Author: Bill Vallicella

More on Social Security as Welfare

In an earlier post I pointed out against Robert Samuelson that Social Security (SS), though in ways  like a welfare scheme, is not a welfare scheme.  Others are chiming in with Samuelson:

Social Security is a welfare program masquerading as an insurance program. People may think of it as forced savings, but that isn't how the program really works.

The trust fund and individual account aspects of Social Security are accounting gimmicks. The payroll taxes we pay in are not really saved for our retirements. They are already paying for the benefits of the current retirees. When we retire, if we are very lucky, we will live off the payroll taxes of the poor working stiffs who remain. The trust fund is stuffed with IOUs; the government has already spent the surpluses. Al Gore's lock box has been picked. Millions continue to draw benefits after they've already gotten back everything they paid in plus interest.

The second paragraph is wholly unexceptionable.  But consider the fact that to be eligible for SS benefits, a worker must have completed 40 quarters of employment.  That fact alone suffices to make it literally false that SS is a welfare program.  Add to it the fact that the amount paid out also reflects how long one has been employed and what one's level of compensation has been.  So although it is true that SS is like a welfare program in the ways Samuelson mentions, it is not, strictly  speaking, a welfare scheme.

Language matters.  Precision matters.  And if not here, where?  If you say what you know to be false for rhetorical effect then you undermine your credibility among those who you need to persuade.  Conservatives don't need to persuade conservatives, and they will not be able to persuade leftists.  They must pitch their message to the undecided who, if rational, will be put off by sloppy rhetoric and exaggeration.

I note that W. James Antle, III, the author of the linked article, refers to the SS system as "the liberals' Ponzi scheme."  But of course it is not a Ponzi scheme.  A Ponzi scheme, by definition, is a scheme set up with the intention of defrauding people for the benefit of those running the scheme.  But there is nothing fraudulent about the SS sytem: the intentions behind it are good ones!  The SS system is no doubt in dire need of reform if not outright elimination.  But no good purpose is achieved by calling it a Ponzi scheme.  That's either a lie or an exaggeration.  Not good, either way.  The most you can say is that it is like a Ponzi scheme in being fiscally unsustainable as currently structured.

Conservative exaggeration is politically foolish.  Is it not folly to give ammo to the enemy?  Is it not folly to choose a means (exaggeration and distortion) that is not conducive  to the end (garnering support among the presently uncommitted)?

Liberal-Left Bias Among the Social Psychologists

Here.  Excerpts, with emphases and a couple of comments by MavPhil.

Let's look at the 3 very liberal social sciences: anthropology, sociology, and psychology. These 3 fields have always leaned left, but things really changed in the 1960s. The civil rights struggle, the brutality inflicted upon peaceful marchers, the Viet Nam war, the assassinations of black leaders… Racial injustice in America was overwhelming, highly visible, and for many people, revolting. The generation that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s was profoundly shaped by these experiences. 

Continue reading “Liberal-Left Bias Among the Social Psychologists”

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

     Our plesance here is all vain glory,
     This fals world is but transitory,
     The flesche is brukle, the Feynd is slee;
     Timor mortis conturbat me.

     No stait in Erd here standis sicker;
     As with the wynd wavis the wicker,
     Wavis this wardlis vanitie;
     Timor mortis conturbat me.

     (William Dunbar c. 1460 — c. 1520, from "Lament for the Makers.")

     Here lie I by the chancel door;
     They put me here because I was poor.
     The further in, the more you pay,
     But here lie I as snug as they.

     (Devon tombstone.)

     Here lies Piron, a complete nullibiety,
     Not even a Fellow of a Learned Society.

     Alexis Piron, 1689-1773, "My Epitaph"

     Why hoard your maidenhead? There'll not be found
     A lad to love you, girl, under the ground.
     Love's joys are for the quick; but when we're dead
     It's dust and ashes, girl, will go to bed.

     (Asclepiades, fl. 290 B.C., tr. R. A. Furness)

     The world, perhaps, does not see that those who rightly engage in
     philosophy study only death and dying. And, if this be true, it
     would surely be strange for a man all through his life to desire
     only death, and then, when death comes to him, to be vexed at it,
     when it has been his study and his desire for so long.

