Author: Bill Vallicella

Invective, Philosophy, and Politics

A new reader (who may not remain a reader for long) wrote in to say that he enjoyed my philosophical entries but was "saddened" by the invective I employed in one of my political posts.

I would say that the use of invective is justifiable in polemical writing.  Of course, it is out of place in strictly philosophical writing and discussion, but that is because philosophy is inquiry into the truth, not defense of what one antecedently takes to be the truth.  When philosophy becomes polemical, it ceases to be philosophy.  Philosophy as it is actually practiced, however, is often degenerate and falls short of this ideal.  But the ideal is a genuine and realizable one.  We know that it is realizable because we know of cases when it has been realized.  By contrast, political  discourse either cannot fail to be polemical or is normally polemical. 

Let me then hazard the following stark formulation, one that admittedly requires more thought and may need qualification.  When philosophy becomes polemical, it ceases to be philosophy.  But when political discourse ceases to be polemical, it ceases to be political discourse.

A bold pronunciamento, not in its first limb, but in its second.  The second limb is true if the Converse Clausewitz Principle is true: Politics is war conducted by other means.  Whether the CCP is true is a tough nut that I won't bite into just yet.  But it certainly seems to be true as a matter of fact.  Whether it must be true is a further question.

Another possible support for the second limb  is the thought that man, contrary to what Aristotle famously said, is not by nature  zoon politikon, a political animal.  No doubt man is by nature a social animal.  But there is no necessity in rerum natura that there be a polis, a state.  It is arguably not natural there be a state.  The state is a necessary evil given our highly imperfect condition.  We need it, but we would be better off without it, given its coercive nature, if we could get on without it.  But we can't get on without it given our fallen nature.  So it is a necessary evil: it's bad that we need it, but (instrumentally) good that we have it given that we need it.

Of course my bold (and bolded) statement needs qualification.  Here is a counterexample to the second limb.  Two people are discussing a political question.  They agree with each other in the main and are merely reinforicing each other and refining the formulation of their common position.  That is political discourse, but it is not polemical.  So I need to make a distinction between 'wide' and 'narrow' political discourse.  Work for later.

Now for a concrete example of an issue in which polemic and the use of invective is justified.

Can one reasonably maintain that the photo ID requirement at polling places 'disenfrachises' blacks and other minorities as hordes of liberals maintain?  No, one cannot.  To maintain such a thing is to remove oneself from the company of the reasonable.  It is not enough to calmly present one's argument on a question like this.  One must give them, but one must do more since it is not merely a theoretical question.  It is a crucially important practical question and it is important that the correct view prevail. If our benighted opponents cannot see that they are wrong, if they are not persuaded by our careful arguments, then they must be countered in other ways.  Mockery, derision, and the impugning of motives become appropriate weapons.  If you don't have a logical leg to stand on, then it becomes legitimate for me to call into question your motives and to ascribe unsavory ones to you. For, though you lack reasons for your views, you have plenty of motives; and because the position you maintain is deleterious, your motives must be unsavory or outright evil, assuming you are not just plain stupid.

Companion post: The Enmity Potential of Thought and Philosophy as Blood Sport

Coitus Reservatus and Beyond

It is a decidedly unpopular thing to say these days, but I'll say it anyway, echoing a conviction of William James: Much profit comes from avoiding sensory indulgence.

A much more difficult practice is to enter into it with cool detachment. Coitus reservatus, for example. But it is no more difficult than playing blindfold chess, which is not that difficult. One experiences the sensations attendant upon sexual intercourse while remaining indifferent to them: one regards them as mere sensations. (In my lexicon, coitus reservatus requires non-ejaculation, whereas coitus interruptus allows it, but outside the partner.)

