior Fellow in Philosophy, The University of Melbourne, Australia,

Nun Run

Some in the habit of running run in a habit. The Poor Clares are sponsoring their 5th annual Desert Nun Run in Tempe on March 8th. Might be fun to run with a nun. And you can vote with your feet against the scumbaggers and bullies of the current administration.

The Poor Clares are the group of sisters who have been targeted by the lawless and corrupt thugs of the Obama administration. See here. Here is the Obamacare Anti-Conscience Mandate.

Book Notice: Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics

This from the back cover:

Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (editiones scholasticae, vol. 39, Transaction Books, 2014) provides an overview of Scholastic approaches to causation, substance, essence, modality, identity, persistence, teleology, and other issues in fundamental metaphysics. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics, so as to facilitate the analytic reader’s understanding of Scholastic ideas and the Scholastic reader’s understanding of contemporary analytic philosophy. The Aristotelian theory of actuality and potentiality provides the organizing theme, and the crucial dependence of Scholastic metaphysics on this theory is demonstrated. The book is written from a Thomistic point of view, but Scotist and Suarezian positions are treated as well where they diverge from the Thomistic position.

I thank Professor Feser for sending me a complimentary copy which arrived a couple of hours ago. So far, I have read the Prolegomenon (pp. 6-30) which is mainly a critique of scientism together with a rejection of the view of philosophy as mere 'conceptual analysis.'

Scientism is the doctrine that "science alone plausibly gives us objective knowledge, and that any metaphysics worthy of consideration can only be that which is implicit in science." (10) That is exactly what it is in contemporary discussions, although, for the sake of clarity, I would have added 'natural' before both occurrences of 'science.' Also worth noting is that scientism is to naturalism as epistemology to ontology: scientism is the epistemology of the ontological view according to which (concrete) reality is exhausted by the space-time manifold and its contents as understood by physics and the natural sciences built upon it such as chemistry and biology.

I won't repeat Feser's arguments, but they are pellucid and to my mind conclusive. The usual suspects, Lawrence 'Bait and Switch' Krauss and Alexander Rosenberg, come in for a well-deserved drubbing. Ed's prose in this book is characteristically muscular, but he keeps his penchant for polemic in check.

By the way, if you want to read a truly moronic article on scientism, I recommend (if that's the word) Sean Carroll, Let's Stop Using the Word "Scientism. Carroll thinks that the word is "unhelpful because it’s ill-defined, and acts as a license for lazy thinking." Nonsense. He should read Feser or indeed any competent philosopher's discussion of the topic.

Some of my take on these matters is to be found in Rosenberg's Definition of Scientism and the Problem of Defining 'Scientism.'

Some hold that philosophy, because it is not science, can only be conceptual analysis. Ed makes a forking good point when he observes that this view is a variation on Hume's Fork:

The claim that "all the objects of human reason or enquiry" [Hume] are or ought to be either matters of "conceptual analysis" matters of natural science is itself neither a conceptual truth nor a proposition for which you will find, or could find, the slightest evidence in natural science. It is a proposition as metaphysical as any a Scholastic would assert, differing from the latter only in being self-refuting." (26)

Putin’s Sudetenland?

It occurred to me this morning that there is an ominous parallel between Putin's occupation of the Ukraine and Hitler's of the Sudetenland, and on a similar pretext, namely, the protecting of ethnic Russians/Germans. The Sudetenland was the German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia whose annexation by Hitler in 1938 was part of the run-up to the Second World War. But I'm no historian. So let me ascend from these grimy speluncar details into the aether of philosophy.

George Santayana is repeatedly quoted as saying that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Although this may be true individually, I cannot see that it is true collectively. I have learned from my mistakes, and I don't repeat them. But a collection of individuals, with its ever-changing membership, is not an individual. Collectively, whether we remember the past or not we are condemned to repeat it. That is how I would go Santayana one better. Or to put it in less ringing terms:

Collectively, knowledge of the past does little to prevent the recurrence of old mistakes.

