I reckon most motorists find vanity plates distasteful. Upon seeing a plate bearing the letters 'Ph.D.' or 'M.D.' or 'J.D.,' the response is likely to be: BFD! In any case, who needs vanity plates when one can have for free one's very own vanity blog? And weblogs have this advantage: they are not in people's faces. You must freely decide to visit a site, and if you don't like what you find there, you bear at least half of the blame.
Author: Bill Vallicella
Movie Notes: The History Boys
From the old blog, originally posted 29 December 2006:
Most movies are trash, but not all, as witness The History Boys. It was well worth the drive to Scottsdale yesterday. Anyone serious about the humanities, from either side of the lectern, should enjoy it. It has much of what I look for in a movie: plenty of wit and intelligence; good dialogue; subtlety and the sort of ambiguity of which real life is replete; little 'action': no race & chase, smash & crash (except for a small bit near the end that had a reason for being there); no special effects of the sort that the crapsters of HollyWeird serve up to satisfy the adolescent needs of the sensation-addicted and stupefied; no gratuitous sex and violence, though there is sex, mainly of the homosexual sort; and perhaps most important, no attempt to manipulate the thoughts and emotions of the viewer. Instead, an entertaining raising of questions and posing of problems.
My favorite line was a quotation from A. E. Housman: "All human knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use."
Near the end there is the reasonably pessimistic suggestion that the humanities are dead, at least at the universities. But Hector the humanist's call to "Pass it on!" also comes through. It brought a tear
to this curmudgeon's eye, and a thought to his head: if the universities become inhospitable to the transmission of high culture, then the job will have to be done in venues like this.
Are You an Introvert?
The bolded material below is taken verbatim from Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking (Crown 2012), p. 13. I then give my responses. The more affirmative responses, the more of an introvert you are.
1. I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. Absolutely! Especially in philosophical discussions. As Roderick Chisholm once said, "In philosophy, three's a crowd."
2. I often prefer to express myself in writing. Yes.
3. I enjoy solitude. Is the Pope Catholic? Beata solitudo, sola beatitudo. Happy solitude, the sole beatitude.
4. I seem to care less than my peers about wealth, fame, and status. Seem? Do! Money is a mere means. To pursue it as an end in itself is perverse. And once you have enough, you stop acquiring more and turn to higher pursuits. Obscurity is delicious. To be able to walk down the street and pass as an ordinary schmuck is wonderful. The value of fame and celebrity is directly proportional to the value of the fools and know-nothings who confer it. And doesn't Aristotle say that to be famous you need other people, which fact renders you dependent on them? Similarly with social status. Who confers it? And what is their judgment worth?
5. I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me. More than once in these pages have I ranted about the endless yap, yap, yap, about noth, noth, nothing.
6. People tell me I'm a good listener. Yes. My mind drifts back to a girl I knew when I was fifteen. She called me her 'analyst' when she wasn't calling me 'Dr. Freud.'
7. I'm not a big risk-taker. That's right. I recently took a three-day motorcycle course, passed it, and got my license. I had been eyeing the Harley-Davidson 883 Iron. But then I asked myself how riding a motorcycle would further my life tasks and whether it makes sense, having come this far, to risk my life and physical integrity in pursuit of cheap thrills.
8. I enjoy work that allows me to "dive in" with few interruptions. Right. No instant messaging. Only recently acquired a cell phone. I keep it turned off. Call me the uncalled caller. My wife is presently in a faraway land on a Fulbright. That allows me to unplug the land-line. I love e-mail; fast but unintrusive. I'll answer when I feel like it and get around to it. I don't allow mself to be rushed or interrupted.
9. I like to celebrate birthdays on a small scale, with only one or two close friends or family members. I don't see the point of celebrating birthdays at all. What's to celebrate? First, birth is not unequivocally good. Second, it is not something you brought about. It befell you. Better to celebrate some good thing that you made happen.
