Author: Bill Vallicella

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sleep, Dreams, and Insomnia

Bobby Lewis, Tossin' and Turnin (1961).  Santo and Johnny, Sleepwalk (1959).  Joe Satriani's cover blows the original and every other cover clean out of the water. Masterful guitar work.  Bobby Edwards, You're the Reason I Don't Sleep at Night.  A country crossover hit from 1961.  Leadbelly, Where Did You Sleep Last Night (1944).  Here's hoping your Dream Lover doesn't leave you with Tears on Your Pillow. 

Cops: A Necessary Evil

I don't much like law enforcement agents (qua law enforcement agents) and I try to avoid contact with them, not because I violate laws or have something to hide, but because I understand human nature, and I understand how power corrupts people, not inevitably, but predictably. Cops and sheriffs are too often arrogant, disrespectful, and willing to overstep their lawful authority. But there is a species of varmint that I like even less than law enforcement agents: criminals and scofflaws. They are the scum of the earth. To clean up scum you need people who are willing to get dirty and who share some of the attributes of those they must apprehend and incarcerate. I mean such attributes as courage, cunning, some recklessness, with a dash of ruthlessness thrown in for good measure. Government and its law enforcement agencies are a necessary evil. That is not pessimism, but realism. There are anarchists and others who dream of a world in which good order arises spontaneously and coercive structures are unnecessary. I want these anarchists and others to be able to dream on in peace. For that very reason, I reject their dangerous utopianism.

Assertion Again

The enigmatic William of Woking e-mails from London:

Hardly a week passes by without my pondering over your objection to my position on assertion.  Would it help us if I try to clarify my position again?  And it would help me, if you clarified what your position is. My position is:

1. The semantics of a sentence is compositional, i.e. a sentence has a meaning, and the meaning has parts. (The semantic composition doesn't necessarily have to correspond to the verbal composition, although it often will).
 
This principle of the compositionality of meaning seems intuitively clear and unproblematic.  The meaning of a semantic whole is a function of  (is uniquely determined by) the meanings of its semantic parts. So far, so good.

2. There is a component of the meaning of the sentence which corresponds to assertion. By this, I mean that without this component, we no longer have a sentence, and by means of this anyone who grasps or understands this component will be correctly taken to be stating what is capable of truth and falsity.

By a sentence you mean a declarative sentence.  Such sentences are either true or false.  You speak of a component of meaning that corresponds to assertion, a component without which a sentence would not be a sentence.  This I don't understand.  Which  component of 'Tom is tall' corresponds to assertion?  It can't be 'Tom' or 'tall.'  And it can't be 'is' because 'is' is a syntactic, not a semantic, component. 

You may also be conflating the question of what makes a sentence assertible and the question of what makes a sentence a sentence as a opposed to a set, sum, or list of its parts.  E.g, what distinguishes the sentence 'Tom runs' (which is either true or false) from the list: Tom, runs (which is neither true nor false)?

If I am given 'Tom is tall' and 'Is Tom tall?' I will classify the first as declarative (indicative) and the second as interrogative.  The difference in grammatical mood is indicated by word order and presence/absence of the question mark.  But there is no one component in 'Tom is tall' that makes it indicative.  So I honestly don't know what you are claiming by (2).

Which of these do you disagree with? Which of them needs further clarification? I suspect you don't agree, for reasons you have given before, namely that the very same sentence can be uttered without the speaker being understood to be stating something true or false (e.g. if the speaker winks, or visibly crosses their fingers, or utters the sentence in an explicitly arch or ironic way).

Right.  I made the point that one can utter an indicative sentence and not make an assertion.   Suppose Johnny is picking his nose in public, and Mommy says to Johnny, 'We don't do that.' Mommy utters an indicative sentence, and yet does not make an assertion; she issues a command.  An assertion is either true or false, a command is neither.  If Johnny is a smartass, he might continue picking his nose while saying to his mother, 'You didn't tell me to cease and desist from rhinotillexomania, you merely stated that people like us don't generally engage in it.'  You could call that the smartass exploitation of the difference between sentence meaning and speaker's meaning.

I conclude that what makes a sentence indicative and what makes it an assertion are two different things.  Indicativity pertains to a sentence-type by itself apart from its tokening by a speaker.  Assertion, however, is a speech act and belongs to pragmatics.  Furthermore, I do not see that the indicativity of a sentence is signaled by some one separable component of it.  Which proper part of 'Tom runs' makes it indcative?  No proper part. 