God, Socrates, and the Thin Theory

I maintain that there are modes of being.  To be precise, I maintain that it is intelligible that there be modes of being.  This puts me at odds with those, like van Inwagen, who consider the idea unintelligible and rooted in an elementary mistake:

. . . the thick conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what properly belongs to the nature of a chair — or of a human being or of a universal or of God — to the being of the chair. (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge 2001, p. 4)

To clarify the issue let's consider God and creatures.  God exists.  Socrates exists.  God and Socrates differ in their natures.  For example, Socrates is ignorant of many things, and he knows it; God is ignorant of nothing.  God is unlimited in power; Socrates is not.  And so on.  So far van Inwagen will agree.  But I take a further step: God and Socrates differ in the way they exist: they differ in their mode of being.  So I make a three-fold distinction among the being (existence) of x, the nature (quiddity, whatness) of x, and the mode of being of x.  At most, van Inwagen makes a two-fold distinction between the being of x and the nature of x.  For me, God and Socrates differ quidditatively and existentially whereas for van Inwagen they differ only quidditatively (in respect of their natures).

One difference between God and Socrates is that God does not depend on anything for his existence  while Socrates and indeed everything other than God depends on God for his/its existence, and indeed, at every time at which he/it exists.  I claim that  that this is a difference in mode of existence: God exists-independently while creatures exist-dependently. There would be an adequate rebuttal of my claim if thin translations could be provided of the two independent clauses of the initial sentence of this paragraph.   By a thin translation of a sentence  I mean a sentence that is logically equivalent to the target sentence but does not contain 'exist(s) or cognates or 'is' used existentially.  Translations are easy to provide, but I will question whether they are adequate.   Let 'D' be a predicate constant standing for the dyadic predicate ' — depends for its existence on ___.'  And let 'g' be an individual constant denoting God.

1. God does not depend on anything for his existence

1-t. (x)~Dgx. 

2. Everything other than God depends on God for its existence

2-t. (x)[(~(x = g) –> Dxg].

I will now argue that these thin translations are not adequate. 

I begin with the obvious point that the domain of the bound variable 'x' is a domain of existent objects, not of Meinongian nonexistent objects.    It is also obvious that the thin translations presuppose that each of these existents exists in the same sense of 'exists' and that no one of them differs from any other of them in respect of mode of existence.  Call this the three-fold presupposition.

Now consider the second translation, (2-t) above.   It rests on the three-fold presupposition, and it states that each of these existents, except God, stands in the relation D to God.  But this is incoherent since there cannot be a plurality of existents — 'existent' applying univocally to all of them — if each existent except God depends on God for its existence.  It ought to be obvious that if Socrates depends on God for his very existence at every moment, then he cannot exist in the same way that God exists.

I don't deny that there is a sense of 'exists' that applies univocally to God and Socrates.  This is the sense captured by the particular quantifier.  Something is (identically) God, and something else is (identically) Socrates.  'Is identical to something' applies univocally to God and Socrates.  My point, however, is that the x to which God is identical exists in a different way than the y to which Socrates is identical.  That 'is identical to something' applies univocally to both God and Socrates is obviously consistent with God and Socrates existing in different ways.

Here is another way to see the point.  To translate the target sentences into QuineSpeak one has to treat the presumably sui generis relation of existential dependence of creatures on God as if it were an ordinary external relation.  But such ordinary relations presuppose for their obtaining the existence of their relata. But surely, if Socrates is dependent on God for his very existence, then his existence cannot be a presupposition of his standing in the sui generis relation to God of existential dependence. He cannot already (logically speaking) exist if his very existence derives from God.

The point could be put as follows.  The Quinean logic presupposes ontological pluralism which consists of the following theses: everything exists; there is a plurality of existents; each existent exists in the same sense of 'exists.'  Ontological pluralism, however, is incompatible with classical theism according to which each thing distinct from God derives its existence from God.  On classical theism, everything other than God exists-derivatively and only God exists-underivatively.

On the Quinean scheme of ontological pluralism, the only way to connect existents is via relations that presuppose the existence of their relata.  So the relation of existential dependence that is part and parcel of the notion of divine creation must be misconstrued by the Quinean ontological pluralist as a relation that presupposes the logically antecedent existence of both God and creatures. 

The ontology presupposed by Quine's logic is incompatible with the theism van Inwagen espouses.  One cannot make sense of classical theism without a doctrine of modes of being.  One cannot be a classical theist and a thin theorist.

First They Came for My Chicken Sandwich . . .

