Author: Bill Vallicella

Why Pay Taxes . . .

. . . when the government fails to do what it is constitutionally mandated to do such as secure the borders (Article I, Section 8), yet does all sorts of things for which there is no constitutional justification? Or has my reading of the U. S. Constitution been too spotty for me to find the mandate for Social Security?

Whether the Federal government should administer such programs as SS, or a substitute system suitably streamlined and reformed, is negotiable. But that border control is an indisputably legitimate and undeniably necessary function of government is not open to reasonable debate.

What are Numbers? Some Dubious Philosophy of Mathematics Exposed

Here we read:

     . . . aren't all numbers inventions? It is not like they grow on
     trees! They live in our heads. We made them all up.

The author of the quotation is introducing a discussion of the imaginary number i = the   square root of -1. His point is that we are free to introduce this  number since all numbers are inventions. So we can make up any number  we like. The actual argument given is self-contradictory: The point of  saying that numbers do not grow on trees is that they do not occur in nature. But if they live in our heads, then they are part of nature,  because our heads ae in nature and what is in our heads is part of nature.

But let's be charitable. The argument the author is trying to give is something like this:

   1. Numbers are not physical objects
   Therefore
   2. Numbers are mental constructions.

That this is a non sequitur should be obvious. For there is a third possibility: numbers are abstract or ideal or Platonic objects. This third possibility is of course the actual view of numerous distinguished thinkers  and is seen to be plausible once one considers the difficulties with the view that numbers are mental constructions.

Note first that an abstract object is not one produced by a mental act of abstraction. For present purposes we can say that an abstract  object is any entity that necessarily exists but is causally inert.

Note second that a number is not the same as a numeral. One and the same number can be represented by different numerals. Thus the same  number is denoted by the Arabic '9' and the Roman 'IX.'  Numerals are signs of numbers, while numbers are not. So no number is a numeral.  Numerals are typically physical (marks on paper, for instance); no number is physical.  Ergo, etv.

We also note that 9 in a base-10 or decimal system is equivalent to 1001 in a base-2 or binary system. When I speak of the number 9 I am referring to the denotatum of the numeral '9' as this numeral   functions within our ordinary base-10 system. That denotatum is the same as the denotatum of '1001' as the latter functions within a base-2 system.

One and the same proposition can be expressed by different indicative sentences. Thus the binary sentence '1 + 1 = 10' expresses the same true proposition as is expressed by the decimal sentence '1 + 1 = 2.'   But if the two sentences are both interpreted relative to the decimal system, then they express different propositions, one true and the other false.

Our question is whether numbers themselves are mental constructions, not whether numerals are mental constructions. This is connected with the question of whether mathematics is in any sense conventional. No doubt notation systems are conventional, i.e. decided upon by human beings (or whatever other intelligent critters there might be elsewhere); but it doesn't follow that numbers or other mathematical objects are.

If numbers themselves are mental constructions, then they depend on our existence for their existence. Their existence is a mental existnce in or before our minds, and thus a dependent mode of existence.  (Forget about extraterrestrial intelligences for the nonce.) The same goes for the truths in which they are involved. (Thus 7 and 9 and 16 are involved in the truth expressed by '7 + 9 = 16'.) But we didn't always exist. So if numbers depend ion us, they they didn't always exist.  Consider a time before any minds existed, some time after the Big Bang and before the emergence of life on earth, say.

During that interval, the speed of light and the speed of sound were the same as they are now, and during that time the former was greater than the latter, as is the case now. Let 'c' denote the speed of light in a vacuum. C is identical to some number, which number depending on the units of measurement one employs. So c = 186,000 miles/sec (approximately). In the metric system, c = 300,000 km/sec   (approximately). The point is that once the system of measurement is fixed — which of course is conventional — then some definite number is the SOL. Similarly with the speed of sound, SOS. Now

   1. SOL > SOS

is true now and was true at the time when no humans existed. Of course, at that time the concept or notion or idea greater than (taken in its mathematical sense) did not exist since concepts (notions,   ideas) cannot exist except 'in' a mind. ('In' here not to be taken  spatially.) But the mathematical relation picked out by '>' existed.

For if it did not, then (1) could not have been true at the time in question. And the same goes for the relational fact of SOL's being greater than SOS. That fact obtained at the time when no minds existed. So its constituents (the numbers and the greater than relation) had to exist at that time as well.

Therefore, mathematical objects cannot be our mental creations.  

