Author: Bill Vallicella

Illegal Immigration, The Catholic Bishops, and the Misuse of Scripture

(Written 26 April 2006, revised 23 May 2010)

At the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, we read:

Why is the Catholic Church involved in the immigration issue? There are several reasons the Catholic Church is involved in the  immigration debate. The Old and New Testaments, as well as the encyclicals of the Popes, form the basis for the Church's position.  In Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls upon us to "welcome the  stranger,for what you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me. " (Mt. 25-35, 40).

There is a deep mistake being made here, and we should try to understand what it is. The mistake is to confuse the private and public spheres and the different moralities pertaining to each.

Note first that if one scriptural passage can be invoked as a basis for public policy and law, then any can. We are enjoined in other New Testament places to "Resist not the evildoer," "Turn the other cheek," and the like. 

Injunctions such as these cannot be made the basis for public policy whatever value they have in the private sphere.

Imagine a society that implements a policy of not resisting (apprehending, trying, convicting, incarcerating) rapists, murderers, and miscreants generally. Such a society would seal its own death
warrant and cease to function. It is a fact of human nature that people, in the main, behave tolerably well only under threat of punishment. People for the most part do not do the right thing because  it is the right thing, but out of fear of punishment. This is not pessimism, but realism, and is known to be true by all unprejudiced students of history and society.  Conservatives know this 'with their bones'; liberals need to learn it the hard way.  Therefore not even a 'Christian' society can afford to make "Resist not the evildoer" a principle of public policy.

As for turning the other cheek, it is a policy that works well in certain atypical circumstances. If a man has a well-formed conscience, and is capable of feeling shame, then turning the other cheek in the face of his affront can achieve a result far superior to that achieved by replying in kind. Nonviolence can work. Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to the British may serve as an historical example. The Brits could be shamed and in any case Gandhi had no other means at his disposal. But imagine what would happen if Israel turned the other cheek in the face of its Islamist enemies who would blow it off the face of the earth at the first opportunity?

Once your enemy has reduced you to the status of a pig or a dog fit only to be slaughtered, then there is no way to reach him, shame him, or persuade him by acts of forebearance and kindness. You must resist him, with deadly force if necessary, if you wish to preserve your existence.  The evil triumph when the good fail to defend themselves.

But is it not better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, as Socrates maintained? Would it not be better to perish than to defend one's life by taking life? Perhaps, but only if the underlying metaphysics and
soteriology are true. If the soul is immortal, and the phenomenal world is of no ultimate concern — being a vale of tears, a place through which we temporarily sojourn on our way to our true home —
then the care of the soul is paramount and to suffer wrong is better than to inflict it.

The same goes for Christianity which, as Nietzsche remarks, is "Platonism for the people." If you are a Christian, and look beyond this world for your true happiness, then you are entitled to practice
an austere morality in your private life. But you are not entitled to impose that morality and metaphysics on others, or demand that the State codify that morality and metaphysics in its laws and policies. For one thing, it would violate the separation of Church and State. More importantly, the implementation of Christian morality would lead to the destruction of the State and the State's ability to secure life, liberty, and property — the three Lockean purposes for which we have a state in the first place.

The problem of confusing private and public morality is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher/Christian, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

A Catholic bishop, therefore, who is pro illegal immigration on the strength of the "welcome the stranger" passage demonstrates a failure to understand the simple point that Arendt undescores.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I
cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug-smuggler or a human-trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law-breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's lawbreaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops who cannot comprehend the simple distinctions I have tried to set forth.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three More Torch Songs

A couple of weeks ago I hauled out some old torch songs from the musty mausoleum. Here are a couple more.  The definition again: "A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, where one party is either oblivious to the existence of the other, or where one party has moved on." (Wikipedia)

Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind (1956).  Made the #1 Billboard position.  The tune has haunted me since I was six years old.  Toni Fisher, The Big Hurt (1959).  Made the Billboard #3 slot.  The first verse hints at the origin of 'torch song':

Now it begins, now that you've gone
Needles and pins, twilight till dawn
Watching that clock till you return
Lighting that torch and watching it burn

Is this the first recording to use a phase shifter?  Pretty far-out for the 'fifties.  While we're on the topic of special effects, the first fuzz tone occurs as far as I know in Marty Robbins' Don't Worry About Me (1961).

