Author: Bill Vallicella

Insanity About Race: The ‘Niggerhead’ Non-Issue

I watched The O'Reilly Factor last night.  In one segment Bill O'Reilly and Brit Hume were discussing some word once used by locals as the name of a hunting venue that is connected with some trouble Rick Perry is in.  But they were so gingerly tip-toeing around the topic that I couldn't figure out what the offensive word was.  Was it perhaps 'Coon's Hollow'?   I ran through various possibilities, trying to guess what they were too chicken and pee-cee to plainly state. Turns out the word is 'Niggerhead.' This was a  name that long before Perry's visit to the site had been painted over.

Philosophers make a distinction between use and mention.  It is one thing to use a word to refer to someone or something, and quite another to talk about, or mention, the word.  Boston is a city; 'Boston' is not: no word is a city.  'Boston' is disyllabic; Boston is not: no city is composed of two syllables.  Same with 'nigger.' It's a disyllabic word, an offensive word, a word that a decent person does not use.  I am not using it; I am mentioning it, talking about it.  Same with 'Niggerhead.'  That was the name that certain locals used for the hunting venue in question.  I am talking about that name, not using it.

The 'reasoning' of the race-baiters is apparently that since Perry visited a place that once bore the unofficial name 'Niggerhead,' that he is either a racist or 'racially insensitive' or something.

What I would like to point out to these nasty liberal dumbasses is that reasoning is not association of ideas. Almost any idea can be associated with any other.  In the febrile and mushy mind of many liberals 'niggardly' suggests 'nigger' so that anyone who uses the former must be a racist.  That's pretty stupid, don't you think?  But it's par for the course for a liberal.  Or how about 'denigrate'?  Does the use of that word embody a racial slur?

This is important.  A man lost his job because he used the perfectly legitimate English word 'niggardly.'  This is insane.  If you are decent person, you will do your bit to oppose the scurrilous insanity of the race-baiting Left.

For more on 'Niggerhead,' read Bad Day at Racist Rock.

Demands of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters

Here is a list of their individually puerile and jointly inconsistent demands.

One wonders how

Demand nine: Open borders migration; anyone can travel anywhere to work and live

is consistent with

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system

and

Demand four: Free college education.

Libertarians believe in the foolish notion of open borders, presumably because they cannot think in any but economic terms; but at least libertarians are intelligent enough to realize that one cannot combine open borders with a full-tilt welfare state that provides 'free' health care, 'free' college education, etc.   The anti-capitalist punks, utopian dumbasses that they are, dream the impossible dream of a welfare state that allows millions upon millions to flood in to grab the goodies that the government will magically provide for them.

Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Again on the Ontological Argument for Truth

I gave the following argument:

We have the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept true proposition is instantiated, and there necessarily exists at least one truth, namely, the truth that the concept true proposition is instantiated.

A reader asks: Does not your argument presuppose that "to be instantiated" means "to exist extra-mentally"? What if someone believed that esse est percipi? If your argument was based on the aforementioned  assumption, then would not it beg the question because it presupposes what needs to be demonstrated?

Let us first note that it cannot be coherently maintained that to be is to be perceived without qualification.  To be perceived is to be perceived by someone or something.  For Bishop Berkeley, the someone in question is God whose being is precisely not identical to his being perceived.  The slogan therefore does not apply to God.  If absolutely everything were such that its being were its being perceived, then a vicious infinite regress would arise.  To put it figuratively, the world cannot be mere percepts 'all the way down.'  You have to come eventually to something whose being is in excess of its being perceived.

Perhaps what the reader is getting at is that any true proposition that instantiates the concept true proposition is  true only for a mind, and not true absolutely.  But this too leads to an infinite regress which appears to be vicious.  For consider the proposition *Every truth is true-for some mind or other; no truth is true absolutely.*  Call this proposition 'P.'  Is P true?  No, it is true-for some mind or other.  Call that proposition P*.  Is it true? No, it is true-for some mind or other.  An infinite regress arises, and it appears to be vicious.

The Problem of the Existence of Consciousness

I tend to the view that all philosophical problems can be represented as aporetic polyads.  What's more, I maintain that philosophical problems ought to be so represented.  You haven't begun to philosophize until you have a well-defined puzzle, a putative inconsistency of plausibilities.  When you have an aporetic polyad on the table you have something to think your teeth into.  (An interesting and auspicious typo, that; I shall let it stand.)