One reason for this is that there is no consensus as to what the lessons of history are. What did we Americans learn from Viet Nam? That we should avoid all foreign entanglements? That when we engage militarily we should do so decisively and with overwhelming force and resolve? (E.g, that we should have suppressed dissent at home and used a few tactical nukes against the Viet Cong?) What is the lesson to be learned? What is the mistake to be avoided? Paleocons, neocons (the descendants of old-time liberals) and leftists don't agree on questions like these.

One cannot learn a lesson the content of which is up for grabs.

What did we learn from Hiroshima and Nagasaki? That the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants is sometimes justified and may (as it actually has) usher in a long period of world peace? (There hasn't been a world war in going on 70 years). That this is a case in which the end justified the means? No adherent of just war doctrine would agree that that is the lesson.

Another reason why knowledge of the past is of little help in the present is that, even if there is agreement on some general lesson — e.g., don't appease dictators — there is bound to be disagreement as to whether or not the lesson applies in particular circumstances. Is Obama an appeaser? Is Putin a dictator? Is the Ukraine sufficiently like the Sudetenland to justify an action-guiding comparison? Et cetera ad nauseam.

The Philosopher as Rhinoceros

A Reason to Take Care of Oneself

It may be that moral and intellectual progress is possible only here. After death it may be too late, either because one no longer exists, or because one continues to exist but in a state that does not permit further progress.

It is foolish to think that believers in post-mortem survival could have no reason to value their physical health and seek longevity. Even a Platonist who believes that he is his soul and not a composite of soul and body has reason to prolong the discipline of the Cave. For it may be that the best progress or the only progress is possible only in the midst of its speluncar chiaroscuro.

Philosophia longa, vita brevis. It is precisely because philosophy is long that one ought to extend one's earthly tenure for as long as one can make progress intellectually and morally. And this, whether or not one has the hope that Vita mutatur non tollitur.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kayo Dot and Captain Beefheart

Giving the familiar a rest this Saturday night, we venture into the far out and experimental. A young friend recommends the following as among the more accessible pieces by Kayo Dot:

Whisper Ineffable

Calonyction Girl

Symmetrical Arizona

Here are three from the '60s by Captain Beefheart:

Electricity

Pachuco Cadaver

Abba Zabba

Nietzsche on Prose and Poetry

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book II, sec. 92, tr. Kaufmann:

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry: all of its attractions depend on the way in which poetry is continually avoided and contradicted.

Three More Putative Instances of Valid Is-Ought Inferences

I thank Tully Borland for pushing the discussion in this fascinating direction.

Affirming the Consequent is an invalid argument form.
Ergo
One ought not (it is obligatory that one not) give arguments having that form.

Modus Ponens is valid
Ergo
One may (it is permissible to) give arguments having that form.

Correct deductive reasoning is in every instance truth-preserving.
Ergo
One ought to reason correctly as far as possible.

An argument form is valid just in case no (actual or possible) argument of that form has true premises and a false conclusion. An argument form is invalid just in case some (actual or possible) argument of that form has true premises and a false conclusion. Deductive reasoning is correct just in case it proceeds in accordance with a valid argument form. 'Just in case' is but a stylistic variant of 'if and only if.'

Now given these explanations of key terms, it seems that validity, invalidity, and correctness are purely factual, and thus purely non-normative, properties of arguments/reasonings. If so, how the devil do we get to the conclusions of the three arguments above?

View One: We don't. A, B, and C are each illicit is-ought slides.

View Two: Each of the above arguments is valid. Each of the key terms in the premises is normatively loaded from the proverbial 'git-go,' in addition to bearing a descriptive load.. Therefore, there is no illict slide. The move is from the normative to the normative. Validity, invalidity, and correctness can be defined only in terms of truth and falsity which are normative notions.

View Three: We have no compelling reason to prefer one of the foregoing views to the other. Each can be argued for and each can be argued against. Thus spoke the Aporetician.

