Author: Bill Vallicella

A Note on Political Rhetoric

Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme?  Many conservatives so label it.  But obviously it is not a Ponzi scheme.  The intent behind such schemes is fraud.  Not so with the SS system.  If your point is that the SS system as currently configured is unsustainable in the long run, and is to that extent like a Ponzi scheme, then say that.  You will then be saying something that, in my opinion, is true.  But don't say something that is literally and obviously false if you expect to convince fair-minded people.

You may accuse me of not understanding the purpose of political rhetoric.  "The purpose is not to convince thoughtful and fair-minded people; the purpose is to fire up the lazy and largely thoughtless masses.  The purpose is to 'energize the base.'  You naively think that others share your abhorrence of loose and irresponsible talk.  They don't."

Negative Existentials and the Causal Theory of Reference: Notes on Donnellan

Causal theories of reference strike me as hopeless.  Let's see how they fare with the problem of negative existentials.

There are clear cases in which 'exist(s)' functions as a second-level predicate, a predicate of properties or concepts or propositional functions or cognate items, and not as a predicate of individuals. The   affirmative general existential 'Horses exist,' for example, can be understood as making an instantiation claim: 'The concept horse is instantiated.' Accordingly, the sentence does not predicate existence of individual horses; it predicates instantiation of the concept horse.

This sort of analysis is well-nigh mandatory in the case of negative general existentials such as 'Flying horses do not exist.' Here we have a true sentence that cannot possibly be about flying horses for the simple reason that there aren't any. (One can make a move into Meinong's jungle here, but there are good reasons for not going there.) On a reasonable parsing it is about the concept flying horse, and says of this concept that it has no instances.

The same analysis works for negative singular existentials like 'Pegasus does not exist.' Pace Meinong, everything exists. So, given the truth of 'Pegasus does not exist,' 'Pegasus' cannot be taken as naming Pegasus. Since 'Pegasus' has meaning, contributing as it does to the meaning of the true sentence, 'Pegasus does not exist,' and since 'Pegasus' lacks a referent, a natural conclusion to draw is that  the meaning of 'Pegasus' is not exhausted by its reference: it has a sense whether or not it has a referent. So, along Russellian lines, we may analyze 'Pegasus does not exist' as, 'It is not the case that there exists an x such that x is the winged horse of Greek mythology.'   Or we can take a page from Quine and say that nothing pegasizes. What we have done in effect is to treat the singular term 'Pegasus' as a   predicate and read the sentence as a denial that this predicate applies to anything.

In this way the paradox attaching to singular negative existentials is removed. But the Russell-Quine analysis is based on the assumption that names are definite descriptions in disguise (Russell) or else transformable into predicates (Quine). But how does one deal with the problem of negative existentials if one denies the Russell-Quine approach to proper names, holding instead that they refer directly to their nominata, and not via the sense of a definite description or Searlean disjunction of definite descriptions?

Keith Donnellan tackles this problem in "Speaking of Nothing" (reprinted in S. P. Schwarz, ed., Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds, Cornell UP, 1977, pp. 216-244).

Consider 'Santa Claus does not exist.' What does a child come to learn when he learns this truth? He does not learn, as a Russellian would have it, that nothing in reality answers to (satisfies) a certain
description; what he learns is that the historical chain leading back from his use of 'Santa Claus' ends in a 'block':

     When the historical explanation of the use of a name (with the
     intention to refer) ends in this way with events that preclude any
     referent being identified, I will call it a "block" in the history.
     In this [Santa Claus] example, the block is the introduction of the
     name into the child's speech via a fiction told to him as reality
     by his parents. (237)

Having defined 'block,' Donnellan supplies a rule for negative existence statements, a rule which he says does not purport to supply the meaning of negative existentials but their truth-conditions:

     If N is a proper name that has been used in predicative statements
     with the intention to refer to some individual, then 'N does not
     exist' is true if and only if the history of those uses ends in a
     block. (239)

'God' would appear to satisfy the antecedent of this conditional, so Donnellan's theory implies that 'God does not exist' is true if and  only if the history of the uses of 'God' ends in a block.

There is something wrong with this theory. If 'God does not exist' is true, then we may ask: what makes it true? What is the truthmaker of this truth? The most natural answer is that extralinguistic reality   makes it true, more precisely, the fact that reality contains nothing that could be referred to as God. There is nothing linguistic about this truthmaker. Of course, if 'God does not exist' is true, then 'God' does not refer to anything, and if 'God' does not refer to anything then the sentence 'God does not exist' is true. But the wholly nonlinguistic fact of God's nonexistence is not identical to the partially linguistic fact of 'God''s not referring to anything.  Why not? Consider the following modal argument:

   1. God's nonexistence, if it obtains, obtains in every possible world.
   2. The fact of 'God''s not referring to anything obtains in only some
   possible worlds. (Because the English language exists in only some
   worlds.)
   Therefore
   3. The two facts are distinct.