 

Atheism, Materialism, and Intellectual Respectability

Joseph A.  e-mails:

Just a quick question. You recently posted that you think atheism can be intellectually respectable. Fair enough. But wouldn't you agree that intellectual respectability in general seems to be assumed more often than it should be?

To put a point on the question: Do you think materialism is intellectually respectable? I seem to recall you saying that (at the least) eliminative materialism is a view you wouldn't bother teaching in a philosophy course. Yet it also seems that some people, even those who would argue that theism isn't intellectually respectable, would bend over backwards to deny that EM isn't as well.

We should begin with a working definition of 'intellectually respectable.'  I suggest the following:

A view V is intellectually respectable =df V is logically consistent with (not ruled out by) anything we can legitimately claim to know.

People claim to know all sorts of things they do not know, which explains the qualifier 'legitimately.'   Note also that truth and intellectual respectability are different properties.  What is true might not be intellectually respectable, and what is intellectually respectable might not be true.  Truth is absolute while intellectual respectability is relative to the class of people to whom 'we' in the definition refers.  And which class is this?  Well, it would include me and Peter Lupu and other astute  contemporaries who are well apprised of the facts of logic and mathematics and science and history and common sense.  It would not include a lady I once encountered who thought that the Moon is the source of its light.  That opinion is not intellectually respectable. 

There are indefinitely many views that are clearly not intellectually respectable, and indefinitely many that clearly are.  The interesting cases are the ones that lie in between.  Let's consider two.

1. Eliminative materialism.  This is defended by some otherwise  sane  people, but I would say it is not intellectually respectable.  For it is ruled out by plain facts that we can legitimately claim to know, such facts as that we have beliefs and desires.  It is a  position in the philosophy of mind that denies the very data of the philosophy of mind.  Here is an argument that some might think supports it:

(1) If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states; (2) beliefs exhibit original intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality; therefore (4) there are no beliefs. 

But anyone with his head screwed on properly should be able to see that this argument does not establish (4) but is instead a reductio ad absurdum of premise (1) according to which beliefs are nothing if not brain states.  For if anything is obvious, it is that there are beliefs.  This is a pre-theoretical datum, a given.  What they are is up for grabs, but that they are is a starting-point that cannot be denied except by those in the grip of  an ideology.  Since the argument is valid in point of logical form, and the conclusion is manifestly, breath-takingly,  false, what the argument shows is that beliefs cannot be brain states.

2.  Theism.  Not every version of theism is intellectually respectable, obviously, but some are.  If you think otherwise, tell me which known fact rules  out a sophisticated version, say, the version elaborated over several books by Richard Swinburne.  ('Known fact' is not pleonastic in the way 'true fact' is; a fact can be unknown.)

a.  Will it be the 'fact' that nothing immaterial exists?  But that's not a fact, let alone a known fact.  Abstracta such as the proposition expressed by 'Nothing immaterial exists' are immaterial but indispensable.  Arguments to the effect  that they are dispensable merely show at the very most that it is debatable  whether abstracta are dispensable, with the upshot that it will not be a known fact that nothing immaterial exists.  No one can legitimately claim to know that nothing immaterial exists.

 b.  Will it be the fact that nothing both concrete and immaterial exists?  Even if this is a fact, it is not a known fact.  I am arguably a res cogitans.  We do not know that this is not the case the way we know that the Moon is not fifty miles from Earth.

c. Will it be the fact of evil?  But how do you know that evil is a fact at all?  Can you legitimately claim to know that the people and events you call evil are objectively evil and not merely such that you dislike or disapprove of them?  But even if evil is an objective fact, what makes you think that it is logically inconsistent with the existence of God? The Hume-Mackie logical argument from evil is almost universally rejected by contemporary philosophers. 

