Author: Bill Vallicella

Existence, Circularity, and Metaphysical Grounding

London Ed must have known by some paranormal means  that I was talking about him over Sunday breakfast with Peter Lupu.  For his post upon return from sunny Greece is about the alleged circularity of the thin conception of existence.  Peter and I were discussing Peter van Inwagen's  "Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment" (in Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, eds. Chalmers et al., Oxford 2009, pp. 472-506.)  Van Inwagen is a Quinean about existence and perhaps the most prominent and formidable of the contemporary thin theorists.  Me, I'm a thick-head: existence is not (identical to) what so-called 'existential' quantification  expresses, and existence comes in modes.  The negations of these convictions I reject as two dogmas of analysis (from the title of a forthcoming paper).

I was lamenting to Peter that I couldn't get London Ed to see my point about circularity.  I now think I understand why Ed doesn't accept it.  It has to do with his not accepting a different notion, that of metaphysical grounding.

Let's start with a Quinean explication of a sentence such as 'Peter exists.'  It goes like this:

1. Peter exists =df for some x, x = Peter.

What does (1) accomplish?  Well, it shows how one can get rid of 'exists' as a first-level predicate, and with it a reason for thinking that existence is a property of individuals.  For it is clear (assuming that there are no nonexistent objects) that the sentences flanking '=df' are equivalent, indeed logically equivalent: there is no possible situation in which  one is true (false) and the other false (true).

Now in one sense of 'circular' I want to concede to Ed that (1) is not circular:  the definiens — the RHS of (1) — does not contain 'exists.'  In other words, (1) is not circular in the way the following are circular:

X is a human being =df x has human parents.
Knowledge is the state one is in when one knows something.
Knowledge is cognition.
A book of pornography is one that contains pornographic material.

The following, whether correct or incorrect,  are not circular definitions in the above sense:

Knowledge is justified true belief.
Justice is whatever is advantageous to the stronger.
A circle is a locus a points in the same plane equidistant to some common point.

(1) is clearly not circular in the manner of the above examples: the definiendum is not repeated in the definiens.  So in what sense is (1) circular? (1) is true iff the following is true

1a. Peter exists =df for some existing x, x = Peter.

(1a), however, is plainly circular.  After all, (1) is  not equivalent to

1b. Peter exists =df for some x, whether existent or nonexistent, x = Peter.

For if (1) were equivalent to (1b), then (1) would be false.

One response I anticipate Ed making is to say that there is no difference between 'x' and 'existing x': whatever is a value of the one is a value of the other, and vice versa.  If so, then perhaps (1a) collapses into (1) and there is no circularity in the sense in which the examples above are circular.

I would insist, however, that (1) is circular in a different and deeper  sense.  A presupposition of (1)'s truth is that the domain of quantification — the domain over which the variable 'x' ranges — is a domain of existents.  Therefore, if I want  to know what it is for x to exist, you have not given me any insight by telling me that for x to exist is for x to be identical to something that exists.  For of course x is identical to something that exists, namely x!

Suppose we distinguish between semantic and metaphysical circularity.  I am willing to concede that (1) is not semantically circular.  But I do maintain that (1) is metaphysically circular: its truth presupposes that the domain of quantification is a domain of existing items.  To put it another way, the truth of (1) has an ontological or metaphysical ground, namely the existence of the items over which we quantify.

Consider a domain consisting of just three items: Peter, Paul, and Mary. Peter exists iff one of these items is identical to Peter.  Paul exists iff one of these items is identical to Paul.  Mary exists iff one of these items is identical to Mary.  Perfectly true and perfectly trivial.  Although we learn something necessarily true about Peter, about Paul, and about Mary, we do not learn what it is for Peter or Paul or Mary to exist in the first place. 

I want to know that is is for Peter (who stands in here for any individual) to exist. You tell me that for Peter to exist is for Peter to be identical to something.  But in giving this true but trivial answer you have helped yourself to the existence of the thing to which Peter is identical.  You have evaded my question by assuming that we are just given existing individuals.

What form could an answer take?  One answer is that the existence of the items in the domain of quantification is a brute fact and thus inexplicable.  To exist is just to be there inexplicably.  That would at least be an honest answer as opposed to the silly triviality that to exist is to be identical to something.  A radically different answer is to say that for a concrete contingent ndividual to exist is for it to be a divine creation.  Both the brute fact answer and the theistic answer are consistent with Quine's triviality.

