Author: Bill Vallicella

The Higher Education Bubble

Good analysis by Michael Barone.

Federal subsidies have caused college costs to skyrocket while quality goes down.  What does all the money buy?  Administrative bloat:

Take the California State University system, the second tier in that state's public higher education. Between 1975 and 2008, the number of faculty rose by 3 percent, to 12,019 positions. During those same years, the number of administrators rose 221 percent, to 12,183. That's right: There are more administrators than teachers at Cal State now.

These people get paid to "liaise" and "facilitate" and produce reports on diversity. How that benefits Cal State students or California taxpayers is unclear.

Barone goes on to point out that to pay $100,000 for a degree in women's studies makes no economic sense.  But he doesn't forcefully make the point, contra Obama, that it is just foolish for everyone to go to college.  Only some people are 'college material' to use a phrase  one no longer hears.  There is nothing wrong with learning and plying a trade right out of high school.  Why waste thousands of dollars partying and goofing off just so one can — learn a trade?

And let's be clear that for the vast majority, 'getting an education' is a euphemism for getting ahead, for acquiring credentials that one hopes will bring social and economic advancement.  It is not about becoming an educated human being.  It's about money and status.  But then it should be spectacularly  clear that if one wants money, a decidedly suboptimal way of going about getting it is by saddling oneself with $100,000 in college debt.

Nota Notae Est Nota Rei Ipsius and the Ontological Argument

(By popular demand, I repost the following old Powerblogs entry.)

"The mark of a mark is a mark of the thing itself." I found this piece of scholasticism in C. S. Peirce. (Justus Buchler, ed., Philosophical Writings of Peirce, p. 133) It is an example of what Peirce calls a   'leading principle.'

Let's say you have an enthymeme:

   Enoch was a man
   —–
   Enoch died.

Invalid as it stands, this argument can be made valid by adding a premise. (Any invalid argument can be made valid by adding a premise.) Add 'All men die' and the argument comes out valid. Peirce writes:

     The leading principle of this is nota notae est nota rei ipsius.
     Stating this as a premiss, we have the argument,

     Nota notae est nota rei ipsius
     Mortality is a mark of humanity, which is a mark of Enoch
     —–
     Mortality is a mark of Enoch.

But is it true that the mark of a mark is a mark of the thing itself? There is no doubt that mortality is a mark of humanity in the following sense: The concept humanity includes within its conceptual content the superordinate concept mortal, which implies that, necessarily, if anything is human, then it is mortal. But mortality is not a mark, but a property, of Enoch. I am alluding to Frege's distinction between a Merkmal and an Eigenschaft. Frege explains this distinction in various places, one being The Foundations of Arithmetic, sec. 53. But rather than quote Frege, I'll explain the distinction in my own way using a totally original example.

Consider the concept bachelor. This is a first-order or first-level concept in that the items that fall under it are not concepts but objects. The marks of a first-order concept are properties of the objects that fall under the concept. Now the marks of bachelor are unmarried, male, adult, and not a member of a religious order. These marks are themselves concepts, concepts one can extract from bachelor by analysis. Given that Tom falls under bachelor, he has these marks as properties. Thus unmarried, etc. are not marks of Tom, but properties of Tom, while unmarried, etc. are not properties of bachelor but marks of bachelor.

To appreciate the Merkmal (mark)-Eigenschaft (property) distinction, note that the relation between a concept and its marks is entirely different from the relation between a concept and its instances. A first-order concept includes its marks without instantiating them, while an object instantiates its properties without including them.

This is a very plausible line to take. It makes no sense to say of a concept that it is married or unmarried, so unmarried cannot be a property of the concept bachelor. Concepts don't get married or remain single. But it does make sense to say that a concept includes certain other concepts, its marks. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say of Tom that he includes certain concepts since he could do such a thing only if he were a concept, which he isn't. But it does make sense to say of Tom that he has such properties as being a bachelor, being unmarried, being an adult, etc.

Reverting to Peirce's example, mortality is a mark of humanity, but not a mark of Enoch. It is a property of Enoch. For this reason the scholastic formula is false. Nota notae NON est nota rei ipsius. The mark of a mark is not a mark of the thing itself but a property of the thing itself.