The argument just given assumes in its initial premise Anselm's Insight: if God exists, then he necessarily exists, and if he does not, then he is impossible. But I don't need this assumption. I can
argue as follows:

   5. God's nonexistence, if it obtains, obtains in some possible worlds.
   6. Among these possible worlds, some are worlds in which English does
   not exist.
   Therefore
   7. There is at least one world in which neither God nor the English
   language exists, which implies that God's nonexistence in that world
   cannot have as truthmaker any fact involving the name 'God.'

Let me put it another way. If 'God does not exist' is true, then the same fact can be expressed in German: 'Gott existiert nicht.' This is one fact expressible in two different languages. But the fact of
 'God''s not referring to anything is a different fact from the fact of 'Gott''s not referring to anything. The facts are different because they involve different word-types. Therefore, neither fact can be
 identical to the fact of God's nonexistence.

Since the two facts are different, the wholly nonlinguistic fact of God's nonexistence cannot have as a truth-condition the partially linguistic fact of the history of uses of 'God' ending in a block, contrary to what Donnellan says. If one assertively utters 'God does not exist,' and if what one says is true, then extralingustic reality must be a certain way: it must be godless. This godlessness of reality, if it indeed obtains, cannot be tied to the existence of any contingent language like English.

Note that the descriptivist need not fall into Donnellan's trap. When he assertively utters 'God does not exist' he says in effect that all or most of the properties associated with the use of 'God' — such
properties as omniscience, etc. — are not instantiated: nothing in extralinguistic reality has them. Since these properties can be viewed as having an objective, extralinguistic existence, the descriptivist needn't tie the existence/nonexistence of God to the existence of any contingent language.

Pushing Outwards Toward the Limits of Mystery

Flannery O'Connor, "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction" in Mystery and Manners (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969), pp. 40-42:

All novelists are fundamentally seekers and describers of the real, but the realism of each novelist will depend on his view of the ultimate reaches of reality. Since the eighteenth century, the popular spirit of each succeeding age has tended more and more to the view that the ills and mysteries of life will eventually fall before the scientific advances of man, a belief that is still going strong though this is the first generation to face total extinction because of these advances.  If the novelist is in tune with this spirit, if he believes that actions are predetermined by psychic make-up or the economic situation or some other determinable factor, then he will be concerned above all with an accurate reproduction of the things that most immediately concern man, with the natural forces that he feels control his destiny.  Such a writer may produce a great tragic naturalism, for by his responsibility to the things he sees, he may transcend the limitations of his narrow vision.

On the other hand, if the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself.  His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward towards the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted.  Such a writer will be interested in what we don't understand rather than in what we do.  He will be interested in possibility rather than in probability.  He will be interested in characters who are forced out to meet evil and grace and who act on a trust beyond themselves — whether they know very clearly what it is they act upon or not.  To the modern mind, this kind of character, and his creator, are typical Don Quixotes, tilting at what is not there.

I was struck by this passage because in philosophy too there is a similar distinction.  There are those philosophical speleologists who are content to describe and explain the furnishings of Plato's Cave seemingly oblivious to its being a cave, and there are those who are always pushing their own limits outward towards the limits of mystery. For the latter, philosophy's technical minutiae are meaningless unless in the service of a transcending vision. 

Singular Meaning

Edward Ockham of Beyond Necessity is back from his Turkish holiday and reports that, besides lazing on the beach at Bodrum, he

. . . spent some time thinking about singular concepts. Do you accept singular meaning? Either you hold that a proper name has a meaning, or not (Aquinas held that it does not, by the way). If it does, then what is it that we understand when we understand the meaning of a proper name? The scholastics held that there was a sort of equivalence between meaning and signifying ("unumquodque, sicut contingit intelligere, contingit et significare"). What I signify, when I use a term in the context of a proposition, is precisely what another person understands, when he grasps that proposition that I have expressed.

Do I accept singular meaning?  That depends on what we mean by 'meaning' and by 'singular.'  Let's see if we can iron out our terminology.

1. Without taking 'sense' and 'reference' in exactly the way Frege intended them to be taken, I would say that 'meaning' is ambiguous as between sense and reference.  Unfortunately, Edward seems to be using 'meaning' to mean 'sense.'  Of course, he is free to do that.

2. Edward also uses the word 'signify.'  I should like him to explain exactly  how he is using this word.  Is the signification of a proper name the same as what I am calling its sense? Or is the signification of a proper name its  referent? Or neither? Or both?

3.  Suppose I assertively utter a token of 'Peter is tired' in the presence of both Peter and Edward.   My assertion is intended to convey a fact about Peter to Edward.  The latter grasps (understands) the proposition I express by my assertive tokening of the sentence in question.  And of course I understand the same proposition.  What I signify — 'express' as I would put it — by my use of 'Peter' is what Edward understands when he grasps the proposition I express. 