More on Why Social Security is not Insurance

John Stossel, here:

Twice the government has argued before the Supreme Court that Social Security is not insurance. In 1960, Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Arthur Sherwood Flemming submitted a brief to the courts stating: "The contribution exacted under the Social Security plan is a true tax. It is not comparable to a premium promising the payment of an annuity commencing at a designated age."

In a ruling that denied a man's property claim to Social Security benefits, the Supreme Court said, "It is apparent that the noncontractual interest of an employee covered by the Act cannot be soundly analogized to that of the holder of an annuity, whose right to benefits is bottomed on his contractual premium payments."

On Wanting All of Life to be Wise and Philosophical

From Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837):

Nessun maggior segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita.

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical.

(Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri, tr. W. S. Di Piero, Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1981, p. 69) Do you see how the translation imports an ambiguity that is not present in the Italian original?

Is Social Security Insurance?

(This first appeared on the predecessor blog on 15 April 2005.)

Many supporters of the current Social Security system claim that it is a form of insurance. (See AARP Bulletin, April 2005, p. 38) I would  like to ask these supporters some questions.

(Q1) If SS is a form of insurance, what eventuality does it insure one against?  (Q2) If SS is a form of insurance, why are the premiums so large?  (Q3) If SS is a form of insurance, why does one receive a payout even if one does not suffer the loss against which one is insured?

To answer (Q1), one might say that SS — or at least the retirement program thereof — insures workers against destitution in their old age. But if this is the answer to (Q1), then (Q2) kicks in: why are the premiums for destitution insurance so large? Surely only relatively few become destitute after retirement, and to keep them off of cat food, it is not necessary for everyone to pay huge insurance premiums. If a worker makes 90 K per annum and (with the help of his employer) pays 12.4% for the destitution insurance, then he pays $11,160 per annum for the insurance, which comes to $930 per month. I say that is a lousy deal.

It is a lousy deal even if you make only $45 K a year. Would you pay it you weren't forced to? ($90 K is the 2005, cap, and if you don't see that the worker is shouldering the entire 12.4% burden, then your  grip on economic reality is weak indeed.) And don't forget that the 'cap' is not much of a cap inasmuch as it is temporary: it will increase. Indeed, a few short months ago it was $87,900. And not only will the cap move up, the retirement age will most likely be increased. What a   deal! And don't forget this. If you are a blue collar worker who puts his body on the line to make a living, then you really get the shaft if the retirement age is increased. A seventy year old professor can function passably well at that age, but not so a seventy year old iron worker high up on a scaffold.

But of course, under the current system, one receives a payout whether or not one ends up destitute. As long as you have contributed for 40 quarters, you receive a payout regardless of how much or how little net worth or income you have at the time the payout begins. But then in what sense is SS insurance? If it is not insurance against destitution, what is it insurance against?

My point is that there is no clear sense in which  SS is insurance. It is more like a retirement program. But  if so, why aren't there private accounts?  You have your very own SS number, but there is no account corresponding to it.  What's worse, the SS trust fund has no money in it. What it contains are intragovernmental bonds.

Do you understand what I am saying? The whole thing is a bloody conceptual muddle — which is part of the reason why there is endless partisan bickering over it.  It is not insurance and it is not a retirement program.  It is better described as an intergenerational wealth transfer arrangement with the the long-term sustainability of a Ponzi scheme.  It takes money from the young who (most of them) need it  and gives it to the old who (manyof them) do not need it.

I am not writing this out of self-interest. I've made mine. Any SS I get will be blown on computers, books and mountain bikes. I'm thinking about you young whippersnappers — you ought to be outraged at this SS ripoff. Admittedly, my motivations are not entirely altruistic: I greatly enjoy thinking, writing, and 'bullshit management.'

Why Exaggerate?

Why do people exaggerate in serious contexts? The logically prior question is: What is exaggeration, and how does it differ from lying, bullshitting, and metaphorical uses of language? A physician in a   radio broadcast one morning said, "You can't be too thin, too rich, or have too low a cholesterol level."

Note first that the medico was not joking but making a serious point. But he couched this serious point in a sentence which is plainly  false, indeed triply false. Since he had no intention of deceiving his audience, and since the point he was making (not merely trying to make) about cholesterol  is true, he was not lying. He was not bullshitting either since he was not trying to misrepresent himself as knowing something he does  not know or more than he knows.