10. People describe me as "soft-spoken" or "mellow." I'm too intense to be called 'mellow,' but sotto voce applies.
11. I prefer not to show or discuss my work with others until it is finished. Pretty much, with the exception of these blog scribblings.
12. I dislike conflict. Can't stand it. Hate onesidedness. I look at a problem from all angles and try to mediate oppositions when possible. I thoroughly hate, reject, and abjure the blood sport approach to philosophy. Polemic has no place in philosophy. This is not to say that it does not have a place elsewhere, in politics for example.
13. I do my best work on my own. Yes. A former colleague, a superficial extrovert, once described me as 'lone wolf.'
14. I tend to think before I speak. Yes.
15. I feel drained after being out and about, even if I've enjoyed myself. Yes. This is a common complaint of introverts. They can take only so much social interaction. It depletes their energy and they need to go off by themselves to 'recharge their batteries.' In my case, it is not just an energy depletion but a draining away of my 'spiritual substance.' It is as if one's interiority has been compromised and one has entered into inauthenticity, Heidegger's Uneigentlichkeit. The best expression of this sense of spiritual depletion is probably Kierkegaard's remark in one of his early journal entries about a party he attended:
I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and soul; witty banter flowed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me — but I came away, indeed that dash should be as along as the radii of the earth's orbit ———————————————————- wanting to shoot myself. (1836)
16. I often let calls go through to e-mail. Yes. See comment to #8 above.
17. If I had to choose, I'd prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled. I love huge blocks of time, days at a stretch, with no commitments whatsoever. Dolce far niente. Sweet to do nothing.
18. I don't enjoy multitasking. Right. One thing at a time.
19. I can concentrate easily. Obviously, and for long stretches of time.
20. In classroom sitations, I prefer lecture to seminars. Especially if I'm doing the lecturing.
Here is a description of the Myers-Briggs INTP. And here is another.
Henri the Feline Existentialist
David Brightly’s Weblog and a Punctilio Anent Predication and Inclusion
The unduly modest David Brightly has begun a weblog entitled tillyandlola, "scribblings of no consequence." In a recent post he criticizes my analysis of the invalidity of the argument: Man is a species; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is a species. I claimed that the argument equivocates on 'is.' In the major premise, 'is' expresses a relation of conceptual inclusion: the concept man includes the subconcept species. In the minor premise, however, the 'is' is the 'is' of predication: Socrates falls under man, he doesn't fall within it.
I am afraid that my analysis is faulty, however, and for the reasons that David gives. There is of course a difference between the 'is' of inclusion and the 'is' of predication. 'Man is an animal' expresses the inclusion of the concept animal within the concept man. 'Socrates is a man,' however, does something different: it expresses the fact that Socrates falls under the concept man.
But as David notes, it is not clear that species is included within the concept man. If we climb the tree of Porphyry we will ascend from man to mammal to animal; but nowhere in our ascent will we hit upon species.
‘Institutionalized Racism’
Liberals love the phrase, 'institutionalized racism.' A racist society it is in which so many blacks achieve high political office despite the fact that blacks are a small minority of the population. Indeed, we have a black president. What better proof that racism is inscribed into our institutional structure? But then again, Obama is only half black. If George Zimmerman of Trayvon Martin fame is a 'white Hispanic' as maintained in the Solomonic pages of the New York Times, then, by parity of reasoning, Barack Obama is a 'white black.' Is that perhaps the proof of institutional racism? You see, if the USA were not institutionally racist, then we would have a black-black president by now.
Of course I am being sarcastic. In dealing with notions as preternaturally idiotic as those of liberals, mockery, derision, sarcasm and the like are more effective than patient argument. Reason and argument are effective only with those who inhabit the plane of reason. There is no point in talking sense to the denizens of the planet Unsinn. Or if you are not in the mood to mock and deride them, if you are feeling charitable, then offer your help and therapy. Those who are beneath reason do not need refutation; they need therapy. They need care. And we conservatives do care. We want you liberals to be happy and successful and less stupid. Of course we are honest enough to admit that our motive is partially selfish: the less stupid and unsuccessful and unhappy you are, the better it will be for us.