Consider the problem of the existence of consciousness.  Nicholas Maxwell  formulates it as follows: "Why does sentience or consciousness exist at all?"  The trouble with this formulation is that it invites the retort:  Why not?  The question smacks of gratuitousness.  Why raise it? To remove the felt gratuitiousness a motive has to be supplied for posing the question. Now a most excellent motive is contradiction-avoidance.  If a set of plausibilities form an inconsistent set, then we have a problem.  For we cannot abide a contradiction.  Philosophers love a paradox, but they hate a contradiction.  So I suggest we put the problem of the existence of consciousness as follows:

1. Consciousness (sentience) exists.
2. Consciousness is contingent: given that it exists it might not have.
3. If x contingently exists, then x has an explanation of its existence in terms of a y distinct from x.
4. Consciousness has no explanation in terms of anything distinct from it.

A tetrad of plausibilities.  Each limb makes a strong claim on our acceptance.  Unfortunately, this foursome is logically inconsistent: the conjunction of any three limbs entails the negation of the remaining one. Thus the conjunction of (1) and (2) and (3) entails the negation of (4).  So the limbs cannot all be true.  But they are all very plausible.  Therein lies the problem.  Which one ought we reject to remove the contradiction?

Note the superiority of my aporetic formulation to Maxwell's formulation.  On my formulation we have a very clear problem that cries out for a solution.  But if I merely ask, 'Why does consciousness exist?' there is no clear problem.  You could retort, 'Why shouldn't it exist?' 'What's the problem?'  There is a problem because the existence of conbsciousness conflicts with other things we take for granted.

(1) is absolutely datanic and so undeniable.  If some crazy eliminativist were to deny (1) I would show him the door and give him the boot.  (Life is too short for discussions with lunatics.)

(4) is exceedingly plausible. To explain consciousness in terms of itself would be circular, hence no explanation.  So it has to be explained, if it can be explained, in terms of something distinct from it.  Since abstract objects cannot be invoked to explain concrete consciousness, consciousness, if it can be explained, must be explained in physical and physiological and chemical and biological terms. But this is also impossible as Maxwell makes clear using a version of the 'knowledge argument' made popular by T. Nagel and F. Jackson:

But physics, and that part of natural science in principle re-ducible to physics, cannot conceivably predict and explain fully the mental, or experiential, aspect of brain processes. Being blind from birth—or being deprived of ever having oneself experienced visual sensations—cannot in itself prevent one from understanding any part of physics. It cannot prevent one from understanding the physics of colour, light, physiology of colour perception and discrimination, just as well as any nor-mally sighted person. In order to understand physical concepts, such as mass, force, wavelength, energy, spin, charge, it is not necessary to have had the experience of any particular kind of sensation, such as the visual sensation of colour. All predictions of physics must also have this feature. In order to understand what it is for a poppy to be red, however, it is necessary to have experienced a special kind of sensation at some time in one’s life, namely the visual sensation of redness. A person blind from birth, who has never experienced any visual sensation, cannot know what redness is, where redness is the perceptual property, what we (normally sighted) see and experience, and not some physical correlate of this, light of such and wave-lengths, or the molecular structure of the surface of an object which causes it to absorb and reflect light of such and such wavelengths. It follows that no set of physical statements, however comprehensive, can predict that a poppy is red, or that a person has the visual experience of redness. Associated with neurological processes going on in our brains, there are mental or experiential features which lie irredeemably beyond the scope of physical description and explanation.

(2) is also exceedingly plausible: how could consciousness (sentience)  exist necessarily?  But (3), whichis a versionof the principle of sufficient reason, is also very plausible despite the glib asseverations of those who think quantum mechanics provides counterexamples to it. 

So what will it be?  Which of the four limbs will you reject? 

I am tempted to say that the problem is genuine but insoluble, that the problem is an aporia in the strongest sense of the term: a conceptual impasse, an intellectual knot that our paltry minds cannot untie.

But this invites the metaphilosophical response that all genuine problems are soluble.  Thus arises a metaphilosophical puzzle that can be set forth as an aporetic triad:

5. Only soluble problems are genuine.
6. The problem of the existence of consciousness is not soluble.
7.  The problem of the existence of consciousness is genuine.

This too is an inconsistent set.  But each limb is plausible.  Which will you reject? 

Joyce Johnson Remembers Kerouac

Jack Kerouac's On the Road was published 54 years ago in September, 1957. Joyce Johnson remembers. Excerpts:

     Who could have predicted that an essentially plotless novel about
     the relationship between two rootless young men who seemed
     constitutionally unable to settle down was about to kick off a
     culture war that is still being fought to this day? [. . .]