4.  Now the issue seems to be this.  Is the meaning or signification or sense  I express, and that I understand,  when I say 'Peter'  a singular meaning?  More precisely: is it an irreducibly singular meaning, one that cannot be understood as logically constructed from general concepts such as man, philosopher, smoker?

5. I say No!   I don't deny that 'Peter' has a sense.  It has a sense and a referent, unlike 'Vulcan' which has a sense but no referent.  But the sense of 'Peter' is not singular but general.  So, to answer Edward's question, I do not accept singular meaning.

Corollary: the haecceity of Peter – Peterity to give it a name — cannot be grasped.  All thinking is general: no thinking can penetrate to the very haecceity and ipseity of the thing thought about.  One cannot think about a particular except  as an instance of multiply exemplifiable concepts/properties.  This is 'on all fours' with my earlier claim that there are no singular or individual concepts.  The individual qua individual is conceptually ineffable.  So if we know singulars (individuals) at all, we do not know them by conceptualization.

If Edward disagrees with this he must tell us exactly why.  He should also tell us exactly how he is using 'proposition' since that is another potential bone of contention.  Is he a Fregean, a Russellian, or a Geachian when it comes to propositions?  Or none of those?

Of Ether, Lead, and Misattribution

Those of us who pursue the ethereal should never forget that it is blood, iron, and lead that secure the spaces of tranquillity wherein we flourish.

I found the following in a gun forum:  “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” It was attributed to George Orwell.

I don't know whether Orwell wrote those exact words.  I rather doubt that he did.  But he did write, in Notes on Nationalism, "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."  The thought is essentially the same, and a good and true thought it is.

Pacifism is for angels.  But we are mixed and mixed-up beings, half animal, half angel.

You should never trust any unsourced attribution you find on the Internet .

The following beautiful  line of Henry David Thoreau is routinely misquoted:

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Again and again, people who cannot read what is on the page substitute 'wilderness' for 'wildness.' People see what they want to see, or expect to see. Here is an example of double butchery I found recently:

In wilderness is the preservation of Mankind.

(Warren Macdonald, A Test of Will, Greystone Books, 2004, p. 145.) 

On Temptation and the Perfection of Jesus

Joshua Orsak e-mails: 
Your recent posts on temptation got me thinking (again) about a problem I've wrestled with a long time. I'm a Christian minister and I've long thought about a tension between Jesus Christ's focus on intentions and sin in the internal life of man and the Christian conviction summed up in Hebrews 4:15 that Jesus was tempted in all the ways that we are but did not sin. I accept Jesus' injunction against (for instance) lusting after a person in one's heart and being angry at a person as sinful mental states or attitudes. I know from many of your past posts that you, too, are sympathetic with such a view. I believe that attitudes and intentions can be sinful as well as actions, and no doubt I get that from my Christianity.
 
But it seems to me that to be tempted is at least in part to (for instance) 'lust after a woman in your heart'. To be angry at someone is to be tempted to act against them. To be attracted to a woman and think about (say) cheating on my wife is to be tempted to cheat. But isn't that lusting after her in my heart? This creates a problem with the view that Jesus was sinless and indeed has often made me question that particular doctrine. How could Jesus be tempted 'in all ways' that we are and yet not sin, since it seems that to be tempted is to adopt, if only for a moment, the attitudes he labels as sinful? I've never come up with a satisfactory answer to this question, so I was wondering what you might think of it.
I had actually never thought of this.  The problem seems genuine and worth discussing for anyone who takes Christian orthodoxy seriously.  To throw the problem into sharp relief, I will formulate it as an inconsistent pentad:
 
1. Being fully human, Jesus was subject to every manner of temptation and was actually tempted.
2. To be tempted to do X is to harbor the thought of doing X.
3. Thoughts are morally evaluable: there are such things as evil (sinful) thoughts.
4.  If a person habitually harbors evil (sinful) thoughts,  then the person is sinful.
5. Being fully divine, Jesus was wholly sinless.
 
This quintet of propositions is logically inconsistent as is obvious from the fact that if  the first four are true, then the fifth must be false.
 
To solve the problem we must reject one of the pentad's limbs.  (1) and (5) are clear commitments of orthodox Christian theology and so cannot be abandoned by anyone who wishes to remain orthodox.  (3) has a NT basis, and so it cannot be abandoned either.  But (2) and (4) are rejectable.
 
As for (2), I can be tempted to do something like cheating my inexperienced customers without harboring the thought of doing so: I might just have the thought but then suppress it or dismiss it.
 
As for (4), even if  a married person dwells on the sinful thought of a trip to Las Vegas (where, we are told, "what happens there, stays there") to hook up (in the contemporary sexual sense) with an old flame, that by itself does not make the person a sinful person.  To be a sinful person one must habitually sin in thought, word, or deed.  Going on a drunk or two does not make one a drunkard; lying a few times does not make one a liar, etc. 
 