Getting back to London Ed, why doesn't he accept my circularity objection to the thin theory?  He doesn't accept it because he is operating with an exclusively semantic notion of circularity which remains at the level of sentences and does not descend to the level of the truth-makers (ontological grounds) of sentences.  (In earlier discussions it became clear that Ed has no clue as to what a truth-maker is supposed to be.) The thin theory, as expressed in (1), however, is not obviously semantically circular: 'exists' is not found on the RHS. All one finds there is a quantifier, a variable bound by the quantifier, the identity sign, and a name that functions in this context as an arbitrary constant.  My claim, however, is that (1) is metaphysically or ontologically circular.  This notion is one that Ed does not understand.

Metaphysical grounding, one of whose forms is truth-making, is for Ed a wholly unintelligible notion.  For Peter and me, however, it is an intelligible notion .  Here I think we can locate the ultimate root of our disagreement.

What say you, gentlemen?

Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."

Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.  And he may stay in office in part because of disgusted conservatives who fail to heed Voltaire's principle.

Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. Not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.

Don't let the best or the better become the enemy of the good.  Try to achieve something achievable.  Don't pine after the unattainable.  Impossible dreams are for liberals, not reality-anchored conservatives.  It did not surprise me when I learned that Ted Kennedy's favorite song was The Impossible Dream.  Figures!

Related post: Can What is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for us? 

Journal Notes on Ed Abbey from May 1997

Ed_abbey_tvI purchased Edward Abbey’s posthumous collection of journal extracts entitled Confessions of a Barbarian (ed. Petersen, Little, Brown & Co., 1994) in April of 1997. Here are some journal jottings inspired by it.

From the notebooks of Paul Brunton to the journals of Ed Abbey – from one world to another. Each of us inhabits his own world. You're damned lucked if in a lifetime you meet two or three kindred souls who can enter, even if only a few steps, into one's own world.  The common world in which we meet with many is but the lowest common denominator of our private spheres of meaning.

Abbey bears the marks of an undisciplined man, undisciplined in mind and in body. A slovenly reasoner, a self-indulger.

Paul Brunton, Ed Abbey, Whittaker Chambers, Gustav Bergmann . . . mysticism, nature, politics, ontology . . . . The wild diversity of human interests and commitments.  It never ceases to fascinate and astonish me.

Ed Abbey: a romantic, the makings of a quester, but swamped by his sensuality. Held down by the weight of the flesh. The religious urge peeps out here and there in his journals, but his crudity is ever-ready to stifle any upward aspirations.

Abbey: the sex monkey rode him hard night and day. But did he want to throw him off? Hell no! Augustine wanted to be chaste, but not right away. Abbey did not want to be chaste. Can an incontinent man gain any true and balanced insight into the world and life? Lust, like pride, dims the eyes of the mind, and eventually blinds them.

The sex monkey in tandem with the booze monkey, a tag team tough to beat.

Which is more manly, to battle one’s sensuality like Augustine, or to wallow in it like Abbey? Is it cock and balls that make the man? Clothes? Social status? Money? Political power?  Big truck? (Abbey: "The bigger the truck the smaller the penis.") Or is it that weak little Funklein, the fragile germ of divine lght that we carry within?

The crudity of Abbey, the elevation of Thoreau.

Abbey: a tremendous sensitivity to the beauties of nature and music, but larded over with an abysmal
crudity. Half-educated, self-indulgent, willful. But he knows it, and a tiny part of him wants to do something about it, but he can’t. His base soul is too strong for his noble soul. Goethe’s Faust complained, “Zwei Seelen, ach, wohnen in meiner Brust, und der einer will sich von den anderen trennen!” Abbey could have made the same complaint about two incompatible souls in one breast.

Abbey: proud of his sensuality, his big dick, his five children whom he thinks are just darlings while meanwhile holding that others should not be allowed to procreate. A misanthrope – but not when it comes to himself, his family, and his friends. A tribalist of sorts.

The battle between the noble and the base. In Ed Abbey, the base usually wins.

Ed Abbey made a false god of nature. There is no god but Nature, and Abbey is her prophet.

As for his writing, I'll take it over the social phenomenology of suburban hank-panky served up by East Coast  establishmentarians such as John Cheever and John Updike.