My claim is that there is no fact which we can claim to know — in the way we can claim to know that the Moon is more than 50 miles from Earth — that rules out the existence of God.  But I also claim that there is no such fact that rules it in.  Both theism  and atheism are intellectually respectable. I take no position at the moment on the question whether one is more respectable than the other, or more likely to be true; my claim is merely that both are intellectually respectable — in the way that eliminative materialism and the belief that the Moon is its own source of light are not intellectually respectable.

Eat, Drink, and Beat Harry

IMG_0363 There are cartoons we never forget. One in Chess Life some years back depicted two intense guys bent over a chess board. The caption read, "Eat, drink, and beat Harry."

Emmanuel Lasker would have liked that. He was always going on about the role of Kampf, stuggle, in chess. Lasker would also have liked this quotation lifted from Michael Gilleland's erudite weblog:

After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real highest, honestest business of every son of man. Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or Border-ruffians, or Bill, Tom, or Harry, who will not let him live his life in quiet till he has thrashed them. (Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays, Part II, Chapter V.)

Next time I'm paired with Crazy Harry, I'm going to thrash that meshuggeneh patzer and I'm going to thrash him good.

The Ambiguity of ‘Verify’

There are sentences the uttering of which falsifies them, and sentences the uttering of which verifies them. An example of the former is 'I am not talking now.' The act of uttering this sentence falsifies it. By contrast, the act of uttering 'I am talking now' verifies it.  If to falsify is to make false, then to verify is to make true.

But 'verify' (from L. veritas, truth) is ambiguous, and clarity will be served if we distinguish its two senses, one epistemological, the other ontological.

In the epistemological sense, to verify a claim is to ascertain whether or not it is true. In its ontological sense, to verify is to make true. My saying 'I am now talking' makes true the proposition expressed by the sentence; it is not part of any ascertaining of the truth of the proposition expressed. The utterance-event is the truth-maker of the proposition in question. It is the ontic ground of the proposition's truth.  There is, therefore, a clear sense in which the truthmaker of a truthbearer is its verifier.

Liberace and Liberation

Did Liberace seek liberation? No, he sought to make a big showy splash in the world — which he did. But now the ripples have all subsided, and all that is left is a cheesy Las Vegas museum stuffed with his gaudy possessions –except that he no longer possesses what once possessed him.

Are Immigration Laws Discriminatory?

Liberals routinely complain that immigration laws such as the recently enacted Arizona Senate Bill 1070 are 'discriminatory.'  This is nonsense, of course, but it is important to understand why.

1.  Let's start with the very notion of discrimination.  Discrimination as such is neither good nor bad.  In this respect it is like change.  Change as such  is neither good nor bad: there is change for the good and change for the bad.  Change for the good is improvement, but not all change is improvement.  (Obama take note.)  Similarly, there is justifiable discrimination and unjustifiable discrimination.  As a matter of fact we all discriminate all the time.  When you refuse to eat rotten food and insist on fresh, you are discriminating.  When you forbid your children from associating with crackheads, you are discriminating.  When you sort arguments into the valid and the invalid, you are discriminating.  When you accept the true and reject the false, you are discriminating.  Such discriminations are obviously justifiable.  But that is to understate the point.  Anyone who fails to discriminate between people with whom it would be dangerous for his children to associate and those with whom it would not be dangerous is  guilty of dereliction of parental duty. Discrimination is not only in a vast range of cases permissible; it is obligatory.

2.  The same goes for laws.  Every law discriminates against those who either do or fail to do the actions either proscribed or prescribed by the law.  A law that proscribes the operation of a motor vehicle while intoxicated discriminates against drunk drivers. Is that a problem?  Of course not.  Discrimination in cases like these is obviously justifiable. 

3.  So there is a clear sense in which SB 1070 is discriminatory:  it discriminates against those who are in the country illegally.  Now I hope our liberal pals are not opposed to 1070 for its being discriminatory in this sense.  Presumably, what they will say is that it 'targets' Hispanics and discriminates against them unjustifiably.  But this is a false and scurrilous allegation.  It does not 'target' Hispanics, it targets illegal aliens.  Of course, the vast majority of illegal aliens in the Southwest are Hispanics.  But that is irrelevant.  The objection to them is not that they are Hispanic, but that they are illegal.