Note that (2) and (4) are necessary to derive a contradiction.  The problem can thus be solved by rejecting one or both of these propositions.  Rejecting (2) suffices to solve the problem.
 
In sum, Jesus' being tempted and his being perfectly sinless are consistent because, while Jesus had tempting thoughts, he did not entertain them with hospitality but rejected them.  "Get behind me, Satan, etc."
 

Britain and the Barbarians

Commentary by Theodore Dalrymple.  You may have noticed that liberals have a exasperatingly lenient and casual attitude toward criminal behavior:

A single example will suffice, but one among many. A woman got into an argument with someone in a supermarket. She called her boyfriend, a violent habitual criminal, "to come and sort him out." The boyfriend was already on bail on another charge and wore an electronic tag because of another conviction. [. . .]  The boyfriend arrived in the supermarket and struck a man a heavy blow to the head. He fell to the ground and died of his head injury. When told that he had got the "wrong" man, the assailant said he would have attacked the "right" one had he not been restrained. He was sentenced to serve not more than 30 months in prison. Since punishments must be in proportion to the seriousness of the crime, a sentence like this exerts tremendous downward pressure on sentences for lesser, but still serious, crimes. 

So several things need to be done, among them the reform and even dismantlement of the educational and social-security systems, the liberalization of the labor laws, and the much firmer repression of crime.

The sentence I bolded is very important. This is why a ban on the death penalty is very foolish besides being morally obtuse.  But there is no common sense on the Left, so much so that contemporary liberalism is arguably more of a mental aberration than a cogent  position on social and political questions.

Bonum Progressionis and the Value of One’s Life

The value of a whole is not determined merely by the values of the parts of the whole; the order of the parts also plays a role in determining the value of the whole.  One of several order principles governing the value of a whole is the bonum progressionis.  Glossing Franz Brentano, R. M. Chisholm (Brentano and Intrinsic Value, Cambridge, 1986, p. 71) writes:

The principle of the 'bonum progressionis' or the 'malum regressus' might be put by saying: 'If A is a situation in which a certain amount of value x is increased to a larger amount y, and if B is like A except that in B there is a decrease from the larger amount of value y to the smaller amount x, then A is preferable to B.'  Thus Brentano writes: "Let us think of a process which goes from good to bad or from a great good to a lesser good;then compare it to one which goes in the opposite direction.  The latter shows itself as the one to be preferred.  This holds even if the sum of the goods in the one process is equal to that in the other.  And our preference in this case is one that we experience as being correct." (Foundation, pp. 196-197) (In comparing the two processes, A and B, we must assume that each is the mirror image of the other.  Hence the one should not include any pleasures of anticipation unless the other includes a coresponding pleasure of recollection.)The bonum progressionis, then, would be a good situation corresponding to A, in our formulation above, and the malum regressus would be a bad situation corresponding to B.

Now let's see if we can apply this insight of Brentano to the question of the value of one's life.   A human life can be thought of as a whole the parts of which are its periods or phases.  It seems obvious that the value of the whole will depend on the values of the parts. 

But order comes into it as well.  Suppose lives L1 and L2 are such that the sums of the values of their constituent phases (however you care to individuate them) are  the same quantity of value, however this may be measured.  (There is also the serious question, which I set aside, of whether it even makes sense to speak of an objective measure of the value of a human life.) But whereas L1 begins well in childhood and adolescence but then deteriorates in quality, L2 begins poorly in childhood and adolescence and  gets better. 

If Brentano's bonum progressionis principle applies here, and I would say it does, then L2 is a more valuable life than L1 despite the fact that the sums of the values of their constituent phases are equal in value.  So we can say that the value of a life is more than the sum of the values of its parts when the life is ascending in value, but less than the sum of the values of its parts when the life is descending in value.

This may shed some light on why some people in old age (which I define as beginning at age 60), feel their lives to be not very valuable or satisfying while others in the same age cohort from similar backgrounds find their lives to be valuable and satisfying despite the obvious limitations that old age imposes.

The above analysis of course only scratches the surface.  Another thing to consider is that what is real and important to us is primarily what is real and important now.  The memories of past satisfactions are no match for the perceptions of present miseries.  So if the whole of one's life up to the present has been excellent while the present is miserable, the balance of good over evil cuts little or no ice.  But to explore this further is for another time. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Songs of Color

Here is a sampling, starting with the determinable and proceeding to some determinates:

Donovan and Joan Baez, Colors
Ry Cooder, Yellow Roses.  A beautiful song. Give it a chance.
Bobby Darin, 18 Yellow Roses.  Never could understand why this tune is almost never played on the oldies stations.
Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze.  For all you benighted qualia deniers out there.
Thelonious Monk, Blue Monk
Jimi Hendrix, Red House
Cream, White Room.  You say this is not a song of color?  What, is white not a color?
Los Bravos, Black is Black
Procol Harum, A Whiter Shade of Pale
Joan Baez, The Green, Green Grass of Home

Temptation Again

This from a reader:
 
I have been a follower and great admirer of you and your blog writing for some time. I enjoyed reading your most recent post, especially as this topic has been fresh in my mind from preaching a sermon last week from James 1:13-15 on the nature and power of temptation in the Christian life. While of course our conclusions will inevitably differ in many ways on this topic, given our differences of belief concerning Christianity, I wanted to write you to ask for clarification concerning what you distinguish as first-order temptations and meta-temptations (or perhaps second-order temptations?).
 