This Life

We sometimes speak of this life.  For example, some assert that this life is all there is.  The ability to thematize and question the whole of life may not prove, but it does suggest, that we are more than beings confined to this life.  Even the average schlep, enmired in the mundane, his fledgling metaphysical organs numbed by the the onslaught of quotidiana, will at some point, when the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" pay him a visit, exclaim, "What the hell is this life all about?"

To Flout and to Flaunt

Why do people have such trouble with this distinction?  One flouts the law.  One does not flaunt it.  Correct:  'She flaunted her naked breats thereby flouting the law.'  Incorrect: 'She flouted her naked breasts thereby flaunting the law.'

Free Will

You say it is a life-enhancing illusion?
Perhaps it is
From a point of view not ours.
From ours
It has all the reality it needs
For all it needs to do is enhance life.

And that it does.
Disagree?
Then see
If you can live your life
On automatic pilot.

Good luck with that.

(If you crave something more substantial, poke around in my Free Will category.)

John Gardner on Mickelsson’s Ghosts

John Gardner describes his novel, Mickelsson's Ghosts:

The novel is about a famous philosopher who, midway through his career, suddenly finds himself (as Dante did) lost. He feels he has failed his wife and family (the wife has left him), feels he has betrayed his earlier promise and the values of his Wisconsin Lutheran background, has lost interest in his students and has ceased to care about philosophical questions, has lost faith and hope in democracy (and owes a large sum of money to the IRS), scorns the university where he teaches and the unsophisticated town in which it is situated, and has good reason to believe he is losing his mind. He cuts himself off fom his university community by buying a huge rotting house in the country, which turns out to be haunted (if he can trust his wits), and he finds himself up to the neck in evils he never before dreamt of — middle-of-the-night dumpings of poisonous wastes, witchcraft, backwoods prostitution, a mysterious string of murders, and more. (John Gardner, On Becoming a Novelist, Harper and Row, 1983, p. 141.)

 On Becoming a Novelist is an excellent book, just unbelievably good. And the above described novel ain't no slouch either. But Gardner, being a damned fool, got himself killed in a motorcycle accident at the tender age of 49. A serious loss to American letters.

John Gardner's card

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Woody Guthrie & Sons: Arlo, Adnopoz, Zimmerman

Tomorrow being Woody Guthrie's 100th birthday, tonight we revisit some of his tunes and some of those he influenced.  First a wry number from the man himself: Philadelphia Lawyer. A tale of an East Coast lawyer, a Hollywood maid, and a gun-totin' Reno cowhand name of Wild Bill, with "ten notches carved on his gun."  "Now tonight back in old Pennsylvania/Amongst her beautiful pines/There's one less Philadelphia lawyer/In old Philadelphia tonight."

Percy's Song, written by Bob Dylan, is well-performed by Guthrie's son, Arlo.  It is in the Guthrie tradition of left-leaning social protest.  A mean judge metes out an unjust sentence.  Arlo's City of New Orleans is a classic slice of Americana, and a great song, right up there with Don McLean's American Pie and Woody's This Land is Your Land. There is a element of silly socialist utopianism in the latter, but also something genuine and worthwhile.

Lacking as it does the proper American cowboy resonance, 'Elliot Charles Adnopoz' was ditched by its bearer who came to call himself 'Ramblin' Jack Elliot.'  Born in 1931 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who wanted him to become a doctor, young Adnopoz rebelled, ran away, and became a protege of Woody Guthrie.  If it weren't for Ramblin' Jack, Guthrie would be nowhere near as well-known as he is today. 

Pretty Boy Floyd.  "As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam/You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home."  No?  An example of the knee-jerk tendency of lefties invariably to  take the side of the underdog regardless of whether right or wrong.  It's as if weakness justifies. 

Ramblin' Jack does a haunting version of Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  It grows on you. Give it a chance.  Cigarettes and Whisky and Wild Woman.  Soul of a Man. Dylan's unforgettable,  Don't Think Twice.

And now the bard himself,the most distinguished Jewish  'son' of Woody Guthrie, who absorbed a hundred influences and made something new, Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota.  Song to Woody.  It Take a Lot to Laugh.  Video of Dylan's meeting with Guthrie as the latter lay dying of Huntington's Chorea in a New Jersey hospital.  I Shall Be Released.  Rollin' and Tumblin.'  Not Dark Yet.  "Sometimes my burden is more than I can bear/It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there."

Finally, one more from Woody.  Hard Travelin. 