A second example.  'Obama sucks' is an indicative sentence.  But a tokening of this sentence type will not typically express a proposition or convey an assertion; it will typically be used to express dislike or contempt.  So again, whatever it is that make a sentence indicative is different from whatever it is that makes it an assertion.

You have also objected that assertion 'is an act', but I have never clearly understood this objection. I agree that uttering a sentence is an act. But semantics i.e. meaning cannot exist without signs, which are physical and tangible tokens for the thoughts and concepts we want to express. Nor can we express our thoughts (which are personal and subjective events) without the signs. So even if assertion is an act (of producing sign-tokens), that is not inconsistent with what I am claiming. What you need to show is that no physical or verbal or written sign corresponds to assertion. (If that is your objection, but I don't really understand it, as I say).

My point was that assertion is a speech act that belongs within pragmatics, not semantics or syntactics.  Perhaps you will grant me that.  What you are looking for, apparently, is a part of a sentence that makes it an assertion.  But whether or not a sentence is an assertion depends on how it is used in a concrete situation.

Marxist Utopianism Illustrated by a Passage from The German Ideology

Here is a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):

. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.  

With all due respect to Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling.  If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perfom a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx.  But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recogntion of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above. 

First of all, it is is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes."  Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chaffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished?  PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope?  Woody Allen a bronco-buster?  Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon?  And if Marx has actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.

Utopian, reality-denying nonsense.  Dangerous, murderous  nonsense.  Incoherence: dictatorship of the proletariat, classless society, worker's paradise.  Cuba?  North Korea?  Communist China?  Dictatorship of the dictator (Stalin, Mao, Fidel . . .).  Classlessness by reduction of all to one class, that of the impoverished and oppressed.

Thanks to the Left: Balkanization, Tribalism, Civil War

For more than two centuries, individuals with diverse backgrounds have come together to form a national ‘melting pot’ and harmonious society sustained by allegiance to the country and its founding principles. But today’s open-ended mass migration, coupled with the destructive influences of biculturalism, multiculturalism, bilingualism, multilingualism, dual citizenship, and affirmative action, have combined to form the building blocks of a different kind of society—where aliens are taught to hold tightly to their former cultures and languages, balkanization grows, antagonism and conflict are aroused, and victimhood is claimed at perceived slights. If a nation does not show and teach respect for its own identity, principles, and institutions, that corrosive attitude is conveyed to the rest of the world, including newly arriving aliens. And if this is unchecked, the nation will ultimately cease to exist.
Mark Levin, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, (New York: Threshold Editions, 2009), pp. 160-161.  Here.

Presentism and Existence-Entailing Relations: An Aporetic Tetrad

It is plausibly maintained that all relations are existence-entailing. To illustrate from the dyadic case: if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.   A relation cannot hold unless the things between which or among which it holds all exist.  A weaker, and hence even more plausible, claim is that all relations are existence-symmetric: if R relates a and b, then either both relata exist or both do not exist. Both the stronger and the weaker claims rule out the possibility of a relation that relates an existent and a nonexistent. (So if Cerberus is eating my cat, then Cerberus exists. And if I am thinking about Cerberus, then, given that Cerberus does not exist, my thinking does not relate me to Cerberus.  This implies that  intentionality is not a relation, though it is, as Brentano says, relation-like (ein Relativliches).)

But if presentism is true, and only temporally present items exist, then no relation connects a present with a nonpresent item. This seems hard to accept for the following reason.

I ate lunch  an hour ago. So the event of my eating (E) is earlier than the event of my typing (T). How can it be true that E bears the earlier than relation to T, and T bears the later than relation to E, unless both E and T exist? But E is nonpresent. If presentism is true, then E does not exist.  And if E does not exist, then E does not stand in the earlier than relation to T.  If, on the other hand, there are events that exist but are nonpresent, then presentism is false.

How will the presentist respond? Since E does not exist on his view, while T does, and E is earlier than T, he must either (A) deny that all relations are existence-symmetric, or deny (B) that earlier than is a relation. He must either allow the possibility of genuine relations that connect nonexistents and existents, or deny that T stands in a temporal relation to E.

To  fully savor the problem we  cast it in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. All relations are either existence-entailing or existence-symmetric.

2. Earlier than is a relation.

3. Presentism: only temporally present items exist.

4. Some events are earlier than others.

Each limb of the tetrad is exceedingly plausible.  But they cannot all be true:  any three, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining limb.  For example, the first three entail the negation of the fourth.  To solve the problem, we must reject one of the limbs.  Now (4) cannot be rejected because it is a datum.