I believe the heart of your argument is: Meta-temptation is the worst form of temptation because one who succumbs to the temptation to reject the objective validity of the moral point view has removed the context in which dalliance with floozies, paying one's debts, not murdering one's rivals, etc. are morally evaluable.

My question is this: is not your definition of meta temptation true of all temptation? Since I always choose that which is most desirable to my mind’s eye in the moment (to paraphrase Jonathan Edwards on the Freedom of the Will), am I not choosing that which I perceive as the greatest good and desirable, even if in reality it is not good but evil? Of course self-deception is at work where I assent to contradictory propositions in the moment: I should not do [X] because it is evil (i.e. God has forbidden [X]); I should do [X] because it is good (i.e. [X] will satisfy me and thus I determine what is good and evil).
 
The distinction I was making was between being tempted to do what one's moral sense tells one is wrong in a particular situation, and the temptation to discount as illusory the entire moral point of view.  These strike me as different  because one can be tempted in the first way while having no doubts at all about the objective validity of morality. Consider an example.  I am a married man in a distant city attending a convention.  A woman I meet there makes it clear that she is attracted to me and is available for sex. Finding her attractive I am tempted to invite her up to my hotel room. This is a 'first-order' temptation in that it concerns a specific action.  Let us assume that there is no prudential reason why I shouldn't act upon my desire.  But my conscience or moral sense  tells me that the contemplated action, adultery, is wrong because it violates a vow I took.   I do not doubt at all the objective validity of the deliverances of conscience in general or even the validity of the present deliverance; I simply override the present deliverance.  I just block it out.  I don't even have to engage in any rationalization.  I merely suppress the bite of conscience and go ahead with the action.
 
So I don't see that my definition of meta-temptation applies to this sort of case.  I know (or rather believe) that what I am about to do is objectively wrong, but, in the grip of lust, I freely suppress this knowledge (or belief) and freely go ahead with the contemplated action. I am not choosing what appears to me at the moment most desirable (desire-worthy), for I believe I am about to do a morally shabby thing.  But I do it anyway!  I willfully do what I know or believe I ought not do.  And I do it freely.  Lust may have me in its grip but I am not powerless to resist it; I freely consent to going with the flow.
 
Is not the purpose of all temptation to construct on alternate reality/metaphysic of what is good and what is evil, to make the false “look more true than truth itself” (to quote Irenaeus from his Against Heresies), to make something look larger than life in order to tempt me to believe that it will slake and satisfy my vicious lusts? It reminds me of Romans 1:22-23 where the Apostle Paul writes, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” What is interesting about verse 23 is that Paul lists the order of creation backwards as if to say, “The moment you exchange the glory of the Creator for the creature, all of reality becomes inverted and perverted and thrown completely upside down.”
I think that seems to be the nature of all temptation: an inversion and perversion of reality where the evil becomes the good and the good the evil.
 
I don't see that all temptation amounts to an erection of an alternative metaphysic of good and evil.  The example I gave, which is common enough, involves no transvaluation of any received values.  We value fidelity and disvalue betrayal.
 
Please note that the inversion you speak of where the evil becomes good and the good becomes evil presupposes the moral point of view.  Suppose A agrees with B that there is an objective and absolute moral order.  But they disagree about which actions are good and which evil.  A might hold that it is objectively good to procreate while B, under the influence of Schopenhauer, holds that procreation is objectively evil.  That is a deep disagreement but one that plays out within the context of the shared assumption of an objective moral world order. The meta-temptation I am referring to is far more radical: the 'Nietzschean' temptation to dismiss as illusory the very notion of objective good and evil. 

Temptation and Meta-Temptation

Temptation Is it built into the very concept of temptation that if one is tempted to do something or leave something undone that the act or ommission is morally wrong? I should think so.  This is not to say that in ordinary English 'temptation' is not used in looser ways. For example, 'I am tempted to answer my opening question in the affirmative.'  Or, 'I am tempted to take some of my cash and buy precious metals.'  These are loose uses of 'tempt' and cognates.  I am here concerned with the strict use, the moral use.  Accordingly, it is by my lights a conceptual truth, and thus a necessary truth, that if one is tempted to do X or forego doing Y, then the act or the omission is morally wrong. 