No doubt commenter Edward the Nominalist will want to wrangle with me over this slight to his scholastic lore, and I hope he does, since his objections will aid and abet our descent into the labyrinth of this fascinating cluster of problems. But for now, two quick applications.

One is to the ontological argument, or rather to the ontological argument aus lauter Begriffen as Kant describes it, the ontological argument "from mere concepts." So we start with the concept of God and analyze it. God is omniscient, etc. But 'surely' existence is also contained in the concept of God. For a God who did not exist would lack a perfection, a great-making property; such a God would not be id quo maius cogitari non posse. He would not be that than which no greater can be conceived. To conceive God, then, is to conceive an existing God, whence it follows that God exists! For if you are conceiving a nonexistent God, then you are not conceiving God.

Frege refutes this version of the OA — not the only or best version I hasten to add — in one sentence: Weil Existenz Eigenschaft des Begriffes ist, erreicht der ontologische Beweis von der Existenz Gottes sein Ziel nicht. (Grundlagen der Arithmetik, sec. 53)  "Because existence is a property of concepts, the ontological argument for the existence of God fails to attain its goal." What Frege is saying is that the OA "from mere concepts" rests on the mistake of thinking of existence as a mark of concepts as opposed to a property of concepts.  No concept for Frege is such that existence is included within it. Existence is rather a property of concepts, the property of having an instance.

The other application of my rejection of the scholastic formula above is to the logical question of the correct interpretation of singular propositions. The scholastics treat singulars as if they are generals as I explained fully in previous posts. But if Frege is right, this is a grave logical error since it rides roughshod over the mark/property distinction. To drag this all into the full light of day will take many more posts.

Prima Facie Evidence

A reader inquires:

     Is 'prima facie' evidence something with self-evident contextual
     significance or a evidence that constitutes some sort of
     transcendental first principle? I am having some trouble with this
     concept.

The Latin phrase means 'on the face of it,' or 'at first glance.'  Prima facie evidence, then, is evidence that makes a strong claim on our credence but can perhaps be rebutted or overturned. The term is   used in the law to refer to evidence which, if uncontested, would establish a fact or raise a presumption of a fact. If you have the victim's blood on your hands, and you are acting nervous, and are seen   running from the crime scene with passport in pocket, and have been recently overheard threatening the life of the victim, then that adds up to a strong prima facie case for your having committed the crime.  But these bits of evidence, even taken together, are not conclusive.

Philosophers use the term in roughly the same way. For example, a prima facie duty is a duty which, in the absence of conflicting duties, is our actual obligation. If I promise to meet you tomorrow at noon at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth to discuss epistemology, then, so promising, I incur the duty to meet you then and there. But if my wife becomes ill in the meantime then my duty reverts to her care. The prima facie duty to meet you is defeated or overridden by the duty to care for my wife.

Or a philosopher might speak of the prima facie evidence of memory. My seeming to remember having mailed my tax return to the Infernal  Revenue Service is good prima facie evidence of my having mailed it,  but it is defeasible evidence.

Prima facie evidence should not be confused with self-evidence. Prima facie evidence is defeasible while (objective) self-evidence is not.

On the TFL (Mis)Representation of Singular Propositions as General

The following is a valid argument:

1. Pittacus is a good man
2. Pittacus is a wise man
—–
3. Some wise man is a good man.

That this argument is valid I take to be a datum, a given, a non-negotiable point. The question is whether traditional formal logic (TFL) is equipped to account for the validity of this argument. As I have already shown, it is quite easy to explain the validity of arguments like the above in modern predicate logic (MPL). In MPL, the logical form of the above argument is

Inferences Involving Singular Propositions

In Modern Predicate Logic (MPL), logical quantity comes in three 'flavors,' universal, particular, and singular. Thus 'All bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'No bloggers are self-absorbed' are universal; 'Some bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'Some bloggers are not self-absorbed' are particular; 'Bernie is self-absorbed' and 'Bernie is not self-absorbed' are singular. Traditional Formal Logic (TFL), however, does not admit a separate category of singular propositions.

