Bill Vallicella – Page 567 – Maverick Philosopher

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Literary Allusions

Linda Ronstadt, 1967, Different Drum. Cf. Henry David Thoreau: "“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Byrds, Turn, Turn, Turn, 1965. Lyrics almost verbatim from the Book Of Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8. Pete Seeger did it first.

Bob Dylan, 1965, Highway 61 Revisited. Genesis 22.

Fever Tree, The Sun Also Rises. A great song by a great but forgotten '60s psychedelic band. The title alludes to Hemingway's 1926 novel and to Ecclesiastes 1: 1-5:

1The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. 2Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. 3What profit has a man of all his labor which he takes under the sun? 4One generation passes away, and another generation comes: but the earth stays for ever. 5The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to his place where he arose. 6

Jaynettes, 1963, Sally Go Round the Roses. Based on the nursery rhyme Ring a Ring o' Roses (British)or "Ring Around the Rosie" (Stateside).

Inez and Charlie Foxx, 1963, Mockingbird. An R & B version of the eponymous nursery rhyme.

Serendipity Singers, 1964, Don't Let the Rain Come Down. Based on ther nursery rhyme, There Was a Crooked Man

Exercise for the reader. Identify the Biblical references in the following Dylan songs: The Times They Are a'Changin', All Along the Watchtower, When the Ship Comes In, The Gates of Eden.

Accidents of a Substance: Simple or Complex?

Dr. Novak is invited to tell me which of the following propositions he accepts, which he rejects, and why:

0. I have reservations about an ontology in terms of substances and accidents, but anyone who adopts such an ontology needs to provide a detailed theory of accidents. This post sketches a theory. It has roots in Aristotle, Brentano, Chisholm, Frank A. Lewis, and others who have written about accidental compounds or accidental unities.

1. Accidents are particulars, not universals, where particulars, unlike universals, are defined in terms of unrepeatability or uninstantiability.

2. The accidents of a substance are properties of that substance. Tom's redness, for example, is a property of him. That there are properties is a datanic claim; that some of them are accidents is a theoretical claim. Accidental properties are those a thing need not have to exist. I am using 'property' in a fairly noncommittal way. Roughly, a property is a predicable entity.

3. It follows from (1) and (2) that some properties are particulars.

4. A substance S and its accident A are both particulars. S is a concrete particular while A is an abstract particular. For example, Tom is a concrete particular; his redness is an abstract particular. It is abstract because there is more to Tom than his being red.

5. Accidents are identity- and existence-dependent upon the substances of which they are the accidents. An accident cannot be the accident it is, nor can it exist, except 'in' the very substance of which it is an accident. Accidents are not merely dependent on substances; they are dependent on the very substances of which they are the accidents. 'In' is not to be taken spatially but as expressing ontological dependence. If the being of substances is esse, the being of accidents is inesse. These are two different modes of being.

6. It follows from (5) that accidents are non-transferrable both over time and across possible worlds. For example, Peter's fear cannot migrate to Paul: it cannot somehow leave Peter and take up residence in Paul. Suppose Peter and Paul are both cold to the same degree. If coldness is an accident, then each has his own coldness. The coldnesses are numerically distinct. They cannot be exchanged in the way jackets can be exchanged. Suppose Peter and Paul both own exactly similar jackets. The two men can exchange jackets. What they cannot do is exchange accidents such as the accident, being jacketed. Each man has his own jacketedness.

Now for a modal point. There is no possible world in which Peter's coldness exists but Peter does not. Peter's coldness does not necessarily exist, but it is necessarily such that, if it does exist, then Peter exists. And of course the accident cannot exist except by existing 'in' Peter. So we can say that Peter's coldness is tied necessarily to Peter and to Peter alone: in every possible world in which Peter's coldness exists, Peter exists; and in no possible world does Peter's coldness inhere in anything distinct from Peter. The same goes for Peter's jacketedness. Peter's jacket, however, is not necessarily tied to Peter: it can exst without him just as he can exist without it. Both are substances; both are logically capable of independent existence.