So, strictly speaking, to be tempted to do something is to be tempted to do something wrong.  One cannot be tempted to do the right thing, or the good thing, or what one ought to do.  This is nonsense: 'The floozy at the Kitty Kat lounge shook her comely ass in my face thereby tempting me to go home to my wife.'  If there is temptation in this situation, it is the temptation to dally with the floozy.  There is no temptation in the  desire to be faithful to one's spouse or in the even stronger desire to engage in sexual intercourse with her. 

Nor can one be tempted to do something morally insignificant, i.e., morally neutral.    'Home fries or hash browns'  in normal circumstances is not a morally significant choice.  I cannot be temped either way. 

I am inclined, though not tempted, to say that the worst form of temptation is the temptation to think that it doesn't matter morally what one does or leaves undone, that the moral point of view is illusory, that morality is buncombe, conventional at best, not grounded in rerum natura.  Lacking a better name for this I will call it 'meta-temptation in order distinguish it from such first-order temptations as the temptation to commit adultery or to shoot my neighbor's barking dog.

Meta-temptation is the worst form of temptation because one who succumbs to the temptation to reject the objective validity of the  moral point view has removed the context in which dalliance with floozies, paying one's debts, not murdering one's rivals, etc. are morally evaluable.  Such a person 'beyond morality' may have prudential reasons for doing this and refraining from that, but not strictly moral reasons.

But if meta-temptation is a form of temptation, strictly speaking, then rejecting the moral point of view is itself immoral.  Rejecting it is immoral, however, only if the moral POV is objectively valid and binding.  If it is without validity, then it cannot be immoral to reject it.  And if it is invalid, then what appears to be temptation cannot really be temptation, and the bite of conscience that accompanies the meta-temptation to reject the moral POV is illusory and not revelatory of any moral truth.

Nothing I have said resolves the question of the objective validitiy/invalidity of the moral point of view.  I myself find it impossible to shake off the thought of its objective validity.  Its objective validity is subjectively certain to me.  That inability of mine is, however, arguably consistent with the illusoriness of the moral POV.  And so my subjective certainty is not objective certainty — even to me!

I suspect that here as elsewhere one must in the end simply decide what one will believe and how one will live.  You are fooling yourself if you think you will come up with a knock-down argument proof against every objection and acceptable to all able and sincere investigators.  Examine the question throughly and then decide.  Once you have decided, don't let your decision be overturned lightly.  What you have resolved upon in your best hours should not be put in jeopardy by passing fears and doubts. 

A Prime Example of Philosophical Cockiness

Gilbert Ryle once predicted with absurd confidence, "Gegenstandstheorie . . . is dead, buried, and not going to be resurrected." (Quoted in G. Priest, Towards Non-Being, Oxford, 2005, p. vi, n. 1.) Ryle was wrong, dead wrong, and shown to be wrong just a few years after his cocky prediction. Variations on Meinong's Theory of Objects flourish like never before due to the efforts of such brilliant philosophers as Butchvarov, Castaneda, Lambert, Parsons, Priest, Routley/Sylvan, and Zalta, just to mention those that come first to mind. And the Rylean cockiness has had an ironic upshot: his logical behaviorism is  dead while Meinongianism thrives. But Ryle too will be raised if my converse-Gilsonian  law of philosophical experience holds.

Etienne Gilson said, famously, "Philosophy always buries its undertakers." I say, rather less famously,  "Philosophy always resurrects its dead."

Feser Defends Hylomorphic Dualism Against My Criticism

I want to thank Edward Feser for responding to my recent post, A Problem for the Hylomorphic Dualist.  And while you are at Ed's site, please read his outstanding entry, So you think you understand the cosmological argument?, an entry with which I agree entirely.

Ed writes,

Naturally, since I am a hylemorphic dualist, I completely disagree with Bill here. Let’s start with the last charge — that hylemorphic dualism “make[s] an exception in the case of the human soul [that] is wholly unmotivated and ad hoc and inconsistent with hylomorphic ontology.” That the view is not “unmotivated and ad hoc” is easily shown. Bill himself would surely acknowledge that there are serious philosophical arguments for hylemorphism, even if he doesn’t accept that view himself. He would also acknowledge that there are serious philosophical arguments for dualism, a view he is sympathetic with. But then he should also acknowledge that someone could find both sorts of arguments convincing. And in that case he should acknowledge that someone could have good philosophical reasons for thinking that there must be some way to combine hylemorphism and dualism.

I agree that there are serious arguments for hylomorphism, and I especially agree that there are strong arguments for dualism.  And I agree that someone who finds both hylomorphism and dualism persuasive will have a motivation to try to combine them by showing how the special-metaphysical thesis of dualism can be accommodated within the general-metaphysical scheme of hylomorphism. 