Here. 

I have honestly never eaten a Chick-Fil-A sandwich.  So tomorrow I am going to try one.  This is in keeping with my maxim, 'No day without political incorrectness.'  Each day you must engage in one or more politically incorrect acts.  Some suggestions:

  • Smoke a cigar
  • Use standard English
  • Practice with a firearm
  • Read the Bible
  • Enunciate uncomfortable truths inconsistent with the liberal Weltanschauung
  • Read Maverick Philosopher
  • Think for yourself
  • Patronize Chick-Fil-A
  • Give your baby baby formula
  • Read the Constitution
  • Cancel your subscription to The New York Times
  • Find more examples of politically incorrect things to do

Obama’s False Alternative

Obama KissObama apparently thinks that the only alternative to omni-intrusive, ever-expanding government is some sort of 'rugged individualism' according to which each individual pulls himself up by his own pony-tail in the manner of the celebrated Baron von Muenchhausen.  Bullshit. False alternative.  That he would push this false alternative is a good illustration of Obama's mendacity.  There is a way to avoid the extremes:  subsidiarity.

Political Correctness and Left-Wing Bias in the Universities

Liberal profs admit they would discriminate.

Captive Minds: Conformity and Campus Intellectuals  Excerpt (emphasis added):

Working for four years at this prairie college, I had many opportunities to see political correctness in action: in our so-called “equity” hiring practices, in changes to our course offerings to highlight racial and sexual diversity, and in the unfailing faux-reverence with which all aspects of Aboriginal literature and culture were treated, even down to a discussion about whether, in a job advertisement, we should refer to Canada by its indigenous name of Turtle Island.

But this was not a matter of political correctness alone: it was collective thinking in its most blatant form. There were striking parallels to what Czeslaw Milosz in The Captive Mind analyzes as the intellectual’s not-unwilling accommodations to Party orthodoxy. Milosz was interested not only in the compulsions of totalitarianism but in the significant emotional and psychological attractions of the Communist system: the reassurances and rewards of ceding responsibility for judgment, and the manifold reasons why an intellectual could find himself at home in conformity. Can it be that, even free of threat or compulsion, many intellectuals will choose to surrender their independence of thought? C.S. Lewis wrote about the seductive pleasures of belonging in “The Inner Ring,” brilliantly highlighting the desire planted deep in the heart of every human being to be approved, acknowledged as “one of us” by people we admire. To get into that charmed circle, Lewis warned, many of us will assent to nearly anything.

No matter the reigning orthodoxy — in our department it was, as in the vast majority of English departments across North America, Leftist, anti-Western, feminist, and multiculturalist — the desire to fall in line, and to compel or outlaw those who do not, seems to be an enduring fact of human nature.

Milosz's Captive Mind is essential reading.  Your humble correspondent has of course read it, but he has yet to blog it.  He really ought to. 

Photo ID: The ‘It Would Disproportionately Affect Hispanic Voters’ Argument

 Here (emphasis added) we find:

In March, the Justice Department denied the Lone Star State the necessary clearance for this new law, arguing that it would disproportionately affect Hispanic voters. Texas officials appealed.  To preserve the access of all citizens to the right to vote . . . the District Court should follow the Justice Department’s lead and strike down this highly suspect and unnecessary law.

What is interesting here is the role disproportionality plays in these leftist attempts at argument.  Let's see if we can uncover the 'logic' of these arguments.

Suppose people of Italian  extraction are disproportionately affected by anti-racketeering statutes.  Would this be a good reason to oppose such laws? Obviously not.  Why not? The reason is that the law targets the criminal behavior, not the ethnicity of the criminal. If it just so happens that people of Italian extraction are 'overrepresented' in the memberships of organized crime syndicates, then of course they will be 'disproportionately affected' by anti-racketeering laws.  So what?

It is very easy to multiply examples.  Who commits more rapes, men or women?  You know the answer.  Among men, in which age group will we find more rapists?  Will there be more rapists in the 15-45 age group or in the 45-75 age group?  You know the answer. Laws against rape will therefore disproportinately affect males aged 15-45.  Would this be a good reason to oppose such laws? Obviously not.  Why not? The reason is that the law targets the criminal behavior, not the age or sex of the criminal. 