So, just to draw out commenter Edward the Nominalist and Co., how would a defender of TFL account for the validity of the following obviously valid argument:

   1. Mars is red
   2. Mars is a planet
   —–
   3. Some planet is red.

A supporter of MPL could construct a derivation as follows:

   4. Mars is a planet & Mars is red. (From 1, 2 by Conjunction)
   5. There is an x such that: x is a planet & x is red. (From 4 by
        Existential Generalization)
   3. Some planet is red. (From 5 by translation back into ordinary
       language)

No sweat for the MPL boys, but how do you TFL-ers do it? (Of course I am aware that it can be done. The point of this post is mainly  didactic.)

‘We are All Dying’

In an interview a while back Christopher Hitchens said, "We are all dying."  The saying is not uncommon.  A friend over Sunday breakfast invoked it. The irony of it is that the friend in question in younger days was decisively influenced by the Ordinary Language philosophers.

Taken literally, the sentence is false: only some of us are dying.  What must the sentence be taken to mean to be true?  This: the life process in each human being issues eventually in death.  But then why don't people say what they mean rather than something literally false?

The short answer is that man is a metaphysical animal with an ineradicable urge to gain perspective so as to be able to reconnoitre the terrain of the human predicament.  The gaining of perspective requires the stretching of ordinary language.

When we say 'We are all dying' we forsake the lowlands of ordinary language and ascend to a higher point of view, a philosophical point of view. It is like someone who says, 'All is impermanent.' That too is literally false.  Some addresses are permanent and some are temporary.  To maintain that all is impermanent one must ascend to a higher point of view  relative to which what is permanent 'here below' is, from that point of view, impermanent.  And so one can say, without talking nonsense, that even a permanent address is impermanent. 

As for 'We are all dying,' it too, though literally false, is not nonsense.  When I look at my life as a whole, I see that it is temporally bounded, and that it must issue in death.  And so even the most robust among us are dying in the sense that we are launched on a trajectory the culmination of which  is death.

I once played chess master Jude Acers a series of games at his sidewalk hangout in New Orlean's French Quarter.  During one endame he pointed to one of his pawns and said, 'This pawn has already queened.'  But it hadn't; it was still several moves away from the queening square.  So why did Acers say something literally false?  His meaning was that I could not stop the pawn, and so, in that sense, it had already queened.  It's the same pattern as before.  I am not dying, but since I will inevitably die, I am now dying.  The pawn has not yet queened, but since it will inevitably queen, it has 'already' queened.  What is not yet the case, but will be the case, is in a higher sense, the case.

Or consider this Platonizing remark a variant of which one can find in St. Augustine:  'What once existed, but does not now exist, and what does exist but will in future not exist, never existed.'  Taken literally as a piece of ordinary English, this is nonsense.  If something did exist, then ex vi terminorum it is false that it never existed; and likewise if the thing now exists.

But only a philosophistine (a 'philosopher' who is a philistine) such as Carnap or David Stove could fail to appreciate that the Augustinian saying is meaningful, despite the stretching of ordinary language.  A theory of how this 'stretching' works is necessary if we are to have a full understanding of what we are doing when we do metaphysics.

There is no doubt that in metaphysics we violate ordinary usage.  But unless one is a benighted philosophistine chained and held fast in some dark corner of Plato's Cave, one will not dismiss metaphysics for this reason, but strive to work out a theory of how  the linguistic  stretching works. 

Serious Faith

A serious faith, a vital faith, is one that battles with doubt.  Otherwise the believer sinks into complacency and his faith becomes a convenience.  Doubt is a good thing.  For doubt is the engine of inquiry, the motor of Athens.  Jerusalem needs Athens to keep her honest, to chasten her excesses, to round her out, to humanize her.  There is not much Athens in the Muslim world, which helps explains why Islam breeds fanaticism, murder, and anti-Enlightenment.

The Problem of Individuation: Genuine or Pseudo?