The modal point underins the temporal point. Accidents cannot migrate over time because they are necessarily tied to the substances of which they are the accidents.

7. It follows that the superficial linguistic similarity of 'Peter's jacket' and 'Peter's weight' masks a deep ontological difference: the first expression makes reference to two substances while the second makes reference to a substance and its accident.

8 If A is an accident of S, then A is not related to S by any external relation on pain of Bradley's regress.

9 If A is an accident of S, then A is not identical to S. For if A were identical to S, then A would be an accident of itself. This cannot be since 'x is an accident of y' is irreflexive.

10. If A is an accident of S, then A cannot be an improper or proper part of S. Not an improper part for then A would be identical to S. Not a proper part of S because accidents depend on substances for their identity and existence. No proper part of a whole, however, depends for its existence and identity on the whole: it is the other way around: wholes depend for their identity and existence on their parts.

11. How then are we to understand the tie or connection between S and A? This is the connection expressed when we say, for example, that Socrates is white. It is an intimate connection but not as intimate as identity. We need a tie that is is less intimate than identity but more intimate than a relation.

We saw in #10 that an accident cannot be a part (ontological consituent) of its substance. But what is to stop us from theorizing that an accident is a whole one of the proper parts of which is the substance? This is not as crazy as it sounds.

12. Let our example be the accidental predication, 'Socrates is seated.' Start by giving this a reistic translation: 'Socrates is a seated thing.' Take the referent of 'Socrates' to be the substance, Socrates. Take the referent of 'a seated thing' to be the accidental compound Socrates + seatedness. This compound entity has two primary constituents, Socrates, and the property of being seated. It has as a secondary constituent the tie designated by '+.' Now read 'Socrates is a seated thing' as expressing, not the strict identity, but the accidental sameness of the two particulars Socrates and Socrates + seatedness. Thus the 'is' in our original sentence is construed, not as expressing instantiation, or identity, but as expressing accidental sameness. Accidental sameness ties the concrete particular Socrates to the abstract particular Socrates + seatedness.

13. The accidental compound is an extralinguistic particular having four constituents: a concrete particular, a nexus of exemplification, a universal, and a temporal index. Thus we can think of it as the thin fact of Socrates' being seated. 'Thin' because not all of Socrates' properties are included in this fact.

14. My suggestion, then, is that accidents are thin facts. To test this theory we need to see if thin facts have all the features of accidents. Well, we have seen (#1) that accidents are particulars. Thin facts are as well. This is a case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: a particular's exemplification of a universal is a particular.

Accidents are properties and so are thin facts: both are ways a substance is. Both are predicable entities. 'Socrates is seated' predicates something of something. On the present theory it predicates an abstract particular of a concrete particular where the predicative tie is not the tie of instantiation (exemplification) but the tie of accidental sameness.

Accidents are abstract particulars, and so are thin facts. They are abstract because they do not capture the whole reality or quiddity of the substance.

Accidents depend on substances for their identity and existence. The same is true of thin facts. A fact is a whole of parts and depends for its identity and existence on its parts, including the substance.

Accidents are non-transferrable. The same holds for thin facts.

Accidents are necessarily tied to the substances of which they are accidents. The same goes for thin facts: the identity of a thin fact depends on its substance constituent.

An accident is not identical to its host substance. The same is true of thin facts. Socrates' being seated is not identical to Socrates.

An accident is not externally related to its substance. The same is obviously truth of thin facts.

Accidents are not parts of substances. The same holds for thin facts.

Finally, no accident has two beginnings of existence. If Elliot is sober, then drunk, then sober again, his first sobriety is numerically distinct from his second: the first sobriety does not come into existence again when our man sobers up. The same is true of thin facts. Elliot's beng sober at t is distinct from Elliot's being sober at t*.