Exaggeration bears some resemblance to metaphor. If I say, 'Sally is a block of ice,' I speak metaphorically or figuratively. What I say is literally false. But by saying it, I manage to convey to the listener some such proposition as that Sally is unemotional and (perhaps) sexually unresponsive. And when the sawbones exaggerated, though he said something literally false, he managed to convey to his audience the true proposition that total cholesterol levels for most of us need reducing.

But I wouldn't want to say that the good doctor was speaking metaphorically. I am merely pointing to a similarity between metaphor and exaggeration. The similarity may consist in the coming apart of   sentence meaning and speaker's meaning. In both examples, the sentence meaning is that of a falsehood. The speaker, however, using those  literally false sentences means something different from what the words 'by themselves' mean, and manages to convey truths to his hearers.

So I suggest that to understand exaggeration we need to understand metaphor so that we can delimit the former from the latter. But what exactly is metaphor? That's a tough one.

One more example.  I heard an intelligent-looking M.D. say on C-Span one moring that any exposure to sunlight is damaging.  Now that is an unconscionably stupid exaggeration.  Why say such a silly thing?  The sawbones must know that sunlight is a source of Vitamin D, and is good for other reasons as well.

So it is a puzzling phenomwenon.  Why do intelligent people exaggerate, and exaggerate wildly, when they must know that it diminishes their credibility? Is it perhaps a rhetorical technique to get people to pay attention to them?

In the case of the tobacco-wackos, who exaggerate the harmfulness of smoking and of sidestream smoke, their exaggerative distortions are readily understandable.  These types are leftists who hate corporations as such.  Their exaggeration is ideologically-driven.  I wonder whether they use Microsoft Word when they write their screeds.  Do they understand that Microsoft is –gasp! — a corporation?

Dennis Prager and Exaggeration

Dennis Prager warns against exaggeration.  He says, rightly, that to exaggerate is to lose credibility.  But he himself exaggerates when he refers to the Social Security sytem as a Ponzi scheme.  Obviously, it is not.  Admittedly, in its present configuration it is fiscally unsustainable like a Ponzi a scheme.  But it is not a Ponzi scheme for a very simple reason: it is not driven by fraudulent intent.  The liberals who set it  up and the liberals who defend its present configuration are by and large not crooks.  They had and have good intentions.  (Yes!)  Mitt Romney was right in last night's Tea Party debate to say that that it is "over the top" to refer to the SS sytem as a Ponzi scheme.

So why does a bright guy like Prager exaggerate in practically the same breath in which he warns against it?

A second example. Prager has an animus against 'studies.'  And with justification.  He regularly states that if a study confirms commonsense then it is unnecessary, and if it does not, then it is wrong.  As someone  who likes pithy formulations, I can see why he repeats this cute 'mantra.'  Unfortunately, it is an exaggeration.  Must I explain why? Not to the elite readers of this blog.

Prager has his acolytes Google his name.  (He addressed one of my posts on the air a while back.) So if he comes across this post, I want to say to him, "I love you, man; you do more for this country in one hour than I could do in a life time of scribbling.  I correct you because I love you."

Sentences as Names of Facts: An Aporetic Triad

There are good reasons to introduce facts as truth-makers for contingently true atomic sentences.  (Some supporting reasoning here.)  But if there are facts, and they make-true contingent atomic sentences, then what is the semantic relation between these declarative sentences and their truth-makers?  It seems we should say that such sentences name facts.  But some remarks of Leo Mollica suggest that this will lead to trouble.  Consider this aporetic triad:

1. 'Al is fat' is the name of the fact of Al's being fat.
2. 'Al is fat' has a referent only if it is true.
3. Names are essentially names: a name names whether or not it has a referent.

Each limb of the triad is very plausible, but they can't all be true.  The conjunction of (1) and (3) entails the negation of (2).  Which limb should we abandon?  It cannot be (1) given the cogency of the Truth Maker Argument and the plausible assumption that the only semantic relation between a sentence and the corresponding fact is one of naming.

(2) also seems 'ungiveupable.'  There are false sentences, and there may be false (Fregean) propositions: but a fact is not a truth-bearer but a truth-maker.  It is very hard to swallow the notion that there are 'false' or nonobtaining facts.  If 'Al is fat' is false it is because Al and fatness do not form a fact.  The existence of a fact is the unity of its constituents.  Where there is the unity of the right sort of constituents you have a fact; where there is not, you don't.

