Author: Bill Vallicella

On Smiting One’s Political Enemies

Tony Hanson e-mails from the once-great state of California whose governor-elect is once again Governor Moonbeam:

I see you had Berlin's essay in your library and reread it. I just wanted to say I don't think that we are in quite the bind you describe since there still seems to be a lot of room for some good rationally justified smiting, polemics and general political ass-kicking in spite of value pluralism. I'll make this very brief.

Defense of Polemics. I am sure you would agree that one's opponents may have all sorts of bad reasons for their positions, and (politely?) exposing them can make people more thoughtful, and may even enlighten them to the truth of value pluralism so much so that they may "flinch" too. Could this encourage comity?

That is a good point and I fully agree with it.  The pluralistic position, according to which no objective resolution satisfactory to all competent practioners is possible due to irresolvable value differences, is entirely consistent with the possibility of the fully objective exposure of bad arguments and empirical falsehoods on both sides.  Take abortion.  There are bad arguments on both sides of the debate, and almost everyone will agree that there are.   (I won't say what those bad arguments are lest I spark a meta-debate as to exactly which arguments on both sides are bad; but that there are bad arguments on both sides is uncontroversial.)   An argument can be objectively bad for a number of different reasons: it is logically invalid; rests on an empirically false premise; involves a weak analogy; commits an informal fallacy; is so murky and indistinct as to be insusceptible of evaluation, etc.  The essence of the pluralistic position is that once all the bad arguments on both sides are set aside, one arrives at a set of 'good' arguments which, however, do not resolve the issue for an  impartial observer.

I would quibble, though, with your use of 'polemics.'  From the Greek polemos, it means strife, struggle, war.  So we can define polemics as verbal warfare, warfare at the level of ideas.  There needn't be anything polemical about pointing out to an opponent that one of his arguments falls short of an objective standard such as the one represented by formal logic.  Here there is the possibility of convincing the opponent (assuming he is sincere, intelligent, etc.) because the cognitive values that come into play (truth, clarity, logical coherence, etc.) are agreed upon.

Defense of War and Smiting.  You said, "Suppose further … that this value difference that divides them cannot be objectively resolved to the satisfaction of both parties by appeal to any empirical fact or by any reasoning or by any combination of the two." Say you are arguing with a Fascist or radical libertarian (who thinks property rights are absolute), and no empirical fact or reasoning satisfies them In other words, they are unreasonable.

But if you say that the radical libertarian is unreasonable, what are your criteria of reasonability or rationality?  I reject the radical libertarian position on property rights and I get the impression that you do as well.  But from his point of view, his stance is reasonable in that it is rationally derivable from certain axioms he accepts.  Is there some plain empirical fact that he fails to take cognizance of, or some rule of logic that he flouts?  When you  say that the radical libertarian is unreasonable, aren't you just rejecting his scheme of values? He places an absolute, inviolable, value on the individual and his property and refuses to admit that there are any competing values that would tend to have a relativizing effect.  Consider an eminent domain dispute.  Farmer Jones has worked hard all his life and owns 100 acres.  The Feds want to buy from him a strip of land for a much-needed road that cannot be placed anywhere else. Jones refuses to sell.  Even if he agrees that there is such a thing as the common good, he refuses to concede that it has the power to limit the absoluteness of his property right.

When you say that Jones is unreasonable, what you are doing is pitting your value-based conception of reasonableness against his.  But then my point goes through, which was that disputes like this are objectively irresolvable because rooted in value disputes which are objectively irresolvable.

Seems like its time for the Converse Clausewitz Principle [Politics is war conducted by other means]. Well, you can of course work to defeat libertarians in the political arena (though they do a pretty good job of this themselves, which is why I follow Medved in calling them 'losertarians.')  But the issue concerns your rational warrant for "unflinchingly" opposing them.  What makes you so cocksure that you are right and they are wrong?