Suppose that drunk drivers are predominantly Irish.  (Just suppose; I'm not saying it is true.)  Then laws against drunk driving would disproportionatey affect them.  Of course.  But that would be no reason to oppose such laws.  Is a law just only if it affects all groups equally or proportionately?  Of course not. 

Who is more likely to be a terrorist, a twenty-something  male Egyptian Muslim or a sixty-something Mormon matron?  Do you hesitate over this question?    The answer is clear, and you know what it is.  Are anti-terrorism laws therefore to be opposed on the ground that they disproportionately affect young Muslim males from middle eastern countries?

Should there be a quota system when it comes to rounding up terrorists?  "You can apprehend only as many Muslim terrorists as Buddhist terrorists."

Suppose child molesters are 'overrepresented' among Catholic priests.  Then laws against such molestation will disproportionarely affect them.  But so what?  It would be morally absurd to argue that such laws 'discriminate' against Catholic priests and should be struck down on the ground that Catholic priests  are disproportionately inclined to engage in child molestation.

Now we know that illegal aliens in Southwest states such as Texas  are predominantly, indeed overwhelmingly,  of Hispanic extraction.  So such aliens would be disproportionately affected by photo ID requirements.  But this is surely no argument against photo ID.  After all, they are not citizens and have no right to vote in the first place.

Now consider the Hispanic citizens of Texas. They have the right to vote.  And no decent person wants either to prevent them from exercising their right or to make it more difficult for them to vote than for other groups to vote.  Why would they be 'disproportionately affected' by a photo ID requirement?

Is it because Hispanics are less likely to have ID than members of other groups?  Or less likely to have the minimal skills necessary to acquire such ID?  It does, after all, take a tiny bit of effort.  You have to get yourself down to the DMV and fork over a nominal sum. 

I myself do not believe that Hispanics as a group are so bereft of life skills that they are incapable of acquiring photo ID.  But that apparently is what Dems believe when they think that a perfectly reasonable requirement would 'disproportinately affect' them.  What an insult to Hispanics!

So I ask once again: is there even one decent reason to oppose photo ID? 

Lesser Lights

The following aphorism floated before my mind as I was reading Paul Roubiczek, Across the Abyss:

Lesser lights, too, provide illumination.  And they, rather than the fixed stars in our cultural firmament, are perhaps better exemplars for us — who are lesser lights.

A Theism-Materialism Combo?

If the reality of spirit and the reality of free will cannot be encountered in ourselves, in the depths of our subjectivity, why should we think that they  can be encountered outside ourselves — in God, for example?

I don't understand those who attempt to combine theism with materialism about the human mind.  I don't deny that it is a logically possible combination.  But mere absence of formal-logical contradiction is no guarantee of metaphysical coherence.  (I develop the thought in "Could a Classical Theist be a Physicalist?" Faith and Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 2, April 1998, pp. 160-180.)

If reality has a spiritual core we will be able to learn about it only by studying ourselves, by plumbing our subjective depths, not by reducing self to not-self, not by trying to understand spirit and consciousness in material terms.  They cannot be understood in those terms, and attempts to do so end up eliminating the very means of access — mind and language — to the material world.

Holes and Their Mode of Being

Consider a particular hole H in a piece of swiss cheese.  H is not nothing.  It has properties.  It has, for example, a shape: it is circular.  The circular hole has a definite radius, diameter, and circumference.  It has a definite area equal to pi times the radius squared.  If the piece of cheese is 1/16th of an inch thick, then the hole is a disk having a definite volume.  H has a definite location relative to the edges of the piece of cheese and relative to the other holes.  H has causal properties: it affects the texture and flexibility of the cheese and its resistance to the tooth.  H is perceivable by the senses: you can see it and touch it.  You touch a hole by putting a finger or other appendage into it and experiencing no resistance.

Now if anything has properties, then it exists.  H has properties; so H exists. 