It takes a little subtlety of mind to understand this, but not that much.  Suppose someone said that drunk driving  laws are unjust because they disproportionately affect those of Irish extraction.  You would of course respond that if they are the ones who are doing most of the drunk driving, then it only right that they should be the ones who disproportionately suffer the penalty.  You would point out that, even if it is true that most drunk drivers are Irish, the objection to them is not that they are Irish, but that they are drunk drivers.

4.  1070 does not unfairly 'target' Hispanics despite the barrage of lies emanating from the Left.  So what are liberals/leftists really opposed to? They are opposed to the very notion of national sovereignty and national borders.  They simply do not want border control.  But being  mendacious, they will not come out and clearly state that.  So they use weasel phrases like 'comprehensive immigration reform' which either mean nothing or are code for amnesty and open borders. 

Seize and Squeeze

Seize the day and squeeze it for all the juice it's worth. Repeat tomorrow. And no day without a little Emerson:

 . . . we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are, by whomsoever we deal with, accepting our   actual companions and circumstances, however humble or odious, as  the mystic officials to whom the universe has delegated its whole pleasure for us. (From "Experience")

Generalizations are the Offspring of Wisdom

People foolishly oppose generalization. One often hears, 'Never generalize!' But of course that itself is a generalization in the imperative mood. The partisan of brute particularity who so opines is hoist by his own petard.

So it was with pleasure that I heard Dennis Prager one day  remark   that "Generalizations are the mother of wisdom." But being a quibbler and a pedant, I cannot forebear to suggest an improvement:

   Generalizations are the offspring of wisdom

 or

   Generalization is wisdom's distillate.

 For wisdom does not spring from generalization; it is rather that generalizations spring from wisdom as its expression and codification.

Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable? On Romans 1:18-20

Joe Carter over at First Things argues that "We have to abandon the politically correct notion that atheism is intellectually respectable."  My own view is that  theism and atheism are both intellectually respectable.  Carter makes his case by invoking St. Paul:

In Romans, St. Paul is clear that atheism is a case of vincible ignorance: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Acknowledging the existence of God is just the beginning—we must also recognize several of his divine attributes. Atheists that deny this reality are, as St. Paul said, without excuse. They are vincibly ignorant. 

Rather than quote the whole of the Pauline passage at Romans 1: 18-20, I'll summarize it. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made . . . ."

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a result of a willful turning away from the truth.   There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork.  Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is  planted firmly in Athens (philosophy, the autonomy of reason). And so I must point out that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism.  It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

But is the world a divine creation? This is the question, and the answer is not obvious. That the natural world is a divine artifact is not evident to the senses, or to the heart, or to reason. Of course, one can argue for the existence of God from the existence and order of the natural world. I have done it myself. But those who reject theistic arguments, and construct anti-theistic arguments, have their reasons too, and it cannot fairly be said that what animates the best of them is a stubborn and prideful refusal to submit to a truth that is evident.  It is not evident to the senses that the natural world is a divine artifact. 

I may be moved to marvel at "the starry skies above me" (Kant).  But seeing is not seeing as.  If you see the starry skies as divine handiwork, then this is an interpretation from within a theistic framework.  But the datum seen can just as easily be given a nontheistic interpretation.

At the end of the day you must decide which of these interpretations to accept. You will not find some plain fact that will decide it for you.  There is no fact you can point to, or argument you can give, that definitively rules out theism or rules it in.

If the atheism of some has its origin in pride, stubborness and a willful refusal to recognize any power or authority beyond oneself, or beyond the human, as is plainly the case with many of the cyberpunks over at Internet Infidels and similar sites, not to mention such luminaries as Russell and Sartre, it does not follow that the atheism of all has this origin.