Further, it seems a distinction needs to be made between the priority of a value, and the weight (or  height?) of the priority. Two people could prioritize security over liberty, but one would be prepared to sacrifice a lot more liberty for security than the other. The extremist gives his value too much weight, obviously; but it also seems one can be objectively wrong about the weight of the prioritized value, and not be an extremist. Invoking Aristotle might be helpful. Though one might not be a complete coward (or extremist), one might miss the mark with respect to courage and be a little cowardly, and so on with the various values. Moreover, it might not be possible to come to an agreement by using facts and reason, to what "hitting the mark" is, but you know it misses. Someone might have a different intuition on what hitting the mark is, or the target might be a large one allowing for disagreement, but it still might be worth trusting your sense of "tone," and fighting for it.

I agree that if value V1 takes priority over value V2, there remains the question of how much higher up in the axiological hierarchy V1 is.  Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death."  He apparently valued his liberty over his very life.  Would you call him an extremist?  If yes, then what is wrong with being an extremist?  If he is placing an inordinate value on liberty, how do you show that?  Or take the Obama liberal who is willing to sacrifice his liberty for (the promise of) cradle-to-grave security and material comfort.  How do you show in an objective manner that the liberal places too much value on security and not enough on liberty?  You simply assert that "one can be objectively wrong about the weight of the prioritized value." Gratuitous assertions, however, elicit gratuitous counterassertions in response.

Tea Partiers object to the liberty-encroaching governmental overreach of the Obama gang.  (Case in point: the 'individual mandate' of Obamacare which forces citizens to buy health insurance.)  The political conflict is rooted in a deep value conflict.  How resolve it?

I don't see how Aristotle helps in this.  I would also point out that he was talking about virtues, not values, which are a different animal entirely and didn't come into philosophical currency until the 19th century.  A virtue is a habit (hexis, habitus), a dispositional feature of an agent; a value is . . . well what exactly is a value?  An abstract or ideal object of some sort?

The ComBox is open to give Hanson an opportunity to reply.  Others may chime in as well, but only if their comments are well-informed, intelligent, and stick precisely to the topic under discussion, what he says and what I say here and in the post that Hanson in replying to.  I simply delete comments I consider to be substandard. 

Can I Stand Unflinchingly for Convictions that I Accept as Only Relatively Valid?

Isaiah Berlin's great essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" concludes as follows:

'To realise the relative validity of one's convictions', said an admirable writer of our time, ' and yet stand for them unflinchingly, is what distinguishes a civilised man from a barbarian.'  To demand more than this is perhaps a deep and incurable metaphysical need; but to allow it to determine one's practice is a symptom of an equally deep, and more dangerous, moral and political immaturity. (Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford 1969, p. 172.)

A marginalium of mine from 1994 reads, "If I think my convictions merely relatively valid, how can I stand for them unflinchingly?  Even if this is psychologically possible, it seems to be something we ought not do."

To expand upon my 1994 thought.  The liberty of the individual to be free from coercion and obstruction — "negative liberty (freedom)" in Berlin's terminology — obviously comes into conflict with other things we deem valuable such as equality, security, and public order. 

Consider how liberty and security are related. Liberty worth having is liberty within a context of security, and security is security worth having only if it makes possible a robust exercise of liberty.  For example, my liberty to leave my house at any time of the day or night  is worth very little if the probability is high that I will be accosted by muggers and other unsavory types when I step out my door.  The security of a police state would prevent that but at a cost too high to pay.

So liberty and security, though both values, are competing values.  Does one rank higher than the other such that we ought to prefer one to the other?  In a concrete situation in which they come into conflict,   one must choose.  Consider for example a sobriety checkpoint on New Year's Eve when by custom booze intake is high.  Such checkpoints involve a clear violation of the (negative) liberty of the individual, and yet they are arguably justifiable in the interests of security and public order.

Now suppose you have a conservative and a libertarian.  In conflict situations, the conservative tends to rank security over liberty, while the libertarian does the opposite.  They both agree that the values in play are indeed values, but they differ as to their prioritization.  Suppose further something that seems obviously true, namely, that this value difference that divides them cannot be objectively resolved to the satisfaction of both parties by appeal to any empirical fact or by any reasoning or by any combination of the two. 

Now here's the question.  Given that the two maintain contradictory value-prioritization theses, how can either "stand unflinchingly" for his thesis given that each recognizes that each thesis is true only from his orientation, an orientation which rests crucially  on his value-prioritization, a value-prioritization that he has no objective reason to prefer over that of his opponent?