     In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman sacrificed his life to a
     fruitless pursuit of the American dream; Kerouac's two protagonists
     acted as if that dream was of no importance. On the Road followed
     Sal and Dean through three years of frenetic transcontinental
     movement in the late 1940s. Their main goal in life was to "know
     time," which they could achieve by packing as much intensity as
     possible into each moment. [. . .]

     The two ideas, beat and beatnik — one substantive and
     life-expanding, the other superficial and hedonistic – helped shape
     the counterculture of the '60s and to this day are confused with
     each other, not only by Kerouac's detractors but even by some of
     his most ardent fans. [. . .]

     Beatniks were passe from the start, but On the Road has never gone
     without readers, though it took decades to lose its outlaw status.
     Only recently was it admitted — cautiously — to the literary canon.
     (The Modern Library has named it one of the 100 best
     English-language novels of the 20th century.) Fifty years after On
     the Road was first published, Kerouac's voice still calls out: Look
     around you, stay open, question the roles society has thrust upon
     you, don't give up the search for connection and meaning. In this
     bleak new doom-haunted century, those imperatives again sound
     urgent and subversive — and necessary.

Anthony Daniel's (Theodore Dalrymple's) assessment in Another Side of Paradise is rather less
positive:

     He led a tormented life, and I cannot help but feel sadness for a
     would-be rebel who spent most of his life, as did Kerouac, living
     at home with his mother. He also drank himself to a horrible death.
     But while it is true that most great writers were tormented souls,
     it does not follow that most tormented souls were great writers. To
     call Kerouac's writing mediocre is to do it too much honor: its
     significance is sociological rather than literary. The fact that
     his work is now being subjected to near-biblical levels of
     reverential scholarship is a sign of very debased literary and
     academic standards.

     I have seen some of the most mediocre minds of my generation
     destroyed by too great an interest in the Beats.

The last line of this quotation parodies the first line of Allen Ginsberg's Howl:

     I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
     starving hysterical naked . . . .

Jkerouacmom And as for Kerouac's "living at home with his mother," which Dalrymple intends as a slight, the truth is rather that Kerouac's mother lived with him, and with him and Stella Sampas after the two were married on 18 November 1966. (See Gerald Nicosia, Memory Babe, p. 670 ff.)  Kerouac was ever the dutiful son, a conservative trait that Dalrymple  misses.

The Great Obama Catharsis

A brilliant article by Victor Davis Hanson. Makes the case that we are really better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain.  Punning on 'catharsis,' a witty commenter writes, "We have met the enema, and his name is Obama."  Obama will precipitate a Huge Dump which will void us of the crap of leftism.

I now think I was wrong to criticize those conservatives who refused to vote for the wishy-washy pseudo-conservative McCain, thereby aiding Obama.  I overlooked the latter's aperient function.  (Bill Tingley, if you are still reading this blog, you were right.)

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Midnight and Other Hours of the Day

Benny Goodman, One O'Clock Jump
Lovin' Spoonful, Six O'Clock 
Maria Muldaur, Midnight at the Oasis
Eric Clapton, After Midnight
Thelonious Monk, Round Midnight
Jack Kerouac, Old Angel Midnight
Headswim, Old Angel Midnight
Patsy Cline, Walkin' After Midnight
Rolling Stones, Midnight Gambler
Allman Bros., Midnight Rambler
B. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Etta James,  Midnight Hour
The Vogues, Five O'Clock World
Blind Boy Fuller, Ten O'Clock Peeper
Eric Clapton and B. B. King, Three O'Clock Blues
Skip James, Four O'Clock Blues
The Gods, Eight O'Clock in the Morning

An Ontological Argument for Truth and the Correspondence Theory

A Pakistani correspondent e-mails:

Regarding your recent post An Ontological Argument for Objective Reality, do you think your argument demonstrates that the correspondence theory of truth is inherent to our notion of objective reality, because we cannot meaningfully, without contradiction, even talk about truth in the absence of objective reality? If so, your argument also settles the case in favor of correspondence theory of truth.

Excellent question.  I define 'ontological argument' in the earlier post, and note that 'ontological argument' and 'ontological argument for the existence of God' are not to be confused.  Here is an ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth:

We have  the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is  instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept true proposition is instantiated, and there necessarily exists at least one truth, namely, the truth that the concept true proposition is instantiated.