Will you deny (1) and say that there are relations that are neither existence-entailing nor existence-symmetric?  I find this hard to swallow because of the following argument.  (a) Nothing can have properties unless it exists.  Therefore (b) nothing can have relational properties unless it exists. (c) Every relation gives rise to relational properties:  if Rab, then a has the property of standing in R to b, and b has the property of standing in R to a.  Therefore, (d) if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.

Will you deny (2) and say that earlier than is not a relation?  What else could it be?

Will you deny presentism and say that that both present and nonpresent items exist?  Since it is obvious that present and nonpresent items cannot exist in the present-tense sense of 'exists,'  the suggestion has to be that present and nonpresent (past or future) items exist in a tenseless sense of 'exist.'  But what exactly does this mean?

The problem is genuine, but there appears to be no good solution, no solution that does not involve its own difficulties.

Guns in the Delusional World of the Leftist

Your typical leftist wants it to be illegal for a citizen to own  a gun for self-defence.  In recent news, an 80 year old Chicago man shot and killed an armed  home invader thereby defending himself, his elderly wife and his grandson.  Well done, old man,  a boon service to humanity.  The miscreant was a scumbag with a long rap sheet.  But in Chitown it is illegal to own a handgun!  That bespeaks a  serious paucity of common sense in the Windy City.  There ought not be any such law.  But since there is, it must be enforced.  Right?  In the topsy-turvy world of leftist 'thought,' one enables the criminal while penalizing the decent citizen.

Laws should be few in number, rational in content, clear and concise in formulation, enforceable, and enforced.  Laws should not be passed for 'feel good' purposes, to show that one is a bien-pensant 'caring' liberal.  All reasonable people abhor gun violence.  But the solution is not legislation that will be ignored by malefactors and serve only to hamstring the law-abiding.

Did Holder, Napolitano, Obama, et al. Lie When They Said They Hadn’t Read the Arizona Law?

J. O. e-mails:

 A caller on the Dennis Miller Show called in and said something very insightful I thought you would like. Miller was asking callers to call in about Eric Holder et al. not reading the Arizona Illegal Immigration law, and the caller said that he thought they HAD read it and were lying about not having read it. Why? Because there isn't anything in it that could possibly be unconstitutional. If there was, it would be plastered all over the news, the exact offending line. Of course they've read it, but by saying they haven't they can criticize it without actually having to show what is wrong with it.

I thought this was insightful, and so I shared it with you.

Now I hadn't thought of that, perhaps because I have more respect for these people (Attorney General Holder, et al.) than I should have.  But now that you mention it, the caller's supposition is very plausible.  How could they fail to have read it?  First of all, all three are legally trained.  Their reading comprehension extends to legalese, and they have staff members who could have summarized it for them.  Second, SB 1070 and the clarificatory  HB 2162 are very short as laws go and easily accessible to anyone with Internet access.  Third, one of them, Homeland Security 'czar' Janet Napolitano (not to be confused with the astute Judge Andrew Napolitano), is a former governor of Arizona, and one would think she would have a keen interest in any laws enacted there, especially laws that have a direct bearing on national security.  Or is Napolitano of Homeland Security unfazed by the possibility of terrorists entering the country via the southern border?

The more I think about it, the more preposterous it sounds for the Attorney General of the U. S. to show no interest in the content of a law when said law mirrors at the State level Federal immigration law.  Would he not want to check whether the law perhaps is inconsistent with Federal law?  How can he not have an interest in the content of a law that is being debated on the international stage?

The caller's surmise seems quite credible.  Why not lie, if it serves your purpose?  The purpose being to prevent anything serious being done about the problem of illegal immigration.  Bear in mind that, for the Left,  the end justifies the means, and 'bourgeois morality' be damned.

Frondizi on the Philosophical Attitude

Risieri Fondizi's What is Value? An Introduction to Axiology, tr. S. Lipp (Open Court, 1963) has stood up well since its English debut over forty five years ago. What follows is a noteworthy metaphilosophical observation of Frondizi's:

The philosophical attitude is basically problematic. He who is not capable of grasping the sense of problems and who prefers to seize upon the first solution that presents itself, and which offers him illusory stability, runs the risk of being submerged, together with his so-called solution, in a sea of difficulties. (p. 26)

'Problematic' can mean dubious. But what Frondizi intends is best rendered by 'problem-oriented.' A philosopher is someone who is sensitive to puzzles, problems, and mysteries. Or, as I like to say, the philospher is one who has the aporetic sense.   I once heard Roderick Chisholm say that one is not philosophizing until one has a puzzle. That's exactly right. But of course it's an old thought. At Theaetetus 155, Plato tells us that philosophy begins in wonder or perplexity, this being the characteristic feeling of the philosopher. Aristotle echoes the idea at Metaphysics 982b10.