Tony Flood on Governor Brewer’s Capitulation

Commenting on a NYT piece on Brewer's capitulation to the anti-liberty forces of political correctness, long-time correspondent Anthony Flood writes:

“Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value,” Governor Brewer philosophized, but “so is no discrimination.” The syntactically challenged governor, or was it her ghost-writer?, evaded the implication that, should the two conflict, religious liberty must give way to "no discrimination."

To elicit the desired Pavlovian response, "discrimination," a "boo" word, replaced "freedom of association," once a "yay" word. The Christian photographer or baker who invites a same-sex couple to seek services elsewhere is slandered as the moral equivalent of a Jim Crow-era bigot. "No discrimination" — which no American founding document honors — is the inviolable dogma of post-Christian Humanism, itself a species of religion.

The LGBT "civil rights movement," apparently bored with mere "tolerance," now demands participation by Christians in the celebration of what they deem morally abhorrent if they are "asked." If they refuse, they can risk prosecution or shutter their businesses. Humanism's propagandists, including many deluded but professing Christians, get to label their opponents "bullies" and "bigots." Meanwhile, AG Holder brazenly suggests to his state counterparts that they need not enforce statutes they swore an oath to uphold but which, in their superior wisdom, deem indefensible, particularly laws that defend traditional marriage.

Let God be true, but every man a liar (Rom 3:4). He will not be mocked (Gal 6:7)

See my Liberal Fascism: The Floral Variation

Nicolás Gómez Dávila on the Vatican II Church

Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994) is an outstanding aphorist of a decidedly conservative, indeed reactionary, bent. What follows are some of his observations on the Catholic Church of the Second Vatican Council. I found them here thanks to Karl White. I've added a couple of comments in blue.

The phenomena of the decay of Catholicism are entertaining; those of Protestantism dull. (p. 191)

Tongues of fire didn’t descend upon the Second Vatican Council, as they did upon the first assembly of the apostles, but a stream of fire – a Feuerbach. (p. 245)

If one were to translate Ludwig Feuerbach's name into English it would come out as Firebrook. (Of course, one does not translate proper names; at most one transliterates them.) Feuerbach was an important influence on Karl Marx. He is famous or notorious for the notion that God is an unconscious anthropomorphic projection. Man alienates himself from his best attributes by unconsciously projecting them, in maximized forms, upon a nonexistent transcendent being.

A single council is nothing more than a single voice in the real ecumenical council of the Church: her complete history. (p. 265)

Popular Catholicism is the target of all progressive anger. Popular faith, popular hope, popular charity exasperate a clergy of petit bourgeois origin. (p. 266)

For the left-wing Catholic Catholicism is the great sin of the Catholic. (p. 248)

Catholics have lost that sympathetic capacity of sinning without arguing that sin doesn’t exist. (p. 274)

The problems of man can be neither exactly defined nor even remotely solved. Whoever hopes that Christianity can solve them ceases to be a Christian. (p. 285)

Add 'here below' at the end of the first sentence, and then the aphorism is true.

The progressive Catholic is only active in zealously seeking for whatever he can still hand over to the world.

Better a small church with Catholics than a numerous one with Rotarians. (p. 334)

Today’s Church is so nice as to exclude everything from the revealed traditions which public opinion condemns. (p. 319)

The current pope prays for that progress which Bury – its historian – called the “substitute for Providence.” (p. 319)

The thing that exasperates today’s Christian about the Middle Ages is Christianity. (p. 319)

The new liturgists have abolished the sacred pulpits in order that no scoundrel can assert that the Church intends to compete with the secular ones. (p. 319)

Catholics don’t have the slightest idea that the world feels betrayed by the concessions made to it by Catholicism. (p. 325)

The progressive clergy crowns the towers of the church of today not with a cross but with a weathervane. (p. 325)

Only the Catholic on the brink of losing his faith is outraged by the Church’s dazed state, sent by Providence.