I am suggesting that a truly civilized man, one who fully appreciates this predicament he is in, must give up his unflinchingness.  He ought to flinch!  After all, his opponent has all the same intellectual and moral virtues as he has –let us assume — is equally capable of reasoning cogently above whatever are the facts, and is equally well apprised of all empirical facts that bear on the issue.  Isn't there something "barbaric" about insisting on one's own position assuming that all of these conditions have been met?

I agree with Berlin that it would be "dangerous and immature" to claim absolute truth for convictions that rest on value judgments that cannot be objectvely established.  But once we get this far, then unflinchingness must also go by the board: what I recognize as true only from my point of view, I cannot hold in an unflinching manner.

And yet I must act, hold opinions, vote, take a stand, smite my enemies.  Suspension of judgment and retreat from the political sphere does not seem to be a viable option — especially not in the face of a bunch of leftist totalitarians who want to so extend the public /political sphere so as to destroy the private.  A hell of a bind we are in: we are essentially agents, hence must act, hence must stand fast, be resolute and smite our dangblasted political opponents — all the while realizing that we have no justification for our unflinchingness.

The admirable writer Berlin mentions is Joseph Schumpeter.

A Modal Ontological Argument and an Argument from Evil Compared

After leaving the polling place this morning, I headed out on a sunrise hike over the local hills whereupon the muse of philosophy bestowed upon me some good thoughts.  Suppose we compare a modal ontological argument with an argument from evil in respect of the question of evidential support for the key premise in each.  This post continues our ruminations on the topic of contingent support for noncontingent propositions.

A Modal Ontological Argument

'GCB' will abbreviate 'greatest conceivable being,' which is a rendering of Anselm of Canterbury's "that than which no greater can be conceived."  'World' abbreviates 'broadly logically possible world.'

1. The concept of the GCB is either instantiated in every  world or it is instantiated in no world.

2. The concept of the GCB is instantiated in some world.  Therefore:

3. The concept of the GCB is instantiated.

This is a valid argument: it is correct in point of logical form.  Nor does it commit any informal fallacy such as petitio principii, as I argue in Religious Studies 29 (1993), pp. 97-110.  Note also that this version of the OA does not require the controversial assumption that existence is a first-level property, an assumption that Frege famously rejects and that many read back (with some justification) into Kant.  (Frege held that the OA falls with that assumption; he was wrong: the above version is immune to the Kant-Frege objection.)

(1) expresses what I will call Anselm's Insight.  He appreciated, presumably for the first time in the history of thought, that a divine being, one worthy of worship, must be noncontingent, i.e., either necessary or impossible.  I consider (1) nonnegotiable.  If your god is contingent, then your god is not God. There is no god but God.  End of discussion.  It is premise (2) — the key premise — that ought to raise eyebrows.  What it says — translating out of the patois of possible worlds — is that it it possible that the GCB exists.

Whereas conceptual analysis of 'greatest conceivable being' suffices in support of (1), how do we support (2)?  Why should we accept it?  Some will say that the conceivability of the GCB entails its possibility.  But I deny that conceivability entails possibility.  I won't argue that now, though I do say something about conceivability here.  Suppose you grant me that conceivability does not entail BL-possibility.  You might retreat to this claim:  It may not entail it, but it is evidence for it:  the fact that we can conceive of a state of affairs S is defeasible evidence of S's possibility.

Please note that Possibly the GCB exists — which is logically equivalent to (2) — is necessarily true if true.  This is a consequence of the characteristic S5 axiom of modal propositional logic:  Poss p –> Nec Poss p. ('Characteristic' in the sense that it  is what distinguishes S5 from S4 which is included in S5.)  So if the only support for (2) is probabilistic or evidential, then we have the puzzle we encountered earlier: how can there be probabilistic support for a noncontingent proposition?  But now the same problem arises on the atheist side.

An Argument From Evil

4. If the concept of the GCB is instantiated, then there are no gratuitous evils.

5. There are some gratuitous evils. Therefore:

6. The concept of the GCB is not instantiated.

This too is a deductive argument, and it is valid.  It falls afoul of no informal fallacy.  (4), like (1), is nonnegotiable.  Deny it, and I show you the door.  The key premise, then, the one on which the soundness of the argument rides, is (5).  (5) is not obviously true.  Even if it is obviously true that there are evils, it is not obviously true that there are gratuitous evils. 