15. On the above theory, an accident is a complex. It follows that an accident is not a trope, pace Dr. Novak. Tropes are very strange animals. A whiteness trope is an abstract particular that is also a property and is also ontologically simple. An example is the particular redness of Tom the tomato. I can pick out this trope using 'the redness of Tom and Tom alone' where the 'of' is a subjective genitive. But note that the 'of Tom and Tom alone' has no ontological correlate. The trope, in itself, i.e., apart from our way of referring to it, is simple, not complex. And yet it is necessarily tied to Tom. This, to my mind, makes no sense, as I explained in earlier posts. So I reject tropes, and with them the identification of accidents with tropes.

My conclusion, then, is that IF — a big 'if' — talk of substances and accidents is ultimately tenable and philosophically fruitful, THEN accidents must be ontologically complex entities. Anyone who endorses accidents is therefore a constituent ontologist.

The ‘Floaters’ of Memory

We should look past useless memories to present realities in the way we look past the floaters in our visual field. To concentrate on the detritus of memory is only to enliven what ought to be left to slumber.

The Ultimate Hiccup Cure

A panacea that cures all your earthly ills in a manner most definitive.

Life in the fast lane often leads to a quick exit from life's freeway. You may recall Terry Kath, guitarist for the band Chicago. In 1978, while drunk, he shot himself in the head with a 'unloaded' gun. At first he had been fooling with a .38 revolver. Then he picked up a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol, removed the magazine, pointed it at his head, spoke his last words, "Don't worry, it isn't loaded," and pulled the trigger. Unfortunately for his head, there was a round in the chamber. Or that is one way the story goes.

Such inadvertent exits are easily avoided by exceptionless observation of three rules: Never point a gun at something you do not want to destroy. Treat every gun as if loaded, whether loaded or not. Never mix alcohol and gunpowder.

Perhaps I should add a fourth: Never mix dummy rounds with live rounds. Variant: Dummies should stay clear of guns, loaded or unloaded, and ammo, live or dummy.

On the Obvious

As Hilary Putnam once said, "It ain't obvious what's obvious." Or as I like to say, "One man's datum is another man's theory."

But is it obvious that it ain't obvious what's obvious?

It looks as if we have a little self-referential puzzle going here. Does the Hilarian dictum apply to itself? An absence of the particular quantifier may be read as a tacit endorsement of the universal quantifier. Now if it is never obvious what is obvious, then we have self-reference and the Hilarian dictum by its own say-so is not obvious.

Is there a logical problem here? I don't think so. With no breach of logical consistency one can maintain that it is never obvious what is obvious, as long as one does not exempt one's very thesis. In this case the self-referentiality issues not in self-refutation but in self-vitiation. The Hilarian dictum is a self-weakening thesis. Over the years I have given many examples of this. (But I am now too lazy to dig them out of my vast archives.)

There is no logical problem, but there is a factual problem. Surely some propositions are obviously true. Having toked on a good cigar in its end game, when a cigar is at its most nasty and rasty, I am am feeling mighty fine long about now. My feeling of elation, just as such, taken in its phenomenological quiddity, under epoche of all transcendent positings — this quale is obvious if anything is.

So let us modify the Hilarian dictum to bring it in line with the truth.

In philosophy, appeals to what is obvious, or self-evident, or plain to gesundes Menschenverstand, et cetera und so weiter are usually unavailing for purposes of convincing one's interlocutor.

And yet we must take some things as given and non-negotiable. Welcome to the human epistemic predicament.

Ed Koch (1924-2013)

Here is my favorite Koch quotation: ''Listen, I love Boston,'' Mr. Koch said. ''It's a wonderful town to come up and visit, on occasion, but it's not New York. Boston is a very nice town, but compared to New York it's Podunk.''

That's Koch for you. Outspoken. Testicular. Not that I agree with the jibe. I'd take the Athens of America over the Big Apple any day. I was offered full funding to attend graduate school both in New York and in Boston. So in the spring of '73 I made the transcontinental trek from Los Angeles by thumb and 'dog' to check out both places. The dismality and crowdedness and dirtiness of NYC with smack addicts on the nod in the subway decided the question for me.

My Boston years were blissful. A great, compact, vibrant town, the hub of the universe and the Eastern hub of the running boom. A great town to be young in. But when it comes time to own things and pay taxes, the West is the best, but not so far West that you end up on the Left Coast. (Trivia question: which member of the 27 Club uttered the italicized words and in which song?)