     Plato, Phaedo, St. 64, tr. F. J. Church

The Foolishness of Envy

You envy me?  What a wretch you must be to feel diminished in your sense of self-worth by comparison to me!  I have something you lack?  Why isn't that compensated for by what you have that I lack?  You feel bad that I have achieved something by my hard work?  Don't you realize that you waste time and energy by comparing yourself to me, time and energy that could be used to improve your own lot?

Do you think you can add one cubit to your stature by tearing me down?  Have you never heard The Parable of the Tree and the House?

You ought to feel bad, not that I do well, but that you are so willfully stupid.  Vices vitiate; they weaken.  You weaken yourself and make yourself even more of a wretch by indulging in envy.

Companion posts:  Envy, Jealousy, Schadenfreude.  Schadenfreude With a Twist

A Divine Activity

Philosophy is a divine activity because only a god has the time and the peace of mind for it. The full-time mortal, embroiled in the flux and shove of material life, is too much in need of guiding convictions to be much of a pursuer of the impersonal truth.

In auspicious circumstances, with the right interlocutors, or embraced in the bliss of solitude, the mortal ascends for a time into the ether of pure thought and becomes for a time a god, a part-time god.

But although philosophy is god-like, God himself has no need for it.  Wisdom itself, in plenary possession of itself, needn't seek itself. It is itself.

De Dicto/De Re

In the course of thinking about the de dicto/de re distinction, I pulled the Oxford Companion to Philosophy from the shelf and read the eponymous entry. After being told that the distinction "seems to have first surfaced explicitly in Abelard," I was then informed that the distinction occurs:

     . . . in two main forms: picking out the difference between a
     sentential operator and a predicate operator, between 'necessarily
     (Fa)' and 'a is (necessarily-F)' on the one hand, and on the other
     as a way of highlighting the scope fallacy in treating necessarily
     (if p then q) as if it were (if p then necessarily-q).

It seems to me that this explanation leaves something to be desired. I have no beef with the notion that the first distinction is an example of a de dicto/de re distinction. To say of a dictum that it is   necessarily true if true is different from saying of a thing (res) that it has a property necessarily. Suppose a exists in some, but not all, possible worlds, and that a is F in every possible world in which it exists. Then a is necessarily F, F in every possible world in which it exists. But since there are possible worlds in which a does not exist, then it will be false that 'a is F' is necessarily true, true
in all possible worlds.  So the de dicto 'Necessarily, a is F' is distinct from the de re 'a is necessarily F.'

So far, so good. But the distinction between

1. Nec (if p then q)

   and

2. If p, then Nec q

is situated entirely on the de dicto plane, the plane of dicta or propositions. The distinction between (1) and (2) is the well-known  distinction between necessitas consequentiae and necessitas consequentiis. To confuse (1) and (2) is to confuse the necessity of the consequence with the necessity of the consequent. Or you could think of the mistake as a scope fallacy: the necessity operator in (1) has wide scope whereas the operator in (2) has narrow scope. But what makes (2) de re? What is the res in question? Consider an example:

3. Necessarily, if a person takes Enalapril, then he takes an ACE inhibitor

does not entail

4. If a person takes Enalapril, then necessarily he takes an ACE  inhibitor.

A second example:

5. Necessarily, if something happens, then something happens

does not entail

6. If something happens, then necessarily something happens.

It can't be that easy to prove fatalism. The point, however, is that the distinction between (5) and (6) does not trade on the distinction between dicta and rei, between propositions and non-propositions: the  distinction is one of the scope of a propositional operator.  Our author thus seems wrongly to assimilate the above scope fallacy to a de dicto/de re confusion.

I conclude that the de dicto/de re distinction is a bit of a terminological mess. And note that it is a mess even when confined to the modal context as demonstrated above. If we try to apply the  distinction univocally across modal, doxastic, temporal, and other  contexts we can expect an even bigger mess. A fit topic for a future  post.