In fact, one might argue that the argument begs the question against the theist at line (5).  For if there are any gratuitous evils, then by definition of 'gratuitous' God cannot exist.  But I won't push this in light of the fact that in print I have resisted the claim that the modal OA begs the question at its key premise, (2) above.

So how do we know that (5) is true?  Not by conceptual analysis. If we assume, uncontroversially, that there are some evils, then the following logical equivalence holds:

7. Necessarily, there are some gratuitous evils iff the GCB does not exist.

Left-to-right is obvious: if there are gratuitous evils, ones for which there is no justification, then a being having the standard omni-attributes cannot exist.  Right-to-left:  if there is no GCB and there are some evils, then there are some gratuitous evils.  (On second thought, R-to-L may not hold, but I don't need it anyway.)

Now the RHS, if true, is necessarily true, which implies that the LHS — There are some gratuitious evils — is necessarily true if true. 

Can we argue for the LHS =(5)?  Perhaps one could argue like this (as one commenter suggested in an earlier thread):  If the evils are nongratuitous, then probably we would have conceived of justifying reasons for them.  But we cannot conceive of justifying reasons.  Therefore, probably there are gratuitous evils.

But now we face our old puzzle: How can the probability of there being gratuitous evils show that there are gratuitous evils given that There are gratuitous evils, if true, is necessarily true?

Conclusion

We face the same problem with both arguments, the modal OA for the existence of the GCB, and the argument from evil for the nonexistence of the GCB.  The key premises in both arguments — (2) and (5) — are necessarily true if true.  The only support for them is evidential from contingent facts.  But then we are back with our old puzzle:  How can contingent evidence support noncontingent propositions? 

Neither argument is probative and they appear to cancel each other out.  Sextus Empiricus would be proud of me.

Conservative Activism, The Left’s Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy (2010 Version)

'Conservative activism' has an oxymoronic ring to it.  Political activism does not come naturally to conservatives, as I point out in The Conservative Disadvantage.   But the times they are a 'changin' and so I concluded that piece by saying that  we now need to become active. "Not in the manner of the leftist who seeks meaning in activism for its own sake, but to defend ourselves and our values so that we can protect the private sphere from the Left's totalitarian encroachment.   The conservative values of liberty and self-reliance and fiscal responsibility are under massive assault by the Obama administration . . . ."

Continue reading “Conservative Activism, The Left’s Incomprehension, and the Genetic Fallacy (2010 Version)”

RightWingBob and RightWingJack

One difference between these two websites is that the first exists while the second doesn't.  It borders on a paradox: two major countercultural influences, Kerouac and Dylan, display significant conservative tendencies in their art.  I recommend RWB's post Times Changin'  with its links to First Things articles and to a very nice Dylan performance in which 'another side' of his vocal styling is made manifest.  This bard's one protean cat.

Kerouac October Quotation #30

The despairing section X of Book Thirteen of Vanity of Duluoz which I quoted yesterday is followed immediately by this:

Yet I saw the cross just then when I closed my eyes after writing all this.  I cant escape its mysterious penetration into all this brutality.  I just simply SEE it all the time, even the Greek cross sometimes.  I hope it will all turn out true.

It is fitting to conclude Kerouac month with the last section of Jack's last book, a section in which, while alluding to the Catholic mass, he raises his glass to his own piecemeal suicide:

Forget it wifey. Go to sleep. Tomorrow's another day. Hic calix! Look that up in Latin, it means "Here's the chalice," and be sure there's wine in it.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Route 66

Kerouac in a letter from 17 January 1962: "Everybody is making money off my ideas, like those "Route 66" TV producers, everybody except me . . . ." (Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed, Charters, Viking 1999, p. 326; see also p. 461 and pp. 301-302.)  Here is the Nelson Riddle theme music from the TV series.  And here is part of an episode from the series which ran from 1960-1964.  George Maharis bears a striking resemblance to Jack, wouldn't you say? Now dig Bobby Troup.  And if that's too cool for you, here is Depeche Mode.  Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Dr. Feelgood,  and others have covered the tune.