Wilfrid Sellars once likened the philosopher's touch to that of King Midas. Whatever the king touched, turned into gold; whatever the  philosopher touches turns into a puzzle. The trouble with this comparison is that it suggests that philosophers create their difficulties. Not so: they discover them, or at least some of them. We could call the ones that are discovered the ground-level problems, distinguishing them from problems that arise as artifacts of theories proposed in solution of the ground-level problems. The ground-level problems are in a  certain sense 'out there' independent of our linguistic and conceptual operations. Pace Wittgenstein, they are not engendered by a  "bewtchment of our understanding by language" (eine Verhexung unseres  Verstandes durch die Sprache). Pace Rorty, they do not arise as artifacts of arbitrarily adopted ways of talking.

The problem of universals, for example, is a perennial problem. It may not interest you, or seem important, but it is there whether you like it or not, and it has repercussions for problems you probably will find important. We attribute properties to things, and sometimes the things to which we attribute the properties actually have them. But what are properties? Are they mental in nature, or perhaps linguistic? Or are properties independent of language and mind? If the latter, are they universals (repeatable entities) or particulars (unrepeatable entities such as sets or tropes)? If properties are universals, can they exist uninstantiated, or can they only exist when instantiated?  How are properties related to the things that have them. 

These are some of the questions that arise when we think about what is somewhat misleadingly called the problem of universals. 'The problem of properties' is perhaps a better moniker.

The onus probandi is on anyone who claims that this problem (or cluster of problems) is not genuine.

Another Round with Reppert on AZ SB 1070: Reasonable Suspicion

In his most recent post on this topic, Victor Reppert tells us that his "main concern is with the 'reasonable suspicion' clause. That strikes me as horribly vague."  Here is the relevant SB 1070 passage as amended by HB 2162 which contains the clause in question:

For any lawful contact stop, detention or arrest made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of this state or a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency of a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state in the enforcement of any other law or ordinance of a county, city or town or this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who and is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person, except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation. 

Reppert continues:

In our state, most illegals are Hispanics, but most Hispanics are not illegals. If you define your conception of what it takes to have reasonable suspicion, and on my blog I made an un-remarked-upon recommendation that we have reasonable suspicion just in case we have objective criteria leading to the conclusion that it is more likely than not that the person is illegal, then you could at least eliminate the worst of the profiling problems. You can't just stop a Hispanic and make an immigration status inquiry, because being Hispanic is not sufficient for it to be more than 50% likely that the person is here illegally. (Emphasis added)

I believe Reppert is missing the point here.  I agree with the last quoted sentence.  But the  1070 law does not mandate that Hispanics be stopped at random to have their status checked.  The law clearly states the conditions under which an immigration inquiry may proceed:

1.  There must be a lawful stop, detention, or arrest.

2. The stop, detention, or arrest must be made in the enforcement of a law other than 1070.

3.  There must be reasonable suspicion that the person is an illegal alien.

4.  The immigration inquiry must be practicable.

5.  The immigration inquiry must not hinder or obstruct an investigation.

I should think that Reppert's 50% rule is satisfied if all the conditions are observed.  For example, during a lawful traffic stop, the cop has the right to ask for a driver's license.  If the Hispanic driver has no license, no proof of insurance, no registration, has a campesino sticker on his bumper, is driving a junker, etc.  then the the chance that he is illegal is way over 50%.

There is a distinction I made earlier which is very important and which Reppert may be ignoring, the distinction between a law and its enforcement.  If a law is reasonable and just, it is these things whether or not some cowboy of a cop oversteps his legitimate  authority in its enforcement.  It would be absurd to argue that a particular law should be repealed because there may be abuses in its enforcement.  For any such argument would 'prove too much': it would prove that every law ought to be repealed.  For every law is such that an abuse can occur in its enforcement.

Five Grades of Self-Referential Inconsistency: Towards a Taxonomy

Some sentences, whether or not they are about other things, are about themselves. They refer to themselves. Hence we say they are 'self-referential.' The phenomenon of sentential self-referentiality is sometimes benign. One example is 'This sentence is true.' Another  is 'Every proposition is either true or false.' Of interest here are the more or less malignant forms of self-reference. One example is the so-called Liar sentence:

1. This sentence is false.

If (1) is true, then it is false, and if false, then true. This is an example of an antinomy. In pursuit of a taxonomy, we might call this Grade I of self-referential inconsistency. Grade I, then, is the class
of self-referentially inconsistent sentences that issue in antinomies.