Terminological fluidity is a problem in philosophy.  It always has been and always will be.  For attempts at regimentation and standardization harbor philosophical assumptions and biases — which are themselves fit fodder for philosophical scrutiny.

Cf. Notes on Philosophical Terminology and its Fluidity

Russellian Propositions and the ‘He Himself’ Locution

Commenting on an earlier post of mine, Peter Lupu brought up some themes from David Kaplan which were not quite relevant but interesting nonetheless.   In my response I pointed out that Kaplan is committed to Russellian (R) as opposed to Fregean (F) propositions whereas the problem I had posed presupposes that propositions are Fregean.  In this post I will do three things.  I will first explain the difference between R- and F-propositions and give an argument against R-propositions.  Then I will explain the 'he himself' locution which Hector-Neri Castaneda brought to our attention back in the '60s.  Finally, I will explain how the 'he himself' locution is further evidence that propositions cannot be Russellian.  And since propositions cannot be Russellian, they cannot be introduced in solution of the problem I raised in the earlier post.

Russellian Versus Fregean Propositions

1. One issue in the philosophy of language is whether singular terms (including pure indexicals, demonstratives, proper names) refer directly or whether they refer via some descriptive meaning that they encapsulate.  The issue is not whether a word like 'I' — the first-person singular pronoun used indexically, not the Roman numeral or the first-person pronoun used nonindexically — has a meaning apart from its reference.  Of course it does.  The meaning of 'I' — its character in Kaplan's jargon — is given by the rule that uttered tokens of 'I' refer to the speaker.  The issue is whether the reference of a singular term is routed through its descriptive meaning.  For example, when Tom says 'I' he refers to Tom.  But is Tom's self-reference routed through any descriptive meaning of 'I'? It should be obvious that Tom's use of 'I' does not target Tom specifically in virtue of the Kaplanian content of 'I.'  For that is quite general.  So if there is a sense of 'I' that mediates Tom's self-reference, it will have to be a special 'I'-sense, a special mode of presentation (Frege:  Darstellungsweise). 

Now if there are terms that refer directly, without the mediation of a Fregean sense (Sinn), then the sentences in which such terms occur express Russellian propositions.  R-propositions involve individuals directly rather than indirectly by way of an abstract representative as in F-propositions.  So if 'Tom is tall' expresses an R-proposition, then Tom himself, all 200 lbs of him, is a constituent of the proposition, along with the property that the sentence predicates of him.  Such a proposition could be represented as an ordered pair the first member of which is Tom and the second the property of being tall.  But if the sentence  expresses an F-proposition, then Tom himself is not a constituent of it. Instead, the sense of 'Tom' goes proxy for Tom in the F-proposition.

Suppose t is a directly referential term in a sentence S.  T may or may not have a meaning apart from its reference.  If S expresses a Russellian-Kaplanian proposition, then the meaning of t — if there is one — is not a constituent of the propositional content of S:  the constituent of the propositional content of S, corresponding to t, is simply the referent  of t.

2.  That there are propositions I take for granted.  We may introduce them  by saying that they are the bearers of the truth-values.  But this leaves open whether they are Russellian or Fregean.  I think there is a good metaphysical reason for not countenancing R-propositions.

3. The metaphysical reason has to do with false R-propositions.  Given that 'Tom is tall' is true, it doesn't strike me as problematic to say that the world contains, in addition to Tom and the property of being tall, Tom's being tall.  But then  'Tom is short ' is false.  If 'Tom is tall' expresses an R-proposition, then so does 'Tom is short.'  But then the world contains, in addition to Tom and the property of being short, a further entity Tom's being short which has Tom himself as a constituent.  And that does strike me as very problematic.  (And it struck Russell that way too, which is why Russell abandoned Russellian propositions!) For if Tom does not exemplify shortness, then there simply is no such entity as Tom's being short. In other words I have no problem accepting facts such as Tom's being tall assuming that all facts obtain.  But nonobtaining facts such as Tom's being short are a metaphysical monstrosity. 