1. The ontological problem of individuation is actually two problems.  One is the problem of what makes two or more numerically different individuals numerically different.  What grounds numerical difference?  The other is the problem of what makes an individual an individual as opposed to a member of some other category of entity.  What grounds individuality?  If the first question is about the differentiator (the ground of numerical difference), the second is about the individuator (the ground of  individuality). 

The two questions are often conflated, but as you can see, they are different.  The conflation is aided and abetted by the fact that on some theories the entity posited to do the differentiating job also does the individuating job.  For example, in Gustav Bergmann's ontology, bare particulars are both differentiators and individuators.  But if I both load the truck and drive the truck it doesn't follow that loading and driving are the same job.  So we cannot just assume that what does the differentiating job will also do the individuating job.  I won't say anything at the moment about the details of Hector-Neri Castaneda's ontology, but in it, the individuator is not a differentiator.

Therefore, 'problem of individuation' is a bit of a misnomer.  A better phrase would be 'problem(s) of individuation/differentiation.'  Having said that, I revert to the stock phrase.

Note also that we are talking ontology here, not epistemology.  'Individuate' can be used in an epistemological way to mean: 'single out,' 'pick out,' 'make an identifying reference to,' etc.  Suppose I single out x as the only item that has properties P, Q, R . . . .  It doesn't follow that having exactly those properties is what makes x an individual or makes x numerically different from y.  It could be like this: concrete particulars a and b are told apart by their difference is properties, but that makes them numerically different is that each has a numerically different bare particular, or a different nonqualitative thisness, where this is not understood to be a bare particular.

2. Before going any deeper into this we ought to ask whether our two problems are genuine. 

Taking the first one first, why is there any need for a differentiator?  If S and P are numerically distinct concrete particulars, why not just take that as a brute fact?  Brute facts need no explaining.  That's what their bruteness consists in. 

A constituent ontologist might answer as follows.  Concrete particulars have ontological consituents, among them, their properties.  Properties are universals.  It is possible that two particulars share all their properties.  Since they are not different due to a difference in properties, there must a further ontological factor that accounts for their difference.

This sketch of an answer won't cut any ice with a certain nominalist of our acquaintance.  He will presumably deny both that concrete particulars have ontological constituents, and that there are any universals.  He may even go so far as to claim that the very idea of an ontological constituent is senseless.  He will take our first question as a pseudo-question that rests on false assumptions.

Our nominalist will say something similar about the first question.  'Only if one starts with the assumption that individuals have ontological constituents, that among these are properties,  and that these are universals,  will one have the problem of explaining why the individual is an individual and not a collection or conjunction of universals.  The assumptions are false, so the problem is pseudo.'

Is There an Obligation to be Happy?

I once heard Dennis Prager say that there is no correlation between a happy childhood and a happy adulthood. That is certainly confirmed  by my experience. An unhappy childhood gave way to a happy adulthood. With others, it is the other way around.

Prager also likes to say that we have a moral obligation to be happy. A more cautious way to put the point would be that we have a moral obligation to do what we can to make ourselves happy. Strictly speaking, there can be no moral obligation to be happy. As we learned at Uncle Manny's knee, 'ought' implies 'can,' and for some the weight of circumstances makes it impossible to be happy. One cannot be morally obligated to do what one cannot do.  There is an element of luck involved in happiness, and there is no moral obligation to be lucky. A good part of my happiness derives from a good marriage to an angelic woman. But had she not flown into my air space — a matter of  luck — I would not have been able to use my skill to bring her down with my arrow of love.

So if you are happy, don't imagine it was all your own doing.  Luck was involved. 

But Prager is surely on the right track. Although we cannot have a moral obligation to be happy, we should strive to be happy, not just for ourselves, but for others.  Happy people tend not to cause trouble.  Do happy people tend to be party to 'road rage' altercations?  Do happy people engage in vandalism or write malware?  Do happy people blow themselves up?