There are other self-referential sentences that are not antinomies, but imply their own necessary falsehood. These are such that, if true, then false, and if false, then false, and are therefore necessarily false. For example,

2. All generalizations are false.

If (2) is true, then, since (2) is itself a generalization, (2) is false. But its falsity does not imply its truth. So, if false, then false. Assuming Bivalence, it follows that (2) is necessarily false, whence it follows that its negation — Some generalizations are true  – is necessarily true, and moreover an instance of itself. A second example might be

3. There are no truths.

If (3) is true, then it is false. And if false, then false. So, (3) is necessarily false, whence it follows that its negation — There are truths — is necessarily true.

Examples (2) and (3) belong to Grade II in my tentative taxonomy. These are self-referential sentences that entail their own necessary falsehood. Grade III comprises those self-referential sentences that are such that if true, then neither true nor false, and if false, then false. For example,

4. There are no truth-bearers.

If (4) is true, then, since (4) is a truth-bearer, (4) is neither true nor false. But if false, then false. If we define the cognitively meaningful as that which is either true or false, then (4) is either cognitively meaningless or false. A more interesting example that seems to belong in Grade III is the Verifiability Principle of the Logical Positivists:

5. Every cognitively meaningful sentence is either analytic or empirically verifiable in principle.

If (5) is supposed to be cognitively (as opposed to emotionally) meaningful, and thus not a mere linguistic recommendation or pure stipulation, then it applies to itself. So if (5) is true, then (5) —
which is clearly neither analytic nor verifiable — is meaningless. So, if true, then meaningless, and if false, then false. Therefore, either meaningless or false. Not good!

Grade IV comprises those self-referential sentences that can be described as self-vitiating (self-weakening) though they are not strictly self-refuting. For example,

6. All truths are relative.

If (6) is true, then (6) is relative, i.e., relatively true. It is not the case that if (6) is true, then (6) is false. So (6) is not self-refuting. Nevertheless, (6) is self-vitiating in that it relativizes and thus weakens itself: if true, it cannot be absolutely true; it can only be relatively true. It is therefore a mistake, one often made, to say that he who affirms (6) contradicts himself.  He does not.  He would contradict himself only if he maintained that it is nonrelatively true that all truths are relative.  But no sophisticated relativist would say such a thing.  Other examples which seem to fall into the category of the self-vitiating:

7. Every statement is subject to revision. (Quine)
8. Every theory reflects class interests. (Marxism)
9. All theory is ideology. (Marxism)
10. Nothing can be known.
11. Nothing is known.
12. Nothing is certain.
13. All truth is historical.
14. All is opinion.

What is wrong with self-vitiating propositions? What does their weakness consist in? Consider (8). If (8) is true, then the theory that every theory reflects class interests itself reflects class interests. Suppose (8) reflects the class interests of the proletariat. Then what is that to me, who am not a proletarian? What is it to anyone who is not a proletarian? If (8) is true only for you and those with your interests, and your interests are not my interests, then I have been given no reason to modify my views.  The trouble with (7)-(14) and their ilk is that they make a claim on our rational attention, on our common rational interest, while undercutting that very claim.

It seems we need a fifth category. The sentences of Grade V are such that, if they are true then they are, not false, and not self-vitiating, but non-assertible. Consider

15. No statement is negative.

(15) applies to itself and so at first appears to refute itself: if (15) is true, then it is false. And if false, then false; hence necessarily false. But consider a possible world W in which God destroys all negative statements and makes it impossible for anyone to make a negative statement. In W, (15) is true, but non-assertible. (15) does not prove itself to be false; it proves itself to be non-assertible.

Can the same said of

16. All is empty (Buddhism)?

I think not, for reasons supplied here.

Finally, we consider

17. All memory reports are deceptive.

This is subject to the retort that one who asserts (17) must rely on memory, and so must presuppose the reliability of the faculty whose reliability he questions by asserting (17). For if anyone is to be in a position responsibly to affirm (17), to affirm it with a chance of its being true, he must remember that on some occasions he has misremembered. He must remember and remember correctly that some of his memories were merely apparent. It seems obvious, then, that the truth of (17) is inconsistent with its correctly being affirmed as true. If true, it is unaffirmable as true. But this is different from saying that (17), if true, is false. Although (17) is unaffirmable or non-assertible if true, it seems that (17) could be true nonetheless.