Roger Kimball on Koch:

Koch was a species of liberal that scarcely exists anymore on the national stage: a liberal, as he liked to put it, “with sanity.” The sanity acted as a prophylactic against the sort of racialist identity politics that helped make the mayoralty of David Dinkins, Koch’s successor, such a conspicuous disaster. It also underwrote his relative independence as a political actor. Thus Koch, in 2004, crossed party lines to endorse George W. Bush, not so much because he agreed with all of Dubya’s platform but because he understood that that United States was under threat from a mortal, if also amorphous, enemy, and Koch was an unembarrassed patriot.

A sane liberal. A dying breed. 'Sane liberal' is becoming an oxymoron and 'liberal loon' a pleonasm.

Three Days Before the Music Died Dylan was Born

Patrick Kurp sends this:

On this Day in Duluth in 1959, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Richie Valens, Jiles Perry “the Big Bopper” Richardson, Dion and the Bellmonts [sic], and others played to a sell-out crowd at the Duluth Armory for a “Winter Dance Party” promoted by Duluth’s Lew Latto—three days before Holly, Valens, and Richardson perished in a plane crash. In the audience, as the famous story goes, was a young Robert Zimmerman, who became so inspired he picked up a guitar and changed his name to Bob Dylan.

The Household Analogy

I saw someone on TV who claimed that comparing a deeply indebted household with the deeply indebted U.S. government is a false analogy. Why? Because the government, unlike the citizen, has the power legally to print money. No doubt that is true and a point of disanalogy, but what surprised me was that neither the speaker nor his listeners seemed to see any problem with printing money in response to a debt crisis. The problem, of course, is that when a government does this it in effect counterfeits its own currency and reduces the buying power of existing dollars.

This got me thinking about counterfeiting. Why can't I engage in my own private stimulus program? I acquire the requisite equipment, print up a batch of C-notes and then spend them in parts of town that I deem need economic stimulus. Better yet, I simply give out grants gaining no benefits for myself. Is there a difference in principle between illegal counterfeiting and the legal 'counterfeiting' that the government engages in? If they can 'stimulate,' why can't I?

But I'm no economist, so I may be missing something. I guess I don't understand how real value can be conjured out of thin air. In this electronic age, you don't even need paper and there needn't be any actual printing. Suppose the Benevolent Hacker breaks into your bank account, not to transfer funds out or to transfer funds in from a legitimate source, but simply to add zeros to your account. You are suddenly richer 'on paper.' You convert this new found wealth into new cars and houses for yourself. Wouldn't that stimulate the economy to some extent?

And then this morning I saw Krazy Krugman on C-Span, a.k.a Paul Krugman, writer of crappy op-eds for Gotham's Gray Lady, his worst and most vile being this outburst re: the Tucson shooting. Krugman is not at all concerned that the national debt approaches 17 trillion. After all, as he brilliantly observed, the U.S. has its own currency, and it can print money! Not one of the C-Span callers called Krugman out on the consequences of inflating one's way out of debt. Obama, said Krugman, "got cold feet." He didn't stimulate enough!

Meanwhile conservatives stock up on grub, gold, guns, and 'lead.'

Driving in California Ain’t What It Used to Be

I left my native state of California in 1973 and headed for Boston. Back in the day, California drivers were very good. So I was appalled to experience the awful driving habits of Bostonians. Not as bad as Turks who perform such stunts as driving on sidewalks and backing up in heavy traffic on account of missing a turn, but still very bad. California is catching up, however, as the once great Golden State becomes the Greece of America, thanks to stupid liberals and their stupid policies.

This from that resolute and near-quotidian chronicler of Californication, Victor Davis Hanson (emphasis added):

Stagecoach Trails

Little need be said about infrastructure other than it is fossilized. The lunacy of high-speed rail is not just the cost, but that a few miles from its proposed route are at present a parallel but underused Amtrak track and the 99 Highway, where thousands each day risk their lives in crowded two lanes, often unchanged since the 1960s.