But if one has good arguments for position A and good arguments for position B, it doesn't follow that one has good arguments for the combined position A + B.  For there may be a good reason why the two positions cannot be combined.  And so it is in the present case.  The case for hylomorphism and the case for dualism do not add up to a case for  hylomorphic dualism.  So while I agree with Ed that one who has good reason to be a hylomorphist and good reason to be a dualist will be powerfully motivated to combine the two positions, I do not agree that the reasons for hylomorphism and dualism, respectively, add up to reasons for the hylomorphic dualism.  A psychological motivation is not the same as a justificatory reason. 

Ed continues:

Nor, contrary to what Bill implies, is Aquinas somehow departing radically from Aristotle. For Aristotle too was committed both to hylemorphism and to the view that the intellect is immaterial — indeed, to the view that the active intellect is immortal. To be sure, that does not by itself show that Aristotle’s views are identical to or entail Aquinas’s; the Averroists took Aristotle’s position in a very different direction, and contemporary commentators often find it simply puzzling. But the reason they do — namely, that it seems odd to say both that the soul is the form of the body and that one of its capacities is somehow separable from the body — is similar to the reason Bill finds Aquinas’s position puzzling. Needless to say, Aristotle had no Christian theological ax to grind; he was simply following the philosophical arguments where they led. There is no reason to accuse Aquinas of doing anything different, and it is hardly unreasonable to suggest that the way to harmonize the various aspects of Aristotle’s position is the way Aquinas does. That does not mean that one might not still question whether Aquinas’s position is ultimately coherent (as Bill does), or criticize it on other grounds. But the charge that it is “wholly unmotivated and ad hoc” — a piece of Christian apologetics with no independent philosophical rationale — is, I think, completely unwarranted. 

Clearly, Aristotle had no Christian axe to grind.  And so if the active intellect (nous poietikos) mentioned in De Anima III, v (430a) is a subsistent element of the human soul, capable of existence independent of matter, then Aquinas' position on the human soul would have been anticipated by Aristotle, and what I said, or rather suspected, about Aquinas implanting Christian  notions in the foreign soil of Aristotelianism would be insupportable.  But the interpretation of De Anima III, v is a vexed and vexing matter as the material in the hyperlink Ed provided makes clear.  If, as some commentators maintain, Aristotle is discussing the divine mind and not the human mind, then it cannot be maintained that Aristotle was anticipating Aquinas.

The important question, of course, is whether the human soul, or any part theoreof, can be coherently conceived as a subsistent form, whether this is maintained by Aristotle or Aquinas or both.  Ed now addresses my puzzle head on:

The soul is, for Aquinas, the form of the body. So how could it possibly exist apart from the body? Bill asks why things should be any different with human beings than they are with Fido. But Aquinas is quite clear about the answer to that question: The difference is that the human soul carries out immaterial operations (i.e. intellectual ones) while a dog’s soul does not. And if it operates apart from matter and agere sequitur esse, then it must subsist apart from matter.

I grant that the human soul, unlike the canine, carries out immaterial operations.  The argument is this:

a.  The human soul engages in immaterial operations
b.  Agere sequitur esse: whatever operates I-ly must be (exist) I-ly.
Therefore
c.  The human soul, qua executing immaterial operations, exists immaterially.

But how is this relevant to the issue I am raising?  Let's assume that the above argument is sound.  What it shows is that the human soul enjoys an immaterial mode of being.  But it does not show that a form of an animal body enjoys an immaterial mode of being.  It is one thing to establish that the human soul, or an element thereof, exists immaterially; quite another to show that this immaterial element is a form.  I hesitate to say that Ed is conflating these two questions.  What he might be doing is begging the question against me: he may be just assuming what I am questioning, namely, that the human soul is a form, and then taking an argument for the immateriality of the soul to be an argument for the immaterial existence of a form of the human body.  Quoting further from Feser:

Necessarily, a form is a form of that of which it is the form. But a subsistent form is possibly such as to exist apart from that of which it is the form. These propositions cannot both be true.
That they can both be true can be seen when we keep in mind how Aristotelians understand concepts like necessity, possibility, essence, and the like. Suppose we say that it follows from the nature or essence of a dog that it has four legs. Does that mean every single dog necessarily has four legs? No, because a given dog might have lost a leg in an accident, or failed to develop all four legs due to some genetic defect, or (if only recently conceived and still in the womb) may simply not yet have developed all four legs. What it does mean is rather that a mature dog in its normal state will necessarily have four legs. As Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot have emphasized, “Aristotelian categoricals” of the form S’s are F convey a norm and are not accurately represented as either existential or universal statements of the sort familiar to modern logicians. “Dogs have four legs” is not saying “There is at least one dog, and it has four legs” and neither is it saying “For everything that is a dog, it is four legged.” It is saying that the typical dog, the normal (mature) dog, has four legs.