Van Inwagen on ‘Exists’ as a Polyadic Predicate

This post continues my examination of Peter van Inwagen's "Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment."  The first post in this series is here.  There you will find the bibliographical details.

We saw that van Inwagen gives something like the following argument for the univocity of 'exists':

1. Number-words are univocal

2*. 'Exist(s)' is a number-word

Therefore

3*. 'Exist(s)' is univocal.

The second premise is pure Frege.  The question arises: is van Inwagen committed to the Fregean doctrine that 'exists(s)' is a second-level predicate?  He says he isn't. (484)

How should we understand a general existential such as 'Horses exist'?  Frege famously maintained that 'exist(s)' is a second-level predicate: it is never a predicate of objects, but always only  a predicate of concepts.  What the sample sentence says is that the concept horse has instances.  Despite appearances, the sentence is not about horses, but about a non-horse, the concept horse.  The concept horse is not a horse!  (Frege also famously and perplexingly maintains that the concept horse is not a concept, but let's leave that for another occasion.)  And what our general existential says about the concept horse is not that it exists (as we ordinarily understand 'exists') but that it is instantiated.  Van Inwagen, though endorsing Frege's key notion that (as PvI puts it) "existence is closely allied to number" (482) does not follow Frege is in holding that 'exists' is a second-level predicate.

Van Inwagen thus appears to be staking out a middle position between the following extremes:

A. 'Horses exist' predicates existence of individual horses.

B. 'Horses exist' predicates instantiation of the concept horse.

Van Inwagen's view is that 'Horses exist' says that horses, taken plurally, number more than zero.  So 'Horses exist,' contra Frege, is about horses, but not about individually specified horses such as Secretariat and Mr Ed. 'Horses exist' is not about the concept horse or any other abstract object such as a property or a set: it is about concrete horses, but taken plurally.

I am trying to understand this, but I find it obscure.   One thing I do understand is that there are predicates that hold plurally (collectively) but not distributively, but are not, for all that, second-level.  Van Inwagen gives the example:

1. Horses have an interesting evolutionary history.

Obviously, the predicate in (1) is not true of each individual horse.  No individual horse evolves in the sense pertinent to evolutionary theory.  But the predicate  is also not true of the concept horse or the set of horses or the property of being a horse or any other abstract object.  No concept, set, or property evolves in any sense.  So what is the logical subject of (1)?  Horses in the plural, or horses taken collectively.  Or suppose the cops have a building surrounded.  No individual cop has the building surrounded, and of course no abstract object has the building surrounded.  Cops have the building surrounded.  Suppose Manny is one of the cops.  Then the following argument would commit the fallacy of division: (a) The cops have the building surrounded; (b) Manny is one of the cops; ergo (c) Manny has the building surrounded.  What is true of cops in the plural is not true of any cop in the singular.

If I have understood PvI, he is saying that 'exists' functions like the predicate in (1), and like the predicate in 'The cops have the building surrounded.'   But this strikes me as problematic.  Consider these two arguments:

Horses have evolved
Secretariat is a horse
ergo
Secretariat has evolved.

Horses exist
Secretariat is a horse
ergo
Secretariat exists.

The first argument is invalid, committing as it does the fallacy of division.  The second argument is perfectly in order.

So it seems, contra Van Iwagen, that  'Horses exist' is importantly disanalogous to 'Horses have evolved' and 'The cops have the building surrounded.'  'Exists' is predicable of specified individuals, individuals in the singular.  'Evolved' is not predicable of specified individuals, individuals in the singular, but only of individuals in the plural.

I take van Inwagen to be saying that the logical subject of 'Horses exist' is not the concept horse, but horses, horses in the plural, and what it says of them is that they number more than zero.  What I am having trouble understanding is how 'more than zero' can attach to a plurality as a plurality, as opposed  to a  one-over-many such as a concept (which has an extension) or a set (which has a membership).

A plurality as a plurality is not one item, but a mere manifold of items: there is simply nothing there to serve as logical subject of the predicate 'more than zero.' 

"But look, Bill, it is the horses that are more than zero; so there is a logical subject of the predicate."

Response: You can't say what you want to say grammatically.  If there IS a logical subject of the predicate, then it is not a mere manyness. But if there ARE many subjects of predication, then 'more than zero' applies to each horse which is not what you want to say.   There must be something that makes the particulars you are calling horses horses, and that would have to be something like the concept horse; otherwise you have an unintelligible plurality of bare particulars.  But then when you say that the horses are more than zero you are saying that the concept horse has more than one instance, and number-words become second-level predicates.