This is a sound ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth using only the concept true proposition, the law of excluded middle, and the unproblematic principle that, for any proposition p, p entails that p is true. By 'proposition' here I simply mean whatever can be appropriately characterized as either true or false. That there are propositions in this innocuous sense cannot be reasonably denied.

Does it follow that the correspondence theory of truth is true?  I don't think so.  What the above argument shows is that there are truths.  A truth is a true proposition, or, more generally, a true truth-bearer.  But a truth-bearer is not the same as a truth-maker.  A correspondence theory of truth, however, requires truth-makers.  And so there is a logical gap between

1. There are truths

and

2. There are truth-makers of these truths.

My ontological argument establishes (1).  It establishes the existence, indeed the necessity, of at least one truth 'outside the mind.'  But truths outside the mind might just be true Fregean propositions.  Such items are truth-bearers but not truth-makers.  So (2) does not straightaway follow from (1).

To get to (2), we need to introduce a truth-maker principle as supplementary premise. Discussions of truth-maker principles can be found in the Truth category.

A Pascalian Pointer to Our Fallenness

Edward T. Oakes in a fine article quotes Pascal:

The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is called nature we call wretchedness in man; by which we recognize that, his nature now being like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his. For who is unhappy at not being a king except a deposed king? Who is unhappy at having only one mouth? And who is not unhappy at having only one eye? Probably no one ever ventured to mourn at not having three eyes; but anyone would be inconsolable at having none.

Yes indeed, man is wretched and only man is wretched. Man's wretchedness is 'structural': man qua man is wretched. Wretched are not merely the sick, the unloved, and the destitute; all of us are wretched, even those of us who count as well off. Some of us are aware of this, our condition, the rest hide it from themselves by losing themselves in what Pascal calls divertissement, diversion. We are as if fallen from a higher state, our true and rightful state, into a lower one, and the sense of wretchedness is an indicator of our having fallen. We are in a dire state from which we need salvation but are incapable of saving ourselves by our own efforts, whether individual or collective.

Well, suppose you don't accept a word of this. And suppose you don't lapse into nihilism either. What option is left? The illusions of the Left and the notion of the perfectibility of man by his own doing? Then I recommend this passage from Reinhold Niebuhr also quoted by Oakes:

The utopian illusions and sentimental aberrations of modern liberal culture are really all derived from the basic error of negating the fact of original sin. This error . . . continually betrays modern men to equate the goodness of men with the virtue of their various schemes for social justice and international peace. When these schemes fail of realization or are realized only after tragic conflicts, modern men either turn from utopianism to disillusionment and despair, or they seek to place the onus of their failure upon some particular social group, . . . [which is why] both modern liberalism and modern Marxism are always facing the alternatives of moral futility or moral fanaticism. Liberalism in its pure form [that is, pacifism] usually succumbs to the peril of futility. It will not act against evil until it is able to find a vantage point of guiltlessness from which to operate. This means that it cannot act at all. Sometimes it imagines that this inaction is the guiltlessness for which it has been seeking. A minority of liberals and most of the Marxists solve the problem by assuming that they have found a position of guiltlessness in action. Thereby they are betrayed into the error of fanaticism.

I refuse to lapse into nihilism and I refuse to be suckered by the illusions of the Left, which illusions have been amply refuted by the horrors of the 20th century. That is why I take original sin seriously. But I reject Biblical literalism with its tale of a first man and a first woman in a garden. And of course I reject the idea that I am guilty because of what some other people did. So this leaves me with the task of articulating the doctrine of original sin/original ignorance in a way that is philosophically respectable.

Original Sin in a Darwinian World

Our old friend Jeff Hodges of Gypsy Scholar e-mails: 

I liked the interesting argument that the consequences of belief and nonbelief in original sin are both bad and thus evidence of our fallen natures. But I do wonder what either original sin or fallenness mean in a Darwinian world . . .

Jeff has posed an excellent question which I must try to answer.

1. I begin with what it can't mean.  It cannot mean that our present fallen condition is one we inherited from Adam and Eve if these names refer to the original parents of the human race.  And this for two reasons.

A. The first is that nothing imputable to a person, nothing for which he is morally responsible, can be inherited.  For what I inherit I receive ab extra by causal mechanisms not in my control.  (It doesn't matter whether these mechanisms are deterministic or merely probabilistic.)  That which is imputable to me, however, is only that which I freely bring about.  It is a clear deliverance of our ordinary moral sense that a person is morally responsible only for what he does and leaves undone, not for what others do or leave undone.  This deliverance is surely more credible than any theory that entails its negation.  So one cannot inherit sinfulness, guilt, or desert of punishment.  Therefore the actual sins of past persons cannot induce in me a state of sinfulness or guilt or desert of punishment.  And that includes the actual sins of our first parents if there were any.