The 'He Himself' Locution 

4. Castaneda pointed out that one cannot validly move from

1. X judges x to be F
to
2. X judges himself to be F.

(2) entails (1), but (1) does not entail (2).  Unbeknownst to me, a certain document I am inspecting was written by me long ago.  It is possible that I conclude that the author of the document was confused without concluding that I was confused.  (Example adapted from Chisholm.)  In this situation I am an x such that x judges x to be confused, but I am not an x such that x judges himself to be confused.

Given that I am x, there is no distinction between the Russellian proposition which is x's being confused and the one which is my being confused.  For the two R-propositions have the all the same constituents. If propositions are Russellian, then we have to say that 'x judges x to be confused' and 'x judges himself to be confused' express the same proposition.  But obviously they don't.  So propositions aren't Russellian.  Or is that too quick?

Samuelson on Social Security as Middle-Class Welfare

Here.  Excerpt:

Here is how I define a welfare program. First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it's pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people's own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts.

Part of the problem with the SS system is that no one quite agrees on just what it is or is supposed to be.  Some call it a Ponzi scheme. (Steve Forbes, Judge Andrew Napolitano)  But obviously it isn't.  Ponzi schemes are fraudulent in intent by definition.  SS is not.  What Napolitano et al. presumably mean  is that it like a Ponzi scheme in being unsustainable.  But that is not quite right either for it is sustainable if one is willing to do one or more of the following:  raise taxes, limit/postpone benefits, reduce spending in other areas, increase the money supply thereby inflating the currency.

To call the SS system a form of welfare as Robert Samuelson does is closer to the mark but still wide of it.  How can it be called welfare when the recipients of it (most of them anyway) have paid in a lifetime's worth of contributions?  The average hard-working  Joe who has contributed all his life via  payroll taxes will bristle, and with justification, if he is branded a welfare recipient when he retires.  He will insist that he has worked hard and long, and now wants what is due him: the money that was coercively taken from him plus a reasonable return. 

So SS is not a welfare scheme either, Samuelson's slanted definition notwithstanding, though it is like one in some respects.

My understanding is that when it was originally set up,  in the '30s, SS was envisaged as destitution insurance.  The idea was that a decent society does not allow its members to fall into the gutter and eat cat food if through no fault of their own they end up destitute at the end of their lives.  But of course if it is destitution insurance, then, like all insurance, the 'premiums' will be small relative to the payout, and only those who end up destitute would get a payout.  But the system is nothing like this now.  It has transmogrified into a retirement program, but one without individual accounts and the sort of  fiscal discipline that they would bring.

So it's not a Ponzi scheme, not a welfare scheme, and not a form of insurance, if  these terms are used strictly.  (And if you are not using them strictly, then you shouldn't pretend to be contributing to a serious discussion.)  Conceptually, SS is a mess, a mess that aids and abets all the unhelpful rhetoric that we hear on all sides.

If memory serves, Speaker Boehner (before he was speaker) called for means-testing.  The moral absurdity of that should be evident, especially  when espoused by a supposed conservative.  You work hard all your life, you play by the rules, defer gratification, exercise the old virtues, and end up well off.  And now the government penalizes you for having been self-reliant and productive.  Disgusting.  You expect that from a liberal.  But from a conservative?

As one further indication of the conceptual mess that is the SS system, consider that the FICA tax is called a tax.  It is no doubt a coercive taking, but what other kind of tax brings with it an expectation of getting one's money back down the line?  Property owners pay real estate taxes to the county.  But no one who pays these taxes expects to be able to pay a visit to the Assessor's office sometime in the future to recoup what he has paid.  That's not the way a tax works.  So why is the FICA tax called a tax?  This is just another indication of the conceptual obfuscation built into the SS system.

 

From the Inside of a Fortune Cookie

"Mental activity keeps you busy at this time."  Only at this time?

"All happiness is in the mind."  This is an example of a half-truth the believing of which is pragmatically very useful.

"If you chase two rabbits, both will escape."  Reminds me of the Lovin' Spoonful tune Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your MInd?

"If you think you're too small to be effective, you have never been in bed with a mosquito."  Does this have a sexual meaning?