Kerouac October Quotation #30: The Holes in Jesus’ and Buddha’s Bags

Vanity of Duluoz, Book Thirteen, X, pp. 274-276, ellipses and bold emphases added:

Kerouac again.  .  .  .Mad Dog creation has a side of compassionate mercy in it . . . we have seen the brutal creation send us the Son of Man who, to prove that we should follow His example of mercy, brotherly love, charity, patience, gave Himself up without murmur to be sacrificed.  Otherwise we would have taken his example lightly.  Seeing that He really meant it right down to the cross, we are impressed.  [. . .] But we cant be redeemed "unless we believe," it says, or follow His example.  And who can do that?  Not even Count Leo Tolstoy who still had to live in a "humble hut" but on his own lands even tho he had signed over his "own lands" of course to his own family, and had the gall then, from that earthly vantage point of vaunt, to write The Kingdom of God is Within You.  If I, myself, for instance, were to try to follow Jesus' example I'd first have to give up my kind of drinking, which prevents me from thinking too much(like I'm doing in awful pain this morning), and so I'd go insane and go on public debt and be a pain to everybody in the blessed "community" or "society."  And I'd be furthermore bored to death by the knowledge that there is a hole even in Jesus' bag: and that hole is, where He says to the rich young man "Sell everything you have and give it tothe poor, and follow me," okay, where do we go now, wander and beg our food off poor hardworking householders?  and not even rich at that like that rich young man's mother? but poor and harried like Martha?  Martha had not "chosen the better part" when she cooked and slaved and cleaned house all day while her younger sister Mary  sat in the doorway like a modern beatnik with "square" parents talking to Jesus about "religion" and "redemption" and "salvation" and all that guck.  Were Jesus and young Mary McGee waiting for supper to be ready? While talking about redemption?  How can you be redeemed when you have to pass food in and out of your body's bag day in and day out, how can you be "saved" in a situation so sottish and flesh-hagged as that? (This was also the hole in Buddha's bag: he more or less said "It's well for Bodhisattva sages and Buddhas to beg for their food so as to teach the ordinary people of the world the humility of charity," ugh I say. No, the springtime bud I talked about with rain dew on its new green, it's the laugh of a maniac.  Birth is the direct cause of all pain and death, and a Buddha dying of dysentery at the age of eighty-three had only to say, finally, "Be ye lamps unto thyselves" — last words –"work out thy salvation with diligence," heck of a thing to say as he lay there in an awful pool of dysentery.  Spring is the laugh of a maniac, I say.

God, Possibility, and Evidential Support for Non-Contingent Propositions

Mike Valle gave a presentation yesterday before the ASU philosophy club on the skeptical theist response to the evidential argument from evil.  A good discussion ensued among Guleserian, Nemes, Lupu, Reppert, Valle, Vallicella, et al.  Peter Lupu made a comment that stuck in my mind and that I thought about some more this morning.  For what puzzles him puzzles me as well.  It may be that we are both just confused.

1. Let us assume that our concept of God is the concept of a being that has a certain modal property, the property of being such that, if existent, then necessarily existent, and if nonexistent, then necessarily nonexistent. Call this the Anselmian conception of deity.  It follows that God exists, if true, is necessarily true, and if false, necessarily false.  Simply put, the proposition in question is either necessary or impossible, and thus necessarily noncontingent.

2. Peter's question, I take it, was: how can such a noncontingent proposition have its probability either raised or lowered by any empirical consideration?  In particular, how can considerations about the kinds and amounts of natural and moral evil in the world lower the probability of God exists?  If true,then necessarily true; if false, then necessarily false.  Peter's sense — and I share it — is that evidential considerations are simply irrelevant to the probability of noncontingent propositions.

3. The problem — if it is one — arises in other contexts as well.  I once argued that conceivability does not entail (broadly logical) possibility.  I got the response that, though this is true, conceivability of p raises the probability of p's being possible. That is not clear to me.  Assuming the modal system S5, if p is possible then necessarily p is possible, and if p is necessary, then necessarily p is necessary. (The possible and the necessary do not vary from world to world.)

I happen to think that S5 caters quite well to our modal intuitions.  Assume it does.  Then It is possible that there be a talking donkey is necessarily true, if true.  If so, how can the fact that I (or anyone or all of us) can conceive of a talking donkey raise the probability of the proposition in question?