Actually, what we need is a 'proctology' of the liberal. We need to understand how so many heads can inhabit that region where the sun doesn't shine. But understanding is not enough: we need practical methods of extraction. My fear, however, is that even an army of proctologists, each member of which enjoys the life span of a Methuselah, would not be able to bring the shrunken pate of even one liberal into the light of day.
And that's a pity. (I have successfully resisted the temptation to engage in scatological alliteration.)
For an example of the sort of idiocy I am excoriating, see here; for an antidote, go here.
Who Is Happy?
Arguments and Proofs in Philosophy
London Ed writes:
Philosophers always refer to their arguments as 'arguments' and never as 'proofs'. This is because there is nothing in the entire, nearly three thousand year history of philosophy that would count as a proof of anything. Nothing.
This obiter dictum illustrates how, by exaggerating and saying something that is strictly false, one can still manage to convey a truth. The truth is that there is very little in the history of philosophy that could count as a proof of anything. But of course some philosophers do refer to their arguments as proofs. Think of those Thomists who speak of proofs of the existence of God. And though no Thomist accepts the ontological 'proof,' there are philosophers who refer to the ontological argument as a proof. The Germans also regularly speak of der ontologische Gottesbeweis rather than of das ontologische Argument. For example, Frege in a famous passage from the Philosophy of Arithmetic writes, Weil Existenz Eigenschaft des Begriffes ist, erreicht der ontologische Beweis von der Existenz Gottes sein Ziel nicht. (sec. 53)
These quibbles aside, an argument is not the same as a proof. 'Prove' is a verb of success. The same goes for 'disprove' and 'refute.' But 'argue' is not. I may argue that p without establishing that p. But if I prove that p, then I establish that p. Indeed, I establish it as true.
Why has almost nothing ever been proven in the history of philosophy?
It is because for an argument to count as a proof in philosophy — I leave aside mathematics which may not be so exacting — certain exceedingly demanding conditions must be met. First, a proof must be deductive: no inductive argument proves its conclusion. Second, a proof must be valid: it must be a deductive argument such that its corresponding conditional is a narrowly-logical truth, where an argument's corresponding conditional is a conditional proposition the protasis of which is the conjunction of the argument's premises, and the apodosis of which is the argument's conclusion.
Third, although a valid argument needn't have true premises, a proof must have all true premises. In other words, a proof must be a sound argument. Fourth, a proof cannot commit any infomal fallacy such as petitio principii. An argument from p to p is deductive, valid, and sound. But it is obviously no proof of anything.
Fifth, a proof must have premises that are not only true, but known to be true by the producers and the consumers of the argument. This is because a proof is not an argument considered in abstracto but a method for generating knoweldge for some cognizer. For example, if I do not know that I am thinking,then I cannot use that premise in a proof that I exist.
Sixth, a proof in philosophy must have premises all of which are known to be true in a sense of 'know' that entails absolute impossibilty of mistake. Why set the bar so high? Well, if you say that you have proven the nonexistence of God, say, or that the self is but a bundle of perceptions, or that freedom of the will is an illuison, or whatever, and one of your premises is such that I can easily conceive its being false, then you haven't proven anything. You haven't rationally compelled me to accept your conclusion. You may have given a 'good' argument in the sense of a 'reasonable' argument where that is one which satisfies my first four conditions; but you haven't given me a compelling argument, an argument which is such that, were I to reject it I would brand myself as irrational. (Of course the only compulsion here at issue is rational compulsion, not ad baculum (ab baculum?) compulsion.)
Given my exposition of the notion of proof in philosophy, I think it is clear that very little has ever been proven in philosophy. I am pretty sure that London Ed, as cantankerous and contrary as he is known to be, will agree. But he goes further: he says that nothing has ever been proven in philosophy.