As for (3), suppose that names are only accidentally names, than a name names only on condition that it have a referent.  We would then have to conclude that if the bearer of a name ceases to exist, that the name ceases to be a name.  And that seems wrong.  When Le Verrier put forth the hypothesis of an intra-Mercurial planent  that came to be called 'Vulcan,' he did not know whether there was indeed such a planet, but he thought he had good evidence of its existence. When it was later decided that there was no good evidence of the planet in question, 'Vulcan' did not cease to be a name.  If we now say, truly, that Vlucan does not exist we employ a name whose naming is not exhausted by its having a referent.

So it seems that names name essentially.  This is the linguistic analog of intentionality: one cannot just think; if one thinks, then necessarily one thinks of something, something that may or may not exist. If I am thinking of something, and it ceases to exist, my thinking does not cease to be object-directed.  Thinking is essentially object-directed.  Analogously, names are essentially names.

So far, then, today's triad looks to be another addition the list of insolubilia.  The limbs of the triad are more reasonably accepted than rejected, but they cannot all be true.  A pretty pickle.

By the way, I insist on the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.

9/11 Ten Years After: Liberty and Security

Liberty and security stand in a dialectical relation to each other in that (i) each requires the other to be what it is, and yet (ii) each is opposed to the other. Let me explain.

Ad (i). LIberty is something worth having.  But a liberty worth having is a liberty capable of being exercised fruitfully and often. Liberty in this concrete sense requires security to be what it is. My liberty to  leave my house at any time of the day or night would be worth little or nothing if I were to be mugged every time I stepped over the threshold. On the other hand, a security worth having is a security that makes possible the exercise of as much liberty as is consistent with the liberty of all. The security of a prison or of a police state is not a security worth having. A security worth having, therefore, requires liberty to be what it is, something worth having.

Ad (ii). Nevertheless, liberty and security oppose each other. The security of all requires limitations on the liberty of each. For if the liberty of each were allowed untrammelled expression, no one would be secure in his life and property. Thus security opposes and limits liberty. Equally, liberty opposes and limits security. The right to keep and bear arms, for example, poses a certain threat to security, as everyone must admit whether liberal, conservative, or libertarian. The question is not whether it poses a threat, but whether the threat it poses is acceptable given the desirability of the liberty it allows.

Ad (i) + (ii). The situation is complex. Liberty requires the very security that it limits, just as security limits the very liberty that it requires. It follows that any attack on our security is also an attack on our liberty. It seems to me that this is a point that liberals and leftists do not sufficiently appreciate, and that some of them do not appreciate at all. The 9/11 attack on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon  did not merely destroy the security of those working in them, it also destroyed their liberty, while impeding to greater and lesser degrees the liberty of all the rest of us. But it must also be said that any restriction on our liberties also negatively affects the value of our security — a point conservatives need to bear in mind.

In the present circumstances, however, when the threats to our security are grave indeed, it is reasonable to tolerate greater than usual restrictions on our liberty. Any liberal or leftist who
disagrees with this should be unceremoniously confronted with the question: How much liberty did the victims of the 9/11 attack enjoy while they were being crushed under girders, burned alive, or falling to their deaths?

I now hand off to Charles Krauthammer, The 9/11 'Overreaction'?

On Redundancy

Redundancy is a stylistic flaw at worst. A noted chess writer advises, "You need to get psyched up within your own mind." One does indeed need to get psyched up to play well. But is it possible to get psyched   up in someone else's mind, or outside any mind? 

So the admonition is redundant and serves no purpose. Sometimes, however, redundancy serves the purpose of clarity. A noted writer on universals speaks of two particulars sharing a universal in common. This is a redundant formulation: if the universal is shared by the two particulars, then they have it in common. But the redundancy helps explain what 'share' means and thus serves clarity. So I offer this aphorism:

     Pleonasm in pursuit of precision is no logical sin, but at worst a stylistic peccadillo.

Plato’s Cave and the Garden of Eden

An archeologist who claimed to have uncovered the site of Plato's Cave would be dismissed as either a prankster or a lunatic.  There never was any such cave as is described in the magnificent Book VII of Plato's Republic.  And there never were any such cave-dwellers or  goings-on as the ones described in Plato's story.  And yet this, the most famous allegory in the history of philosophy, gives us the truth about the human condition.  It lays bare the human predicament in which shadow is taken for substance, and substance for shadow, the truth-teller for a deceiver, and the deceiver for a truth-teller.