4. Reppert made a comment in response to Lupu about the probability being epistemic in nature.  I didn't follow it.  If p is noncontingent, and we are concerned with the probability of p's being true, and if truth is not an epistemic property (i.e., a property reducible to some such epistemic property as rational acceptability), then I don't see how evidential considerations are relevant.

The ComBox is open if Victor or Peter want to add to their remarks. 

 

 

Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Moderate?

Spencer Case, on his way home from Afghanistan, e-mails:

I recently wrote a column on Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the supposed Islamic moderate.  It's been a long time since I've written a column that was really controversial, but this might break the dry spell. I hope you will share it with your readers not only for the sake of shameless self-promotion but also because your readers need to be warned about this guy. It says a lot about Islam that this guy is considered moderate! The link is here: http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/afghanistan/

I urge you to read Mr. Case's column.  This Nasr is obviously no moderate, and his views, at least as reported by Case, are plainly incompatible with Western values.   That Nasr has tenure at an American university is yet another demonstration of the complicity of the Left with radical Islam. Excerpts:

Nasr states in many places and in no unclear terms that he opposes both secular law and “freedom of speech”—placed in scare quotes—which allows for criticism of religion. Most moderates in western countries, Nasr asserts, want the same.

“In the Islamic perspective,” he writes, “Divine Law is to be implemented to regulate society and the actions of its members rather than society dictating what laws should be… to speak of Shari’ah as being simply the laws of the seventh century fixed in time and not relevant today would be like telling Christians that the injunctions of Christ to love one’s neighbor and not commit adultery were simply the laws of the Palestine two thousand years ago and not relevant today, or telling Jews not to keep the Sabbath because this is simply an outmoded practice of three thousand years ago.”

And again: “Since God is the creator of all things, there is no legitimate domain of life to which His Will or His Laws (antecedently stated to mean Qur’anic Shari’ah) do not apply.”

The problem  with Nasr's view as reported by Case should be obvious.  It is plainly incompatible with our Western liberal values — values whose defense, paradoxically enough, is being carried out by contemporary conservatives, the Left having abdicated due to its inherent political correctness. 

ONLY IF we know that God exists AND ONLY IF we know his will with respect to us and our well-being would it be plausible to argue that something like Shari'ah is justified.  But those two necessary conditions have not been met and most likely never will.   Only an uncritical fundamentalist who absolutizes what is relative and conditioned, namely, the scripture of a religion inferior to Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity, a scripture which, even if in part divinely inspired, is mainly a human product, could possibly think that we have in that scripture rules of behavior that should be imposed on everyone.

Read the whole of Spencer's column.  And then make sure you vote next Tuesday, bearing in mind that the Democrat Party is the party of the Left and that the Left does not have the will or the integrity to stand up to radical Islam.

 

You Don’t Know Jack About Kerouac. A Trivia Test

I'll prove it. Take this test. No search engines.
Kerouac merchant marine 1. Name the one and only Kerouac novel that contains a chess  diagram. Extra credit: Does it represent a legal position?
2. On which nationally known talk show did Kerouac make a reference to Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite?
3. Kerouac gave a pretentious literary subtitle to one of his novels.  Name the novel and name the subtitle.
4. Kerouac applied the derogatory moniker 'Reinhold Cacoethes' to whom of his acquaintances?
5. Which of Jack's friends compiled a list of popes from A.D. 64 to 1958?
6. Which branch of the service was Kerouac in when the above picture was taken?
7. Name the neocon who took Kerouac & Co. to task in "The Know-Nothing Bohemians."
8. The phrase 'ball the jack' has fallen into desuetude. To the best of my knowledge, the phrase is employed in only one of Kerouac's novels. Name the novel and explain the phrase's meaning and origin.
9. "But it was that beautiful cut of clouds I could always see above the little S. P. alley, puffs floating by from Oakland or the gate of Marin to the north or San Jose south, the clarity of Cal to break your   heart." From which short piece is this passage excerpted? And what does 'S. P.' stand for?
10. "Since beginningless time and into the never-ending future, men have loved women without telling them, and the Lord has loved them without telling, and the void is not the void because there's nothing to be empty of." From which novel?