But hasn't the sophomoric relativist been refuted? He maintains that it is absolutely true that every truth is relative. Clearly, the sophomoric relativist contradicts himself and refutes himself. One might object to this example by claiming that no philosopher has ever been a sophomoric relativist. But even if that is so, it is a possible philosophical position and one that is provably mistaken. Or so say I.
Or consider a sophist like Daniel Dennet who maintains (in effect) that consciousness is an illusion. That is easily refuted and I have done the job more than once in these pages. But it is such a stupid thesis that it is barely worth refuting. Its negation — that consciousness is not an illusion — is hardly a substantive thesis. A substantive thesis would be: Consciousness is not dependent for its existence on any material things or processes.
There is also the stupidity of that fellow Krauss who thinks that nothing is something. Refuting this nonsense hardly earns one a place in the pantheon of philosophers.
Nevertheless, I am in basic agreement with London Ed: Nothing of any real substance has ever been proven in philosophy. No one has ever proven that God exists, that God does not exist, that existence is a second-level property, that there is a self, that there is no self, that the will is free, that the will is not free, and so on.
Or perhaps you think you have a proof of some substantive thesis? Then I'd like to hear it. But it must be a proof in my exacting sense.
The Illiberalism of Contemporary Liberals
When I attack liberals it is always contemporary liberals that I have in my sights. I myself am in several ways a classical liberal. What I object to in contemporary liberals, or 'progressives' as they like to call themselves, is their extremism and their illiberalism. Peter Berkowitz has an excellent article on progressive illiberalism.
There is more true liberalism in today's conservatives than in today's 'liberals.'
Lady Gogi
YouTube comments are among the worst of the Internet. But this is good: "You can have your Lady Gaga, I'll take Lady Gogi."
Can Things Be Counted?
From the mail:
I saw your blog post the other day titled Saying and Showing where you talked about Wittgenstein's exchange with Russell on 'things', along with his Kantian perspective. Toward the end you say this: "What goes for 'world' also goes for 'thing.' You can't count things. How many things on my desk? The question has no clear sense. It is not like asking how many pens are on my desk. So Wittgenstein is on to something. His nonsense is deep and important."
In fact, E. J. Lowe says something similar toward the beginning of his book The Possibility of Metaphysics. However, I have never entirely understood the motivation behind this claim. It seems to me that, as a matter of fact, a man *can* count the number of things on his desk. There will certainly be very *many* things (the composite objects, their parts down to the atoms, and so forth), but what stops them from being *in principle* counted? [. . .]
Let's begin by clearing up an ambiguity. I can count the cats in my house; cats are things (in the very broad sense in which the term means the same as: object, entity, existent, being, item); and so one might think that one can count things. I'll grant that. But what we cannot do — and this was my claim –is count things as things. I can sensibly ask how many cats, cat whiskers, unicorns, pachyderms, and bottles of tequila are presently in my house, and I can sensibly give the following answers: 2, <40, 0, 0, 1. What I cannot do is sensibly ask how many things or existents are in my house.
Why is this? Well, when I count Fs, what I am doing is counting instances of the concept F. To count I need a concept, a classificatory device. To count the spatulas in a drawer I have to have the concept spatula. I have to know what 'counts' as a spatula. I have to know WHAT a spatula is to know whether there are any and how many there are. I have to be able to identify a particular item as a spatula (as opposed to, say, a ladle) and I have to be able to re-identify it — so that I don't count it twice. To count three spatulas and two ladles I need the concepts spatula and ladle. That makes five utensils. How many electrical appliances? Zero. In each of these cases, what we are counting are the instances of a concept.
How many utensils in the drawer? Five. How many entities? This question has no clear sense. The question presupposes that some definite answer is possible in terms of a finite or even a transfinite cardinal. But any answer given, whether 5 or 50 or aleph-nought will be arbitrary. Do we count the handle of the ladle as distinct from the rest of it? Is one ladle two entities? But of course, parts themselves have parts, and they have parts, etc. Suppose the ladle is ultimately composed of simple (indivisible) bits of matter. Suppose there are n such bits. In the region of space occupied by the ladle are there n entities or n + 1 entities? Is the whole ladle countably distinct from its parts? Or is the whole ladle just those parts? (Compare van Inwagen's denial of artifacts.) And what about the space occupied by the ladle? It is not nothing! So do we count it too when we count the entities in the drawer? And the time during which it exists?