H exists and the piece of cheese exists.  Do they exist in the same way?  Not by my lights.  The hole depends for its existence on the piece of cheese; the latter does not depend for its existence on the former.  H is a particular, well-defined, indeed wholly determninate, absence of cheese.  It is a particular, existing absence.  As an absence of cheese it depends for its existence on the cheese of which it is the hole.

So I say the hole exists in a different way than the piece of cheese.  It has a dependent mode of existence whereas the piece of cheese has a relatively independent mode of existence.

On the basis of this and other examples I maintain that there are modes of being.  To be precise, I maintain that it is intelligible that there be modes of being.  This puts me at odds with those, like van Inwagen, who consider the idea unintelligible and rooted in an elementary mistake:

. . . the thick conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what properly belongs to the nature of a chair — or of a human being or of a universal or of God — to the being of the chair. (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge 2001, p. 4)

Did I make a mistake above, the mistake van Inwagen imputes to thick theorists?  Did I mistakenly transfer what properly belongs to the nature of the hole — its dependence on the piece of cheese — to the being (existence) of the hole?

I plead innocent.  Perhaps it is true that it is the nature of holes in general that they depend for their existence on the things in which they are holes.  But H is a particular, spatiotemporally localizable, hole in a particular piece of cheese.  Since H is a particular existing hole, it cannot be part of H's multiply exemplifiable nature that it depend for its existence on the particular piece of cheese it is a hole in.  The dependence of H on its host is due to H's mode of existence, not to its nature.

Suppose there are ten quidditatively indiscernible holes in the piece of cheese: H1, H2, . . . H10.  Each exists.  Each has its own existence.  But each has the very same nature.  How then can this common nature be the factor responsible for making H1 or H2 or H3, etc.,  dependent on the particular piece of cheese?  The dependence of each hole on its host is assignable not to the nature common to all ten holes but to each hole's existence as a mode of its existence.

Now of course this will not convince any thin theorist.  But then that is not my goal.  My goal is to show that the thick theory is rationally defensible and not sired by any obvious 'mistake.'  If any 'mistakes' are assignable then I 'd say they are assignable with greater justice to the partisans of the thin theory.

Talk of 'mistakes,' though, is out of place in serious philosophy.  For apart from clear-cut logical blunders such as affirming the consequent, quantifier shift fallacies, etc. any alleged 'mistakes' will rest on debatable substantive commitments.

Susan Sontag on the Art of the Aphorism

At any given time I am  reading twenty or so books.  One of them at the moment is Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2012.  In the midst of a lot of stuff, there are some gems.  Here is one:

Aphorism is aristocratic thinking: this is all the aristocrat is willing to tell you; he thinks you should get it fast, without spelling out all the details.  Aphoristic thinking constructs thinking as an obstacle race: the reader is expected to get it fast and move on.  An aphorism is not an argument; it is too well-bred for that. (512)

The last line is the best.  There is something plebeian about argument.  The thought is pure Nietzsche.  See "The Problem of Socrates" in Twilight of the Idols (tr. Kaufmann):

Section 4: Socrates' decadence is suggested not only by the admitted wantonness and anarchy of his instincts, but also by the hypertrophy of the logical faculty . . . .

Section 5: With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dalectics. [. . .]  What must first be proved is worth little.  Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon . . . . Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously . . . .

Whether or not argument is plebeian, it has no place in an aphorism.  As I put it:

An aphorism that states its reasons is no aphorism at all. But the reasons are there, though submerged, like the iceberg whose tip alone is visible. An aphorism, then, is the tip of an iceberg of thought.

and

Aphorisms and poems have this in common: neither can justify what they say while remaining what they are.

The Sontag-Nietzsche view seems to be that one needn't have reasons for what one aphoristically asserts;  mine is that one should have them but not state them, leastways, not in the aphorisms themselves.

Addendum, 4:30 PM:  That indefatigable argonaut of cyberspace, the ever-helpful Dave Lull, librarian non pareil, friend of bloggers and the just recipient of their heart-felt encomia, sent me a link to a post by James Geary entitled  Susan Sontag on Aphorisms. 