Presentism

Franklin Mason tells me he is a presentist.  I would like to see if he and I understand the same thing by the term.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present — the present time and its contents — alone exists. The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist. Past and future items do not exist. But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists. (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and the future does not now exist else it would not be future.) If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking. So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis. For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense). It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified use of 'exist(s).' So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.' Accordingly:

P. The only items that exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis. The presentist will affirm it, the antipresentist will deny it. Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed. But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter. The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does. Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now. But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in relations to things that presently exist, one of these relations being the reference relation. The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead. But I am her son. So I stand in the son of relation to my mother. If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object. But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there? This is a problem for the presentist, is it not? But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter. For then the relation connects two existents.

A second problem for presentism is that it seems not able to accommodate the obvious distinction between actual past items and merely possible past items.  Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen are past individuals.  Their child Angie, like Schopenhauer's son Will, however, are past merely possible individuals.  But what becomes of this distinction if everything past is nonexistent?  For the presentist, what was is not.  But then what was is indistinguishable from what never was (because merely possible).

No doubt the presentists will have answers to these objections.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene: the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult in all of philosophy.

Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?

We have been discussing the topic of nonqualitative thisness here, here,  and here.  The following post gets at the problem from another angle, the love angle.

Here is a remarkable passage from Pascal's remarkable Pensees:

BLAISE%20PASCAL%20PORTA A man goes to the window to see the passers by. If I happen to pass by, can I say that he has gone there to see me? No; for he is not thinking of me in particular. But does he who loves someone for her   beauty, really love her? No; for small-pox, destroying the beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to love. And if I am loved for my judgment, for my memory, am I loved? No; for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where then is this 'I,' if it resides neither in the body, nor the soul? And how  love the body or the soul save for these qualities which do not  make the 'me,' since they are doomed to perish? For can one love the soul of a person in the abstract, irrespective of its qualities? Impossible and wrong! So we never love anyone, but only  qualities. (p. 337, tr. H. F. Stewart)

 

This passage raises the following question. When I love a person, is it the person in her particularity and uniqueness that I love, or merely the being-instantiated of certain lovable properties? Do I love  Mary as Mary, or merely as an instance of helpfulness, friendliness, faithfulness, etc.?

These are clearly different. If it is merely the being-instantiated of lovable properties that I love, then it would not matter if the love object were replaced by another with the same ensemble of properties. It would not matter if Mary were replaced by her indiscernible twin Sherry. Mary, Sherry, what's the difference? Either way you get the very same package of delectable attributes.

But if it is the person in her uniqueness that I love, then it would matter if someone else with exactly the same ensemble of properties were substituted for the love object. It would matter to me, and it would matter even more to the one I love. Mary would complain bitterly if Sherry were to replace her in my  affections. "I want to be loved for being ME, not for what I have in common with HER!"

The point is perhaps more clearly made using the example of self-love.  Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin.  Now it is a fact that I love myself.  But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally.  For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do.  But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil.  Suppose that God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go.  I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' 

This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties.  For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other.  This would make no sense if the being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties.  In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also a unique existent individual that cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual.  And the same goes for Phill: he loves himself as a unique individual.

Now it is a point of phenomenology that love intends to reach the very haecceity and ipseity of the beloved: in loving someone we mean to  make contact with his or her unique thisness and selfhood. It is not a mere instance of lovable properties that love intends, but the very  being of the beloved. And what some of us of a personalist bent want to maintain is that this intending or meaning is in some cases fulfilled: we actually do sometimes make conscious contact with the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved. We arrive at the very being of the beloved, not merely at the co-instantiation of a set of multiply instantiable lovable properties. But how is this possible given Pascal's argument?

The question underlying all of this is quite fundamental: Are there any genuine individuals? X is a genuine individual if and only if X is essentially unique. The Bill and Phil example suggests that selves are genuine individuals and not mere bundles of multiply instantiable properties.  For each of the twins is acutely aware that he is not the other despite complete agreement in respect of  pure properties.  Here are some of my theses to be expounded and clarified as the discussion proceeds:

1. There exist genuine individuals.
2. Genuine individuals cannot be reduced to bundles of properties.
3. The Identity of Indiscernibles is false.
4. Numerical difference is numerical-existential difference: the existence of an individual is implicated in its very haecceity. 
5.  There are no nonexistent individuals. 
6. There are no not-yet existent individuals.