The 99, I-5, and 101 are potholed two-lane highways with narrow ramps, and a few vestigial cross-traffic death zones. But we, Californian drivers, are not just double the numbers of those 30 years ago, but — despite far safer autos and traffic science — far less careful as well. There are thousands of drivers without licenses, insurance, registration, and elementary knowledge of road courtesy. Half of all accidents in Los Angeles are hit-and-runs.

My favorite is the ubiquitous semi-truck and trailer swerving in and out of the far left lane with a 20-something Phaethon behind the wheel — texting away as he barrels along at 70 mph with a fishtailing 20 tons. The right lane used to be for trucks; now all lanes are open range for trucking — no law in the arena! The dotted lane lines are recommendations, not regulations. (Will young truck drivers be hired to become our new high-speed rail state employee engineers?)

When I drive over the Grapevine, I play a sick game of counting the number of mattresses I’ll spot in the road over the next 100 miles into L.A. (usually three to four). Lumber, yard clippings, tools, and junk — all that is thrown into the back of trucks without tarps. To paraphrase Hillary: what does it matter whether we are killed by a mattress or a 2 x 4? In places like Visalia or Madera, almost daily debris ends up shutting down one of the only two lanes on the 99.

Wrecks so far? It is not the number, but rather the scary pattern that counts. I’ve had three in the last 10 years: a would-be hit-and-run driver (the three “no”s: no license, no registration, no insurance) went through a stop sign in Selma, collided with my truck, and tried to take off on foot, leaving behind his ruined Civic; a speeder (80 m.p.h.) in L.A. hit a huge box-spring on the 101 near the 405, slammed on his brakes, skidded into a U-turn in the middle lane, reversed direction, and hit me going 40 m.p.h. head-on (saved by Honda Accord’s front and side air-bags and passive restraint seat harnesses; the injured perpetrator’s first call was to family, not 911); and a young woman last year, while texting, rear-ended me at 50 m.p.h. while I was at a complete stop in stalled traffic in Fresno (thank God for a dual-cab Tundra with a long trailer hitch). She too first called her family to try to help her flee the scene of her wrecked car, but my call apparently reached the Highway Patrol first.

Drive enough in California, and you too, reader, will have a ‘”rendezvous with Death, at some disputed barricade.”

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change: Can Relational Ontology Do Better?

Constituent ontologists would seem to have a serious problem accounting for accidental change. Suppose an avocado goes from unripe to ripe over a two day period. That counts as an accidental change: one and the same substance (the avocado) alters in respect of the accidental property of being unripe. It has become different qualitatively while remaining the same numerically.

This is a problem for constituent ontologists if C-ontologists are committed to what Michael J. Loux calls "Constituent Essentialism." ("What is Constituent Ontology?" Metaphysics: Aristotelian, Scholastic, Analytic, Ontos Verlag 2012, Novak et al. eds., p. 52) Undoubtedly, many of them are, if not all. Constituent Essentialism is the C-ontological analog of mereological essentialism. We can put it like this:

Constituent Essentialism: A thing has each of its ontological parts necessarily. This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose an ontological part without ceasing to be same
thing.

Mereological Essentialism: A thing has each of its commonsense parts necessarily.
This implies that a thing cannot gain or lose a commonsense part without ceasing
to be the same thing.

To illustrate, suppose an ordinary particular (OP) such as our avocado is a bundle of compresent universals. The universals are the ontological parts of the OP as a whole. The first of the two principles entails that ordinary particulars cannot change. For accidental (alterational as opposed to existential) change is change in respect of properties under preservation of numerical diachronic identity. But preservation of identity is not possible on Constituent Essentialism. The simple bundle-of-universals theory is incompatible with the fact of change. But of course there are other types of C-ontology.

I agree with Loux that Constituent Essentialism is a "framework principle" (p. 52) of C-ontology. It cannot be abandoned without abandoning C-ontology. If an item (of whatever category) has ontological parts at all, then it is difficult to see how it could fail to have each and all of these parts essentially. And of course the fact of accidental change and what it entails, namely, persistence of the same thing over time, cannot be denied. So the 'argument from change' does seem to score against primitive versions of the bundle-of-universals theory.