Geary rightly demolishes the silly conceit of another blogger who, commenting on Sontag, characterizes aphorisms as "the ultimate soundbitification of thinking."  That is truly awful and deserves to be buried in the deepest and most mephitic nether regions of the blogosphere.

But Geary says something that contradicts my claim above that argument has no place in an aphorism:

And aphorisms are arguments. That’s why they are so often written in declarative or imperative form. An aphorism is only one side of the argument, though.

It appears that Geary is confusing a statement with an argument.  Consider Nietzsche's "Some men are born posthumously."  This is a declarative sentence but certainly no argument.  An argument requires at least one premise and a conclusion.  To argue is to support a claim with reasons.   Nothing like this is going on in the one-sentence aphorism just quoted.

A Letter to Young Voters

I would quibble with parts of this piece  by Dennis Prager, but it is worth reading.   Excerpt:

Young people believe that when the government gives more money and benefits to more people it helps them. This is naïve. As you get older and wiser you realize that when people are given anything without having to earn it (unless they are physically or mentally utterly incapable of earning anything), they become ungrateful and lazy. They also become less happy. Every study shows that people who earn money are far happier than people who win many millions of dollars in a lottery. Happiness is earned, not given.

Here’s another: Young people are far more likely to believe that world peace is achieved when nations lay down their arms and talk through their differences. But this has never been the case. Of course, good nations stay peaceful when they talk to other good nations. Bad nations — that is, nations ruled by evil men — are never dissuaded from making war by talk. They are dissuaded only by good nations having more arms than they do. That is why the Marine Corps has done so much more for world peace than the Peace Corps.

If you want to vote Democrat, don’t do so because that is the party that cares more for the poor and the hungry. We older conservatives (and young ones, too) care just as much for the poor. But after living a life of seeing the naïve only make things worse for the poor, we are no longer seduced by caring rhetoric. We are seduced by policies based on the awesome American value of individual initiative combined with liberty to create and retain wealth. It’s now called “conservatism.”

And, finally, you should know this: The “idealists” that many of you find appealing are the ones leaving you with a national debt that will render it very difficult for you to attain the material quality of life that these people have had.

Will millenials be persuaded?  Not likely.

Whether Being is an Activity on the Thick Theory: Van Inwagen’s Straw Man Argument

(Note to Alfredo and Peter L:  I need your help in understanding this particularly opaque portion of PvI's paper.)

Here are some notes on section 2 of Peter van Inwagen's "Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment" (pp. 476-479 of the Metametaphysics volume).

The first of the Quinean theses that van Inwagen maintains is that "Being is not an activity."  Here is the opening sentence of the section:

Many philosophers distinguish between a thing's being and its nature.  These philosophers seem to think of, e.g., Socrates' being as the most general activity Socrates engages in.

These two sentences have me flummoxed.  Let me explain why.

First, the two sentences taken together imply that philosophers who distinguish between a thing's being (existence) and its nature think of a thing's being as the most general activity it engages in.  That's just false.  There are philosophers who distinguish between being and nature (Aquinas for example) without holding that a thing's being is the most general activity it engages in.  Since I hesitate  to impute something plainly false to the dean of the thin theorists, I must question what he's driving at.

My suspicion is that van Inwagen (447) gets the notion that being is an activity entirely from J. L. Austin's jocose footnote to p. 68 of Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford, 1962):  "The word ['exist'] is a verb, but it does not describe something that things do all the time, like breathing, only quieter — ticking over, as it were, in a metaphysical sort of way."  That's clever all right, but too frail a reed to support a global imputation to all thick theorists of the view that being is a peculiarly quiet activity.

Second, since van Inwagen goes on to deny that being is an activity, are we to conclude that he rejects the distinction between being and nature?  Is PvI denying that there is a distinction between Socrates' nature and his existence?  Is he suggesting the following argument:

a. If there is a distinction between a thing's being and its nature, then being is the most general activity the thing engages in.

b. Being is not the most general activity a thing engages in.

Therefore

c. There is no distinction between a thing's being and its nature.