My suspicion is that van Inwagen's middle path is unviable and that his position collapses into the full-throated Fregean position according to which (a) "existence is allied to number" and (b) number-words are second-level predicates. 

Van Inwagen on the Univocity of ‘Exists’

In "Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment" (in Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, eds. Chalmers et al., Oxford 2009, pp. 472-506), Peter van Inwagen argues that 'exists' is univocal: it does not have "different meanings when applied to objects in different categories." (482)  This post will examine one of his arguments, an argument found on p. 482.  All quotations are from this page.

Van Inwagen begins by noting that number words such as 'six' or 'forty-three' do not "mean different things when they are used to count objects of different sorts."  Surely he is correct: "If you have written thirteen epics and I own thirteen cats, the number of your epics is the number of my cats."  So the first premise of the argument is the indisputable:

1. Number-words are univocal in sense: they mean the same regardless of the sorts of object they are used to count.

Van Inwagen takes his second premise straight from Frege:

2. "But existence is closely allied to number."

How so?  Well, to say that unicorns do not exist is equivalent to saying that the number of unicorns is zero, and to say that horses exist is equivalent to saying that the number of horses is one or more.  Surely that is true for both affirmative and negative general existentials.  Whether it is true for singular existentials is a further question.

Van Inwagen proceeds: "The univocacy [univocity] of number and the the intimate connection between number and existence should convince us that existence is univocal."  The conclusion of the argument, then, is:

3. Existence  is univocal.

The first thing to notice about this argument is that it is not even valid.  Trouble is caused by the fudge-phrase 'closely allied to' and van Inwagen's shift from 'exists' to existence.  But repairs are easily made, and charity demands that we make them.  Here is a valid argument that van Inwagen could have given:

1. Number-words are univocal

2*. 'Exist(s)' is a number-word

Therefore

3*. 'Exist(s)' is univocal.

The latter argument is plainly valid in point of logical form: the conclusion follows from the premises.  It is the argument van Inwagen should have given.  Unfortunately the argument is unsound.  Although (1) is indisputably true,  (2*) is false.

Consider my cat Max Black.  I joyously exclaim, 'Max exists!'  My exclamation expresses a truth.  Compare 'Cats exist.'  Now I agree with van Inwagen that the general  'Cats exist' is equivalent to 'The number of cats is one or more.'  But it is perfectly plain that the singular  'Max exists' is not equivalent to  'The number of Max is one or more.'  For the right-hand-side of the equivalence is nonsense, hence necessarily neither true nor false.

This question makes sense: 'How many cats are there in BV's house?'  But this question makes no sense: 'How many Max are there in BV's house?'  Why not?  Well, 'Max' is a proper name (Eigenname in Frege's terminology) not a concept-word (Begriffswort in Frege's terminology).  Of course, I could sensibly ask how many Maxes there are hereabouts, but then 'Max' is not a proper name, but a stand-in for 'person/cat named "Max" .'  The latter phrase is obviously not a proper name.

Van Inwagen's argument strikes me as very bad, and I am puzzled why he is seduced by it.  (Actually, I am not puzzled: van Inwagen is in lock-step with Quine; perhaps the great prestige of the latter has the former mesmerized.)  Here is my counterargument:

4. 'Exists' sometimes functions as a first-level predicate, a predicate of specific (named) individuals.

5. Number-words never function as predicates of specific (named) individuals

Therefore

6. 'Exists' is not a number-word.

Therefore

7. The (obvious) univocity of number-words is not a good reason to think that 'exists' is univocal.

Of course, there is much more to say — in subsequent posts. For example if you deny (4), why is that denial more reasonable than the denial of (2*)?

All Along the Watchtower

The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9:

     Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye
     princes, and prepare the shield. For thus hath the Lord said unto
     me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. And he saw a
     chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a
     chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with such heed. . .
     . And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of
     horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen,
     and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the
     ground.

Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower:

     "There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief,
     "There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.
     Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
     None of them along the line know what any of it is worth." 

     "No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
     "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
     But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
     So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

     All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
     While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
     Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
     Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

The absurdist sensibility of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde gave way, after the July 1966 motorcycle accident, to a renewed seriousness. Life is no joke. We've been  through that. No more talking falsely now, the hour is getting late.