This amounts to a denial of originated original sin.  It does not amount to a denial of originating original sin.  The distinction is explained in greater detail here.  So there can still be original sin even if sinfulness, guilt, and desert of punishment cannot be inherited.

As I said elsewhere, we must distinguish between the putative fact of original sin and the various theories one can have of it.  Refuting a particular theory does not amount to refuting the fact.

B. The second reason is that there were in actual historical fact no original parents of the human race who came into existence wthout animal progenitors.  We know this from evolutionary biology which is more credible — more worthy of belief — than the stories of Genesis interpreted literally.  In any conflict between the Bible so interpreted and natural science, the latter will win — every time.  So if one takes both Bible and science seriously, the Bible must be read in such a way that it does not conflict with our best science.

2. To take this whole original sin problematic seriously one must of course assume that in some sense or other 'Man is a fallen being.'   I warmly recommend the study of history to those who  adhere to such delusions of the Left as that of human perfectibility or the inherent goodness of humanity.  Once you disembarrass yourself of those illusions you will be open to something like human fallenness or Kant's radical evil.  I am not saying that the horrors of history by themselves entail man's fallenness.  Our fallenness is certainly not a plain empirical fact as G. K. Chesterton and others have foolishly and tendentiously suggested.  Chesterton's "plain as potatoes" remark was silly bluster.  It is rather that a doctrine of the fall is reasonably introuduced, by a sort of inference to the best explanation, to account for man's universal wretchedness and inability to substantially improve his lot. The details of the inferential move from what could count as plain facts to a doctrine of a fall is not my present topic. 

3. Now to Jeff's question.  If the Genesis stories cannot be read as literally true accounts of actual historical facts, if we accept the findings and theories of evolutionary biology as regards the genesis of human animals, then what can human fallenness mean? There are various possibilities.  I will mention just one, which derives from Kant. 

What we need is a theory that allows us to embrace all of the following propositions without contradicting any deliverance of natural science or any deliverance of our ordinary sound moral sense:

a. There is a universal propensity to moral evil in human beings which is radical in that it is at the root of every specific act of wrong-doing.
b. This propensity to evil is the best explanation of the fathomless horrors of the human condition.
c. The radical propensity to moral evil is innate in that it not acquired at any time in a moral agent's life, but is present at every time precisely as the predisposition to specific evil acts.
d. The propensity is imputable. 
e. The propensity is not inherited. 
f.  Imputable actions and states are free and unconditioned.

Here is a quick and dirty sketch of Kant's theory, a theory which allows one to affirm each of the six propositions above.

Man enjoys dual citzenship.  As a physical being, and thus as an animal, he he is a member of the  phenomenal world, the world of space-time-matter.  In this realm determinism reigns: everything that happens is necessitated by the laws of nature plus the initial conditions.  But man knows himself to be morally responsible, and so knows himself to be libertarianly free.  Since everything phenomenal is determined, and nothing free, man as moral agent is a noumenal being who 'stands apart from the causal nexus.'

Kant sees with blinding clarity that nothing imputable to an agent can be caused by factors external to the agent: only that which the agent does or leaves undone freely and by his own agency is imputable to the agent.  It follows that sinfulness, guilt, and desert of punishment cannot be inherited:  there is no originated original sin. For what is inherited is caused to be by factors external to the agent.  So (e) is true.  But the predisposition to moral evil is nonetheless innate in the sense that it is not conditioned by events in time.  It is logically prior to every action of the agent in the time-order.

How is the predisposition imputable?  It is imputable because it is the result of a free noumenal choice.  And so there is originating original sin.  Each of us by an atemporal noumenal choice is the origin of the radical evil which is at the root of each specific evil act. So (d) is true.

Kant's theory has its problems which I have no desire to paper over.  But it does provide an answer to Jeff's question.  His question, in effect, was what original sin or human fallenness could mean if Darwinism is true. Kant's theory counts as an answer to that question.  For on Kant's theory there is no need to contradict evolutionary biology by positing two original parents of the human race, nor any need to accept the notion that moral qualities such as guilt are biologically transmissible, or the morally unacceptable notion that such qualities are in any way (biologically, socio-culturally) inheritable.