The reader will have guessed where I am going with this.  If the allegory of the Cave delivers the truth about the human predicament despite its falsity when taken as an historical narrative, the same could be true for the stories in the Bible. No reasonable person nowadays could take Genesis as reporting historical facts.  To take but one example, at Genesis 3, 8 we read that Adam and Eve, after having tasted of the forbidden fruit, "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden . . . ."  Taken literally, this implies that God has feet.  But if he has feet  was he shod on that day or not?  If shod, what was his shoe size?  10 1/2?    Obviously, nothing can have feet without having feet of a determinate size!  And given that the original parents heard God stomping around, then he had to be fairly large: if God were the size of a flea, he wouldn't have made any noise.  If God were a  physical being, why couldn't he be the size of a flea or a microbe?  The answer to these absurdities is the double-barreled denial that God is a physical being and that Genesis is an historical account.  I could give further examples. (And you hope I won't.)

This is why the deliverances of evolutionary biology do not refute the Fall.  (I grant that said deliverances refute some doctrines of the Fall, those doctrines that posit an original pair of humans, without animal progenitors, from whom the whole human race is descended.)  Indeed, it is quite stupid to think that the Fall can be refuted from biology.  It would as stupid as to think that the truths about the human condition that are expressed in Plato's famous allegory can be negated or disconfirmed by the failure of archeologists to locate the site of Plato's Cave, or by any physical proof that a structure like that of Plato's Cave is nomologically impossible.

And yet wasn't that what Jerry Coyne, the University of Chicago biologist, was quoted as maintaining? 

Earlier I quoted John Farrell quoting biologist Jerry Coyne:

I’ve always maintained that this piece of the Old Testament, which is easily falsified by modern genetics (modern humans descended from a group of no fewer than 10,000 individuals), shows more than anything else the incompatibility between science and faith. For if you reject the Adam and Eve tale as literal truth, you reject two central tenets of Christianity: the Fall of Man and human specialness.

 I suppose this shows that the wages of scientism are (topical) stupidity.

Addenda (10 September 2011)

1.  I said that the Allegory of the Cave "gives us the truth about the human condition."  Suppose you disagree.  Suppose you think the story provides no insight into the human condition.    My point goes through nonetheless.  The point is that the truth or falsity of the story is unaffected by empirical discoveries and nondiscoveries.  Anthropological and archeological investigations are simply irrelevant to the assessment of the claims being made in the allegory.  That, I hope, is perfectly obvious.

2.  There is another point that I thought of making but did not because it struck me as too obvious, namely, that the Allegory of the Cave is clearly an allegory, and is indeed explicitly presented as such in Chapter VII of the Republic (cf. 514a et passim), whereas the Genesis account is neither clearly  an allegory, nor explicitly presented in the text as one.  But that too is irrelevant to my main point.  The point is that biological, anthropological, and geological investigations are simply irrelevant for the evaluation of what Genesis discloses or purports to disclose about the human condition.  For example, at Gen 1, 26 we are told that God made man in his image and likeness.  That means:  Man is a spiritual being.  (See my post Imago Dei) Obviously, that proposition can neither be established nor refuted by any empirical investigation.  The sciences of matter cannot be expected to  disclose any truths about spirit.  And if, standing firm on the natural sciences, you deny that there is anything other than matter, then you fall into the easily-refuted mistake of scientism.  Furthermore, Genesis is simply incoherent if taken as presenting facts about history or facts about cosmology and physical  cosmogenesis.  Not only is it incoherent; it is contradicted by what we know from the physical sciences.  Clearly, in any conflict between the Bible and natural science, the Bible will lose.

The upshot is that the point I am making about Genesis cannot be refuted by adducing the obvious difference between a piece of writing that presents itself as an allegory and a piece of writing that does not.  Plato's intention was to write an allegory.  The authors of Genesis presumably did not have the intention of writing an allegory.  But that is irrelevant to the question whether the stories can be taken as reporting historical and physical facts.  It is obvious that Plato's story cannot be so taken.  It is less obvious, but nonetheless true, that the Genesis story cannot be so taken.  For if you take it as historical reportage, then it is mostly false or incoherent, and you miss what is important: the spiritual, not the physical, meaning.

3.  The mistake of those who think that biology refutes the Fall is the mirror-image of those benighted fundamentalists and literalists who think that the Fall 'stands or falls' with the historical accuracy of tales about original parents, trees, serpents, etc.  The opposing groups are made for each other.  The scientistic atheist biologist attacks a fundamentalist straw man while the benighted fundamentalist knocks himself out propping up his straw man.  Go at it, boys!  The spectacle is entertaining but not edifying.