I don't want to discuss whether more sophisticated C-ontological theories such as Hector Castaneda's Guise Theory escape this objection. I want to consider whether relational ontology does any better. I take relational ontology to imply that no item of any category has ontological parts. Thus R-ontology implies that no type of particular has ontological parts. A particular is just an unrepeatable. My cat Max is a particular and so are each of his material parts, and their material parts. If Max's blackness is an accident of him as substance, then this accident is a particular. The Armstrongian state of affairs of Max's being black is a particular. Mathematical sets are particulars. Particulars need not be concrete. Sets are abstract particulars in one sense of 'abstract.' Tropes are abstract particulars in another sense of 'abstract.' If an entity is not a particular, an unrepeatable, then it is a universal, a repeatable.

My question is whether we can explain real (as opposed to 'Cambridge') accidental change without positing particulars having ontological constituents. I will argue that we cannot, and that therefore R-ontology is untenable.

Lukas Novak presents an argument to the conclusion that the fact of accidental change requires the positing of particulars that have ontological constituents. Here is my take on Novak's argument:

Peter goes from being ignorant of the theorem of Pythagoras to being knowledgeable about it. This is an accidental change: one and the same concrete particular, Peter, has different properties at different times. Now a necessary condition of accidental change is that one and the same item have different properties at different times. But is it a sufficient condition? Suppose Peter is F at time t and not F at time t* (t* later than t). Suppose that F-ness is a universal but not a constituent of Peter and that Peter is F by exemplifying F-ness. Universals so construed are transcendent in the sense that they are not denizens of the world of space and time. They belong in a realm apart and are related, if they are related, to spatiotemporal particulars by the external relation of exemplification.

It follows on these assumptions that if Peter undergoes real accidental change that Peter goes from exemplifying the transcendent universal F-ness at t to not exemplifying it at t*. That is: he stands in the exemplification relation to F-ness at t, but ceases so to stand to t*. But there has to be more to the change than this. For, as Novak points out, the change is in Peter. It is intrinsic to him and cannot consist merely in a change in a relation to a universal in a realm apart. After all, transcendent universals do not undergo real change. Any change in such a universal is 'merely Cambridge' as we say in the trade. In other words, the change in F-ness when it 'goes' from being exemplified by Peter to not being exemplified by Peter is not a real change in the universal but a merely relational change. The real change in this situation must therefore be in or at Peter. For a real, not merely Cambridge, change has taken place.

Thus it seems to Novak and to me that, even if there are transcendent universals and ordinary concrete particulars, we need another category of entity to account for accidental change, a category that that I will call that of property-exemplifications. (We could also call them accidents. But we must not, pace Novak, call them tropes.) Thus Peter's being cold at t is a property-exemplification and so is Peter's not being cold at t*. Peter's change in respect of temperature involves Peter as the diachronically persisting substratum of the change, the universal coldness, and two property-exemplifications, Peter's being cold at t and Peter's being not cold at t*.

These property-exemplifications, however, are particulars, not universals even though each has a universal as a constituent. This is a special case of what Armstrong calls the Victory of Particularity: the result of a particular exemplifying a universal is a particular. Moreover, these items have natures or essences: it is essential to Peter's being cold that it have coldness as a constituent. (Thus Constituent Essentialism holds for these items. ) Hence property- exemplifications are particulars, but not bare particulars. They are not bare because they have natures or essences. Further, these property-exemplifications are abstract particulars in that they do not exhaust the whole concrete reality of Peter at a time. Thus Peter is not merely cold at a time, but has other properties besides.

It seems that the argument shows that there have to be these abstract particulars — we could call them accidents instead of property-exemplifications — if we are to account for real accidental change. But these partculars have constituents. Peter's coldness, for example, has Peter and coldness as constituents. It is a complex, not a simple. (If it were a simple, there would be nothing about it to tie it necessarily to Peter. Tropes are simples, so accidents are not tropes.) So it seems to me that what Novak has provided us with is an argument for C-ontology, for the view that the members of at least one category of entity have ontological constituents.