On Calling Obama a Socialist

It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist. For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this strict definition. Robert Heilbroner defines socialism in terms of "a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production." To my knowledge, Obama has never advocated such a thing. So when the libertarian or conservative accuses Obama of socialism he lets himself in for a fruitless and wholly unnecessary verbal dispute from which he will emerge the loser.

It is enough to point out that the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party lead us toward bigger government and away from self-reliance, individual responsibility, individual liberty, and sound fiscal policy.  If you want to use the 'S' word, you can say that Obama & Co. are pushing us in the direction of socialism.  But calling him a socialist is tactically inadvisable.  Never forget that the whole point is to remove him and his gang from positions of power.  To achieve that goal we need to persuade large numbers of fence-sitters that  that he is leading us down the wrong path.  That persuasion is less likely to happen if we come across as extremists who misuse language.

It is even worse to label Obama a 'communist.' Every communist is a socialist, but not every socialist is a communist. If our president is not a socialist, then a fortiori he is not a communist. It is intellectually irresponsible to take a word that has a definite meaning and turn it into a semantic bludgeon. That's the sort of thing we expect from leftists, as witness their favorite 'F' word, 'fascist,' a word they apply as indiscriminately and irresponsibly as 'racist.'

Liberals and leftists love to sling the SIXHRB (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted) epithets to pre-empt thought and prevent debate.  We should avoid similar behavior.

Milos Forman has an op-ed piece in the NYT entitled Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close.  Forman takes umbrage at the loose way 'socialism' is used by some conservatives:

Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.

Forman goes on to recount a couple of truly horrifying tales about what it was like living under the jackboot of communism in Czechoslovakia.

Although Forman is right to distinguish the brutal forms of socialism from the supposedly benign forms, he seems willy-nilly to concede that Obamacare is a socialist policy.  He is also quite naive if he thinks that the seeds of jackboot socilaism are not already present, in undeveloped form, in 'benign' socialism.  He seems not to understand that power corrupts people and that one can get to a truly awful destination by tiny steps each of which seems reasonable and benign.

The pious platitudes with which Forman ends his piece are risible.

Scriptural Inerrancy Again

The following is from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous but who wants me "to hear a different perspective on the matter than that of the Calvinists who comment on your blog: I don't want you thinking they are the ones rightly interpreting the Christian texts."

……………….

Jesus and Paul had a rather liberal interpretation of the Old Testament Law, by which I mean a non-literal, moralist interpretation. I shall explain this in further detail by offering a few exemplary statements from them both.

Jesus famously said that "What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them" (Mt 15:11), specifying what he meant a few verses later: "But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person" (vv. 18-20). This is directly contradictory to the teaching of the Old Testament Law; after a long list of animals the eating of which is strictly forbidden, Lev 11:24 reads: "You will make yourselves unclean by [eating] these." Jesus denies the literal truth of Lev 11:24 by denying the reality of ritual purity and impurity; instead he gave a spiritualized, moralist interpretation of purity and impurity: the only true (im)purity or (un)cleanliness is moral (im)purity or (un)cleanliness.
 
A further expression of the denial of the reality of ritual purity and impurity and, implied with this, a rejection of the temple sacrificial system of worship is involved in Jesus' quoting the verse from Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." When the Pharisees see that Jesus eats at the same table as many tax collectors and sinners — i.e., those who would render him ceremonially unclean and incapable of participating in the temple cult, thus removed from the blessings of God — Jesus responds that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Mt 9:10-13). "Sacrifice" is connected to a concern for ritual purity, as well as participation in the temple religious system; what God wants is not this, but mercy towards those who are in need of love: particularly those rejected by the religious figures and "holy men" of his time. God evidently is not concerned with ritual purity; he wishes that men be kind to one another, and he makes an effort to show such kindness himself through Jesus. But a rejection of ritual purity, the requirement for sacrifice, the legitimacy of the temple, etc., is a rejection of a literal reading of many Old Testament texts.

 
Consider also Jesus' and Paul's affirmation that the true fulfillment of the Law is obedience to the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (see, e.g., Mt 22:34-30; Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:14). This cannot be literally true, for the various ritual and ceremonial injunctions of the Law (e.g., regarding circumcision, dietary habits, sacrifices, etc.) cannot in any plausible way be interpreted as mere instances of love for neighbor; no one would ever get the impression that the command to circumcise one's child on the eighth day is an instance of "love thy neighbor" by reading the relevant OT texts. What this statement suggests, rather, is a non-literal and moralist interpretation of the Old Testament: what is really of value is the moral teaching about loving your neighbor; all that ritual and ceremonial stuff doesn't mean much of anything and can even at times be ignored.
 