St. Thomas Aquinas: an Orleaniste of theology? (p. 350)

Aggiornamento is the sellout of the Church. (p. 363)

The progressive Catholic collects his theology from the garbage can of Protestant theology. (p. 363)

Intending to open her arms to the world the Church instead opened her legs. (p. 363)

Instead of a theology of the mystical body the theologians of today teach a theology of the mystical masses. (p. 363)

Today it is impossible to respect the Christians. Out of respect for Christianity. (p. 379)

Truth and Normativity

I am on the hunt for a deductive argument that is valid in point of logical form and that takes us from a premise set all of whose members are purely factual to a categorically (as opposed to hypothetically or conditionally) normative conclusion. Tully ( = Cicero?) the Commenter offered an argument that I make explicit as follows:

1. It is snowing
2. For any proposition p, if p, then it is true that p.
Therefore
3. If it is snowing, then it is true that it is snowing. (2, UI)
Therefore
4. It is true that it is snowing. (1, 3 MP)
5. For any p, if p is true, then one ought to believe that p.
Therefore
6. If it is true that it is snowing, then one ought to believe that it is snowing. (5, UI)
Therefore
7. One ought to believe that it is snowing. (4, 6 MP)

Does this argument do the trick? Well, it is plainly valid. I rigged it that way! Is the conclusion categorically normative? Yes indeed. Are all of the premises purely factual? Here is the rub. (5) is a normative proposition. And so the argument begs the question at line (5). Indeed, if one antecedently accepts (5), one can spare oneself the rest of the pedantic rigmarole.

But I have a second objection. Even if the move from 'is' to 'ought' internal to (5) is logically kosher, (5) is false. (5) says that whatever is true is such that one ought to believe it. But surely no finite agent stands under an obligation to believe every true proposition. There are just too many of them.

If one ought to do X, then (i) it is possible that one do X, and (ii) one is free both to do X and to refrain from doing X. But it is not possible that I believe or accept every true proposition. Therefore, it is not the case that I (or anyone) ought to believe every true proposition. (One can of course question whether believings are voluntary doings under the control of the will, and (surprise!) one can question that questioning. See my Against William Alston Against Doxastic Voluntarism.)

Still and all, truth does seem to be a normative notion. (5) doesn't capture the notion. What about:

5*. For any p, if p is true, then p ought to be believed by anyone who considers it.

The idea here is that, whether or not there are any finite minds on the scene, every true proposition qua true has the intrinsic deontic property of being such that it ought to be believed. I say 'intrinsic' because true propositions have the deontic property in question whether or not they stand in relation to actual finite minds.

But of course plugging (5*) into the above argument does not diminish the argument's circularity.

Here is a possible view, and it may be what Tully is getting at. Truth is indissolubly both factual and normative. To say of a proposition that it is true is to describe how it stands in relation to reality: it represents a chunk of reality as it is. But it is also to say that the proposition qua true functions as a norm relative to our belief states. The truth is something we ought to pursue. It is something we ought doxastically to align ourselves with.

This is murky, but if something like this is the case, then one can validly move from

p is true

p ought to be believed by anyone who considers it.

The move, however, would not be from a purely factual premise to a categorically normative conclusion. My demand for a valid instance of such a move might be rejected as an impossible demand. I might be told that there are no purely factual premises and that if, per impossible, there were some, then of course nothing normative could be extracted from them.

What say you, Tully?

Syntactic Versus Semantic Validity

Consider the argument:

   Bill is a brother
   —–
   Bill is a sibling.

Is this little argument valid or invalid? It depends on what we mean by 'valid.' Intuitively, the argument is valid in the following generic sense:

D1. An argument is (generically) valid iff it is impossible that its premise(s) be true and its conclusion false.

(D1) may be glossed by saying that there are no possible circumstances in which the premises are true and the conclusion false. Equivalently, in every possible circumstance in which the premises are true, the conclusion is true. In short, validity is immunity to counterexample.