Loux's argument notwithstanding, a version of C-ontology seems to be required if we are to make sense of accidental change.

But how are accidents such as Peter's coldness connected or tied — to avoid the word 'related' — to a substance such as Peter?

First of all, an accident A of a substance S does not stand in an external relation to S — otherwise a Bradleyan regress arises. (Exercise for the reader: prove it.)

Second, A is not identical to S. Peter's coldness is not identical to Peter. For there is more to Peter than his being cold. So what we need is a tie or connection that is less intimate than identity but more intimate than an external relation. The part-whole tie seems to fit the bill. A proper part of a whole is not identical to the whole, but it is not externally related to it either inasmuch as wholes depend for their identity and existence on their parts.

Can we say that Peter's accidents are ontological parts of Peter? No. This would put the cart before the horse. Peter's coldness is identity- and existence-dependent on Peter. Peter is ontologically prior to his accidents. No whole, however, is ontologically prior to its parts: wholes are identity and existence-dependent on their parts. So the accidents of a substance are not ontological parts of it. But they have ontological parts. Strangely enough, if A is an accident of substance S, then S is an ontological part of A. Substances are ontological parts of their accidents! Brentano came to a view like this.

More on Brentano later. For now, my thesis is just that the fact of real accidental change requires the positing of particulars that have ontological constituents and that, in consequence, R-ontology is to be rejected. Constituent ontology vindicatus est.

When Praise is Out of Place

A thousand times you do the right thing and receive no praise. But the one time you do the wrong thing you are harshly blamed. This is the way it ought to be. Praise should be reserved for the supererogatory. To praise people for doing what it is their duty to do shows that moral decline has set in. If memory serves, Kant makes this point somewhere in his vast corpus.

Dennis Prager once said that wives should praise their husbands for their fidelity. I don't think so. Being married entails certain moral requirements, and fidelity is one of them. One should not be praised for doing what one morally must do; one should be blamed for failing to do what one morally must do.

And yet we do feel inclined to praise people for doing the obligatory.

A related point has to do with expressing gratitude to someone for doing his job. I took my wife in for a minor medical procedure this morning. As we were leaving I thanked the nurse. I would have been slightly annoyed had she said, "I'm just doing my job." Was my thanking her out of place? Maybe not. Maybe my thanking was not for her doing her job, but for her doing it in a 'perky' and friendly way.

The Calvin Blocker Story

When I lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, I was within walking distance of the old Arabica coffee house on Coventry Road. The Coventry district was quite a scene in those days and there I met numerous interesting characters of the sort one expects to find in coffee houses: would-be poets and novelists, pseudo-intellectual bullshitters of every stripe, and a wide range of chess players from patzers to masters. It was there that I became acquainted with International Master Calvin Blocker. Observing a game of mine one day, he kibitzed, "You'd be lucky to be mated."

Here is his story.

Harvey Pekar talks about Coventry.

Gun Control and Speech Control

A reasonable person advocates both, but limited versions of both. Liberals, however, tend not to be reasonable. If they interpreted the Second Amendment in as extreme fashion as they do the First, gun ownership would be mandatory.

Cute Internet Chess Club Handles

I just beat a guy in a five-minute game who rejoices under the handle 'noblitz-oblige.' I guess that counts as an inaptronym given that he was playing blitz.

3:22 PM. Just beat 'keresmatic' whose play was neither reminsicent of Paul Keres nor charismatic. Cute handle, though.

I've prepared a line to use next time I hike with James L., a fanatical hiker of near master strength in chess. Should I lag, I will complain of feeling weaker than f7.

Courage and Fearlessness

Courage is not fearlessness. The courageous feel fear, but master it, unlike the cowardly who are mastered by it. To feel no fear in any of life's situations is to fail to perceive real dangers. The fearless are foolish. It is therefore inept to praise the courageous as fearless: their virtue, which one presumably intends to praise, consists in the mastery of precisely that the absence of which would render them foolish.