It is all-too-human to suspect in our opponents moral depravity when we cannot convince them. The Pauline passage smacks of that all-too-humanity. There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.

Paul appears to be doing what ideologues regularly do when pushed to the wall in debate: they resort to ad hominem attacks and psychologizing:  you are willful and stubborn and blinded by pride and lust; or you are a shill for corporate interests; or you are 'homophobic' or 'Islamophobic' or xenophobic; or you are a fear-monger and a hater; or you are a liar or insincere or stupid; or you are a racist, etc. 

Joe Carter does the same thing. 

Objection: "You are ignoring the deleterious noetic consequences of original sin. Because our faculties have been corrupted by it, we fail to find evident what is in itself evident, namely, that the world is a divine artifact.  And it is because of this original sin that unbelief is inexcusable."

This response raises its own difficulties.  First, how can one be morally responsible for a sin that one has not oneself committed but has somehow inherited? Second, if our faculties have been so corrupted by original sin that we can no longer reliably distinguish between the evident and the non-evident, then this corruption will extend to all our cognitive operations including Paul's theological reasoning, which we therefore should not trust either. 

For a different take on Carter's piece, see Michael Liccione's Why Atheism Can Be Respectable.

Why Mix Philosophy and Politics?

I am sometimes asked why I intersperse political entries with narrowly philosophical ones.  But in every case the question was put to me by someone who tilts leftward.  If my politics were leftist, would anyone complain?  Probably not.  Academe and academic philosophy are dominated by leftists, and to these types it seems entirely natural that one will be a bien-pensant latte-sipping lefty.  Well, I'm here to prove otherwise.  Shocking as it will  seem to some, leftist views are entirely optional, and a bad option at that.

I could of course post my political thoughts to a separate weblog.  But given that philosophy attracts more liberals/leftists than conservatives, it is good for them to be exposed to views  that they do not encounter within the enclaves they inhabit.  Or are contemporary liberals precisely illiberal in their closemindedness to opposing views?  One gets that impression.

Posting the political to a separate weblog would also violate my 'theory' of blogging.  My blog is micro to my life's macro.  It must accordingly mirror my life in all its facets  as a sort of coincidentia oppositorum of this situated thinker's existence.

I Was Forced to Show My Papers!

Az_police_state_175 Things are really getting bad here in the fascist state of Arizona.  Why just this morning I was forced to show ID when I went to vote.  I strolled into the polling place looking a fright after several hours of hiking.  I introduced myself as 'King Blog' but that cut no ice with the  old ladies who manned the place.  They asked to see my driver's license! What chutzpah!  What bigotry!  A bunch of damned Nazis, if you want my opinion.  What if I forgot it, or never had one? Then the Nazi bastards would have disenfranchised me!  The very act of requesting ID is an act of disenfrachisement and intimidation.  Besides, it prevents me from voting twice, which I have the right to do.  I should have adapted a line from B. Traven's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Papers?  I don't need no stinkin' papers!  I'm a human being.  You just hate me because I smell like I spent the night under a bridge.  I have the right to do whatever I want, wherever I want, and vote wherever I want and as many times as I want.

I'm gettin' the hell out of this rattlesnake infested inferno of gun-totin' yahoos, rednecked racists, and xenophobic immigrant-bashers.  I'm going where a man can be free.  I'm headed for the People's Republic of China.  "Live free or die," as I always say.

The Upside of the Arizona Bashing

Ed-abbey

The ACLU and — are you ready for this? — China have joined the bash Arizona band wagon.  The upside is that many liberals and illegals will leave or not come here in the first place. And that makes Cactus Ed very happy.  He recommends Arizona: How Big is Big Enough?  and Immigration and Liberal Taboos.

From the first piece:

. . . the religion of endless growth — like any religion based on blind faith rather than reason– is a kind of mania, a form of lunacy, indeed a disease. And the one disease to which the growth mania bears an exact analogical resemblance is cancer. Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. Cancer has no purpose but growth; but it does have another result — the death of the host.

Cactus Ed here provides us with the makings of an 'environmental' argument against illegal immigration.