One more example would be Paul's affirmations regarding the ultimate insignificance of circumcision: "A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Rom 2:28-29); "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts" (1 Cor 7:19); "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation" (Gal 6:15). No one would ever come to such a conclusion merely reading what the Old Testament says regarding the requirement of circumcision: "Every male among you shall be circumcised. . . . My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people" (Gen 17:10, 13-14). Paul elevates obedience to the moral commandments of God, especially "love thy neighbor", above the command of circumcision, so much so that the latter command is effectively annulled.
 
No one would come to the conclusions that Jesus and Paul did merely by reading the salient Old Testament texts themselves; their interpretation is non-literal and moralist, and is merely one manifestation of the tendency towards spritualized, internalized interpretations of inherited religion that appears in other places (e.g., ancient Greek religion with the advent of the philosophers) as well. (For more on this, see Stephen Finlan, The Background and Contents of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Boston: Brill, 2004), 47ff.)
 
 
BV comments:  I find the foregoing persuasive and would extract the following argument against inerrancy from it:
 
1. If the Scripture is inerrant, then no later passage revises, corrects, contradicts, annuls, or abrogates any earlier passage.
 
2. There are NT passages that contradict OT passages, e.g. MT 15:11 contradicts Lev 11:24. 
 
Therefore
 
3. It is not the case that the Scripture is inerrant.
 
The argument is valid in point of logical form.  If the first premise is not true, then I simply do not know what plenary inerrancy means. (I assume we mean by inerrancy plenary (full) inerrancy.  Otherwise I could maintain that my blog is inerrant, provided you ignore all assertions in it that are mistaken.  "It is everywhere inerrant except where it isn't.")  The first premise is true and so is the second as the anon. contributor demonstrated.  Therefore, the Scriptures are not inerrant.
 
ComBox open.  But if you comment, be BRIEF and address PRECISELY WHAT IS CLAIMED by the anonymous contributor.  Otherwise you will be unmercifully cast into the outer cyber-darkness where there is much weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

Barack Obama, the PoMo Prez

No one is more skillful than Victor Davis Hanson when it comes to exposing His Mendacity, the empty suit currently occupying the White House.  Here is an excerpt from a recent column:

Illegal, Legal, Neither, or Both?

I think the current status of immigration law goes something like this. It is fine for a municipality or state to contravene immigration law by declaring a region a “sanctuary,” where federal law cannot be enforced. But it is illegal for a state to enforce immigration statutes when the federal government will not. Arizona was sued for trying to deport illegal aliens; so California is considering ways to grant them amnesty. If an illegal alien graduates from high school, serves in the military, or breaks no law, he can be exempt from deportation; but if he does not graduate, does not serve, or breaks a law, there is no expectation that he will now suddenly be deported at the time those eligible for amnesty will not be. The president told Latino activists he wanted to, but could not, issue exemptions by fiat, but then did exactly that a bit later as the campaign heated up.  Eric Holder both claimed the Arizona law encouraged profiling and admitted he had never read it. Obama called for an end to vilification, and then begged Latinos to “punish our enemies,” in the manner he once asked supporters to “get in their face.”

Mandate/Tax/Penalty?

The new federal takeover of health care requires a mandate, a tax, or a penalty, but the architects of the plan cannot agree on which — not a surprising postmodern turn when Justice Roberts reportedly wrote much of both the majority-confirming and the minority-dissenting opinions. It is unpopular now, but supposedly won’t be when it is enacted (or read for the first time) — and that is why over 2,000 insiders obtained exemption from such popular legislation. The 2,400 pages of ObamaCare were to lower our premiums by $2,500 a family, but they have already risen by almost 10% on average. Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton for her advocacy of a mandate, a position he ridiculed as both unfair and unworkable — before asserting just the opposite when he adopted her position as his own. One cannot be rejected for insurance for a preexisting illness, and therefore need not purchase insurance (preferring instead to pay the mandate / tax /penalty) until he is actually in extremis and in need of costly care — sort of like buying car insurance the day after you were blindsided, or life insurance on the day you were diagnosed with leukemia.