I hope van Inwagen is not suggesting any such argument.  For that would not cohere with his commitment to a Quinean translation of 'Socrates exists' into 'It is not the case that everything is identical to Socrates.'  This implies that the existence of Socrates is his identity-to-something — in which case there is a distinction between Socrates' nature and his existence.  After all, Socrates' nature and the property of being identical to something are distinct.

Third,  PvI speaks of "many philosophers' but gives no examples.  He needs a footnote right at the end of the second sentence above.  He needs to quote philosophers who explicitly say that being is a most general activity.  Farther down the page he mentions Heidegger and Sartre, but no page references are given and no quotations.  So my third point is that PvI seems to be committing a Straw Man fallacy.  Which philosopher ever said that being is the most general activity a thing engages in?

The view van Inwagen ascribes to thick theorists such as Heidegger and Sartre  involves the following propositions:

1. Being is an activity.

2. Being is the most general activity that a thing engages in, one that is implied by every other activity the thing in question engages in.  Thus if Socrates is running, then he is moving on his feet, and if so, then he is moving through space, etc.  until we come to some one terminal activity that is implied by all the other activities  the thing is engaged in at the time.

3.  This most general terminal activity — being — is the same activity at every time the thing in question is engaging in any activity.

4.  This most general activity is the same for each member of a given category, Thus it is the same for Socrates and Plato, but presumably not the same for a bridge or an ass.

5.  This most general terminal activity of being (existing) is different (or can be different) for different categories of entity. Thus the most general activity of a table is not the same as the most activity of a human being.  And so there are different kinds of being, different kinds of this most general terminal activity. 

Van Inwagen imputes the above five theses to Heidegger and Sartre and, it appears, to all thick theorists.

There are  several topics to discuss.  One, which I will leave until later, is whether Heidegger and Sartre are committed to the five theses listed.  A second is whether thick theorists in general are committed to them.

Well, I'm a thick theorist and I don't see that I am committed to them.  As a thick theorist I am committed to the intelligibility of the idea that there are modes of existence (ways or modes of being).  The thin theory, however, entails the unintelligibility of this idea.  For van Inwagen, the idea springs from a clear-cut mistake, namely, the mistake of transforming a difference in nature into a difference in mode of existence.  For van Inwagen, the vast difference between a human being and a rock is simply a vast difference in their natures, and does not imply any difference in the mode of being of that which has these natures.  The idea is not that a rock and a human being have the same mode of being, but that one cannot intelligibly speak of one or more modes of being at all.  The rock exists, the man exists, and to say that is just to say that each is identical to something or other.

I will now given an example which to my mind shows that it is intelligible that there be modes of existence.  We will have to see if I am committing the mistake of transforming a difference in nature into a difference in mode of existence.

Pains and Brains

Phenomenal pains exist and brain states exist.  More generally, there are non-intentional mental states and there are physical states.  But felt pains and felt pleasures and such have a “first-person ontology” as John Searle puts it.  The being of a pain is (identically) its being perceived.  But nothing physical is such that its being is (identically) its being perceived.  This certainly looks like a difference in mode of existence.  Pains exist in a first-person way while brains exist in a third-person way.  

What can the thin theorist  say in rebuttal?  The thins think that we thick-heads illicitly transfer what belongs to the nature of an item to its existence.  So a thin theorist must say that it belongs to the nature of a particular pain that it belong to some particular person.  But this cannot be right.  It cannot belong to the nature of this pain I am now enduring that it be felt by me.  For natures are multiply realizable.  We can of course say that it is the nature of pains in general to be perceived by someone or other. If a pain exists, however, it is a particular pain and it cannot be part of the nature of that particular pain to be perceived by some particular person sich as me.  The dependence of a particular pain on its being perceived is therefore due to its dependent mode of existence and not due to its nature.

Note also that nothing I said implies that the being of the particular pain I am in is a most general activity the pain is engaging in.  My pain is not an agent engaged in an exceedingly quiet activity; it is not an agent at all but a subjective state.

We must also note that the being of my felt pain and the being of your felt pain are numerically different contra van Inwagen's #4 above.

As far as I can see, little or nothing van Inwagen says in  section 2 of his paper  touches the thick theory.  What he has given us is a straw man argument.