I of course agree with the bit about the dog and his nature.  But I question its relevance to my point.  I grant that from the fact that it is the nature of a dog to have four legs it does not follow that every dog has four legs.  In parallel with this, Ed seems to be suggesting that while it is the nature of a form to be a form of something, it does not follow that every form is a form of something. I deny the parallel.  The claims are on different levels.  The 'canine' claim is about a particular nature (essence), dog-nature.  My claim is about the principles (in the scholastic sense) deployed by hylomorphic ontologists  in their ontological assays.  A form is a 'principle' not capable of independent existence in the manner of a primary substance.

How form and matter operate in the analysis of material substances becomes clearer if we examine a criticism the distinguished Aristotelian Henry Veatch lodges against Gustav Bergmann. (See here for the rest of the post from which the following blue section is excerpted and for bibliographical data.)

Veatch Contra Bergmann

Veatch now lodges a reasonable complaint against Bergmann. How could "matter or bare particulars [be] among the ultimates that one arrives at in a process of analysis. . ."? "For how could anything which in itself is wholly indeterminate and characterless ever qualify as a 'thing' or 'existent' at all?" (81) On Bergmann's assay, an ordinary particular has more basic entities as its ontological constituents. But if one of these constituents is an intrinsically indeterminate and intrinsically characterless entity, how could said entity exist at all, let alone be a building block out of which an ordinary particular is constructed?

For Veatch, form and matter are not ontological atoms in the way bare particulars and simple universals are ontological atoms for Bergmann. "Matter and form are not beings so much as they are principles of being." (80) 'Principle' is one of those words Scholastics like to use. Principles in this usage are not propositions. They are ontological factors invoked in the analysis of primary substances, but they are not themselves primary substances. They cannot exist on their own. Let me try to make Veatch's criticism as clear as I can.

An ordinary particular is a this-such. The thisness in a this-such is the determinable element while the suchness is the determination or set of determinations. Veatch's point against Bergmann is not that ordinary particulars are not composites, this-suches, or that the thisness in a this- such is not indeterminate yet determinable; his point is that the determinable element cannot be an ontological atom, an entity more basic than the composite into which it enters as ontological building block. The determinable element cannot be a basic existent; it must be a principle of a basic existent, where the basic existent is the this-such. This implies, contra Bergmann, that what is ontologically primary is the individual substance, the this-such, which entails that matter and form in an individual substance cannot exist apart from each other. They are in some sense 'abstractions' from the individual substance. The form in a material this-such is not merely tied to matter in general, in the way that Bergmannian first-order universals are tied to bare particulars in general; the form is tied to the very matter of the this-such in question. And the same goes for the matter: the designated matter (materia signata) of Socrates cannot exist apart from Socrates' substantial form.

Veatch says that Bergmann cannot have it both ways: "His bare particulars cannot at one and the same time be utterly bare and characterless in the manner of Aristotelian prime matter and yet also be 'things' and 'existents' in the manner of Aristotelian substances." (82-83)

 The point I want to underscore is that, as Veatch puts it,  "Matter and form are not beings so much as they are principles of being."  Ed continues,

Similarly, to say “Human souls are associated with bodies” is to say that the human soul in its normal state is associated with its body, just like the human hand in its normal state is associated with its body. But it doesn’t follow that it cannot exist apart from the body, any more than it follows that the hand (at least while its tissues are still alive) can exist apart from the body. And again, the reason this is possible with the human soul and not with Fido’s soul is that the human soul, unlike Fido’s soul, carries out immaterial operations even when it is associated with the body.

Here again I think Ed is failing to engage the problem I raised.  I do not question that the human soul in its normal state is associated with its body.  And I do not question that it can exist apart from its body.  What I am questioning is the conceptualization of the human soul as a form.  And so, while Ed has said many things with which I agree, he has not given me a reason to retract my criticism.  To put it another way, he has not given me a reason why I should accept argument A below over argument B:

Argument A:  The human soul can exist apart from its body; the human soul is the form of the human body; therefore, there are forms that can exist apart from the matter they inform.

Argument B:  The human soul can exist apart from its body; no form can exist apart from the matter it informs; therefore, the human soul is not the form of the human body.

I have another argument that Ed may recall from our discussions at my old Powerblogs site, namely, an argument based on the premise that a form cannot be a subject of experience, which is what a soul must be.  But that's a separate post.

Flash Mobs

Another indicator of the decline of the West.  And another argument for concealed carry.

And of course there is a Pee Cee taboo on mentioning any of this:

The hateful murders of Matthew Shephard, who was gay, and James Byrd, Jr., who was black, were memorialized with national legislation. When similar crimes are committed by blacks against whites, they are greeted with ignominious silence. Just ask your friends how many of them are familiar with the murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome, or David Graham. How many are familiar with Hoang Nguyen, who was killed in a senseless "game" called the knock-out game, in which mostly black attackers attack mostly non-black victims?