Hell for Philosophers

Jean-Paul Sartre put the following into the mouth of a character in the play, No Exit:  "Hell is other people."   What then would hell be for philosophers?  To be locked in a room forever with a philosopher with whom one has little or no common ground. David Stove and Theodor Adorno, for example.  Or Sartre and Etienne Gilson.

All is Impermanent? Impermanence and Self-Reference

I have long been fascinated by forms of philosophical refutation that exploit the overt or covert self-reference of a thesis. To warm up, consider

   1. All generalizations are false.

Since (1) is a generalization, (1) refers to itself. So if (1) is true, then (1) is false. On the other hand, if (1) is false, as it surely is, then (1) is false. Therefore, necessarily (1) is false. It follows that the negation of (1), namely, Some generalizations are true, is not just true, but necessarily true. (1) is self-refuting and its negation is self-verifying.  Some generalizations are true is an instance of itself which shows that it itself is true: one instance suffices to verify a particular generalization.

There are those who dismiss arguments like this as quick and facile. Some even call them 'sophomoric,' presumably because any intelligent and properly caffeinated sophomore can grasp them — as if that could constitute a valid objection. I see it differently. The very simplicity of such arguments is what makes them so powerful. A simple argument with few premises and few inferential moves offers few opportunities to go wrong. Here, then, is a case where simplex sigillum veri, where simplicity is the seal of truth.  Now consider a more philosophically interesting example, one beloved by Buddhists:

   2. All is impermanent.

(2) applies to itself: if all is impermanent, then (2), or rather the propositional content thereof, is impermanent. That could mean one of two things. Either the truth-value of the proposition expressed by (2) is subject to change, or the proposition itself is subject to change, perhaps by becoming a different proposition with a different sense, or by passing out of existence altogether.  (There is also a stronger reading of 'impermanent' according to which the impermanent is not merely subject to change, but changing.)

Note also that if (2) is true, then every part of (2)'s propositional content is impermanent. Thus the property (concept) of impermanence is impermanent, and so is the copulative tie and the universal
quantifier. If the property of impermanence is impermanent, then so is the property of permanence along with the distinction between permanence and impermanence.

In short, (2), if true, undermines the very contrast that gives it a determinate sense. If true, (2) undermines the permanence/impermanence  contrast. For if all is impermanent, then so is this contrast and this distinction. This leaves us wondering what sense (2) might have and whether in the end it is not nonsense.

What I am arguing is not just that (2) refutes itself in the sense that it proves itself false, but refutes itself in the much stronger  sense of proving itself meaningless or else proving itself on the brink of collapsing into meaninglessness.

No doubt (2) is meaningful  'at first blush.' But all it takes is a few preliminary pokes and its starts collapsing in upon itself.

Michael Krausz ("Relativism and Beyond: A Tribute to Bimal Matilal" in Bilimoria and Mohanty, pp. 93-104) arrives at a similar result by a different route. He writes:

     Paradoxically, because all things are contexted, the idea of
     permanence cannot be permanent. But it does not follow that in the
     end all things are impermanent either, for impermanence too is
     contexted and it too finally drops out of any fixed constellation
     of concepts. (101)

Krausz invokes the premise,

   3. All things are contexted.

Krausz writes as if (3) is unproblematic. But surely it too 'deconstructs' itself. Just apply the same reasoning to (3) that we applied to (2). Clearly, (3) is self-referential. So (3) cannot express an invariant structure of being. It cannot be taken to mean, context-independently, that every being qua being is contexted.

Note also that if (3) is true, then every part of (3)'s propositional content is contexted: the universal quantifier, the concept thing, the  copulative tie, and the concept of being contexted are all contexted. What's more, the very contrast of the context-free and the context-bound is contexted.

In short, (3), if true, undermines the very contrast that confers upon it a determinate sense, namely, the contrast between the context-free and the context-bound. For if all is contexted, then so is this contrast and this distinction.

(3) collapses in upon itself and perishes for want of a determinate sense. And the same goes for all its parts. Copulative Being collapses into indeterminacy along with every other sense of Being: the   existential, the identitative, the veritative, the locative, the class-theoretic. Being ends up with no structure at all. If Being and Thinking are one, as Father Parmendides had it, then the collapse of
Being brings Thinking down with it.

Clearly, we are sinking into some seriously deep shit here, and it is of the worst kind: the formless kind, crap that won't own up to its own crapiness, the kind that deconstructionists, whether Continental or Asian, like to serve up. It is stuff so unstable that one cannot even say that it stinks. Do we really want to wallow in this mess?

Wouldn't it be better to admit that there is an Absolute?