(D1), though correct as far as it goes, leaves unspecified the source or ground of a valid argument's validity. This is the philosophically interesting question. What makes a valid argument valid? What is the ground of the impossibility of the premises' being true and the conclusion being false? One answer is that the source of validity is narrowly logical or purely syntactic: the validity of a valid argument derives from its subsumability under logical laws or (what comes to the same thing) its instantiation of valid argument-forms.

Now it is obvious that the validity of the above argument does not derive from its logical form. The logical form is

   Fa
   —–
   Ga

where 'a' is an arbitrary individual constant and 'F' an arbitrary predicate constant. The above argument-form is invalid since it is easy to interpret the place-holders so as to make the premise true and the conclusion false: let 'a' stand for Al, 'F' for fat and 'G' for gay.

We now introduce a second, specific sense of 'valid,' one that alludes to the source of validity:

D2. An argument is syntactically valid iff it is narrowly-logically impossible that there be an argument of that form having true premises and a false conclusion.

According to (D2), a valid argument inherits its validity from the validity of its form, or logical syntax. So on (D2) it is primarily argument-forms that are valid or invalid; arguments are valid or invalid only in virtue of their instantiation of valid or invalid argument-forms. (D2) is thus a specification of the generic (D1).

But there is a second specification of (D1) according to which validity/invalidity has its source in the constituent propositions of the arguments themselves and so depends on their extra-syntactic content:

D3. An argument is extra-syntactically valid iff (i) it is impossible that its premises be true and its conclusion false; and (ii) this impossibility is grounded neither in any contingent matter of fact nor
in logic proper, but in some necessary connection between the senses or the referents of the extra-logical terms of the argument.

A specification of (D3) is

D4. An argument is semantically valid iff (i) if it is impossible that its premises be true and its conclusion false; and (ii) this impossibility is grounded in the senses of the extra-logical terms of
the argument.

Thus to explain the semantic validity of the opening argument we can say that the sense of 'brother' includes the sense of 'sibling.' There is a necessary connection between the two senses, one that does not rest on any contingent matter of fact and is also not mediated by any law of logic. Note that logic allows (does not rule out) a brother who is not a sibling. Logic would rule out a non-sibling brother only if 'x is F & x is not G' had only false substitution-instances — which is not the case. To put it another way, a brother that is not a sibling is a narrowly-logical possibility. But it is not a broadly-logical possibility due to the necesssary connection of the two senses.

So it looks as if analytic entailments like Bill is a brother, ergo, Bill is a sibling show that subsumability under logical laws is not necessary for (generically) valid inference. Sufficient, but not necessary. Analytic entailments appear to be counterexamples to the thesis that inferences in natural language can be validated only by subsumption under logical laws.

One might wonder what philosophers typically have in mind when they speak of validity. I would say that most philosophers today have in mind (D1) as specified by (D2). Only a minority have in mind (D3) and its specification (D4). I could easily be wrong about that. Is there a sociologist of philosophers in the house?

Consider the Quineans and all who reject the analytic/synthetic distinction. They of course will have no truck with analytic entailments and talk of semantic validity. Carnapians, on the other hand, will uphold the analytic/synthetic distinction but validate all entailments in the standard (derivational) way by importing all analytic truths as meaning postulates into the widened category of L-truths.

Along broadly Carnapian lines one could argue that the above argument is an enthymeme which when spelled out is

   Every brother is a sibling
   Bill is a brother
   —–
   Bill is a sibling.

Since this expanded argument is syntactically valid, the original argument — construed as an enthymeme — is also syntactically valid. When I say that it is syntactically valid I just mean that the
conclusion can be derived from the premises using the resources of standard logic, i.e. the Frege-inspired predicate calculus one finds in logic textbooks such as I. Copi's Symbolic Logic. In the above example, one uses two inference rules, Universal Instantiation and Modus Ponens, to derive the conclusion.

If this is right, then the source of the argument's validity is not
in a necessary connection between the senses of the 'brother' and 'sibling' but in logical laws.