And then there are properties and relations and relational properties and perhaps also property-instances. Do I count the properties of the spatula and the relations in which it stands to the other things in the drawer when I (try to) count the entities in the drawer?
Suppose in the drawer there is a triangular piece of mental. Now everything triangular is trilateral, and vice versa. And this is true as a matter of broadly-logical necessity. So, when I count (or try to count) the entities in the drawer, do I count triangularity and trilaterality as two properties or as one property?
From considerations like these one can see that the question How many entities? has no clear sense. We can give a sense to it, but that would involve the arbitrary imputation of conceptual content into 'entity.' Suppose I define:
X is an entity df= x is either a feral cat or a piece of cooked seaweed.
That 'definition' would allow me to count the entities in my house. And the answer is . . . (wait for it): zero.
To count is to count the instances of a concept. Existence is not a concept that has instances. Therefore, one cannot count existents as existents.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Death and Resurrection
Johnny Cash, Ain't No Grave
Johnny Cash, Redemption
Mississippi John Hurt, You've Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley
B. B. King, See That My Grave is Kept Clean
Blind Boy Grunt (Bob Bylan), Gospel Plow
Bob Dylan, Fixin' to Die
Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus
Johnny Cash, Hurt
Johnny Cash, Final Interview. He speaks of his faith starting at 5:15.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 45e: "Go on, believe! It does no harm."
Kitsch King Kinkade Dead
RIP. But if you put a gun to my head and force me to choose between Kinkade and Rothko, I'll go with Kinkade.
Good Friday Meditation: Wittgenstein on Christianity
From Culture and Value, p. 32e, tr. Peter Winch:
Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief that is appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin, which you can do only as the result of a life. Here you have a narrative!–don’t treat it as you would another historical narrative! Make a quite different place for it in your life.– There is nothing paradoxical about that!
The "nothing paradoxical" may be an allusion to Kierkegaard who is discussed in nearby 1937 entries. For Kierkegaard, it is is absurd that God should become man and die the death of a criminal, but this absurdity or paradox is precisely what the Christian believer must embrace. Wittgenstein appears to be rejecting this view, but also the view that S. K. also rejects, namely, that Christianity is grounded in verifiable historical facts such as that Jesus Christ was crucified by the Romans, died, was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead.
I interpret Wittgenstein to be saying that Christianity is neither an absurd belief nor an historically grounded one. It is a groundless belief, but not groundless in the sense that it needs, but lacks, a ground, but in the sense that it is a framework belief that cannot, because it is a framework belief, have a ground and so cannot need one either. Christianity is a form of life, a language-game, self-contained, incommensurable with other language-games, under no threat from them, and to that extent insulated from logical, historical, and scientific objections, as well as from objections emanating from competing religious language-games.
But is it true?
When Jesus told Pontius Pilate that he had come into the world to bear witness to the truth, Pilate dismissed his claim with the cynical, "What is truth?" Presumably, the Wittgensteinian fideist cannot likewise dismiss the question of the truth of Christianity. If it is true, it is objectively true; it corresponds to the way things are; it is not merely a set of beliefs that a certain group of people internalize and live by, but has an objective reference beyond itself.
Here is where the Wittgensteinian approach stops making sense for me. No doubt a religion practiced is a form of life; but is it a reality-based form of life? And no doubt religions can be usefully viewed as language games. But Schachspiel is also a Sprachspiel. What then is the difference between Christianity and chess? Chess does not, and does not purport to, refer to anything beyond itself. Christianity does so purport.
Here is an extended post on Wittgensteinian fideism.
Stumbling Block or Stepping Stone?
One man's stumbling block is another's stepping stone. The philosopher, the believer, the cross.