Author: Bill Vallicella

Contingent, Necessary, Impossible: A Note on Nicolai Hartmann

Hartmann Nicolai Hartmann, Moeglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, p. 29:  . . . denn das Zufaellige ist immerhim wirklich, und nur die Notwendigkeit negiert.  Hartmann is saying in effect that everything contingent is actual, and that the contingent and the necessary are polar opposites:  what is contingent is not necessary, and what is not necessary is contingent.

I beg to differ.  First of all, not everything contingent is actual.  My being asleep now and my being awake (= not asleep) now are both possible states of affairs.  The second  is actual, the first  is not.  But both are contingent.  So not everything contingent is actual.  The imagery of possible worlds ought to make this graphic for the modally challenged.  A contingent state of affairs is one that obtains in some but not all possible worlds.  Now my being asleep now obtains in some but not all possible worlds.  Therefore, my being asleep now is contingent though not actual.  So not everything contingent is actual.

Second, it is not the case that x is contingent if and only if x is not necessary.  For there are states of affairs that are not necessary but also not contingent.  My being both awake and not awake now is an impossible state of affairs.  It is neither necessary nor contingent.  Not necessary, because it does not obtain in every possible world.  Not contingent, because it it does not obtain in some (but not all) possible worlds. 

The polar opposite of the contingent is not the necessary but the the noncontingent.  The noncontingent   embraces both the the necessary and the impossible, that which exists/obtains in all worlds, and that which exists/obtains in no world.  Reality, then, is modally tripartite:

The necessary: that which exists/obtains in all possible worlds.  The contingent: that which exists/obtains in some but not all possible worlds.  The impossible: that which exists/obtains in no possible world.

You say you are uncomfortable with the patois of possible worlds?  The distinctions can be sliced without this jargon.  The necessary is that which cannot not be.  The contingent is that which is possible to be and possible not to be. The impossible is that which cannot be.

And that's all she wrote, modally speaking.

Weaver’s Needle From Picket Post Mountain

I didn't make it to the top of Picket Post Mountain this morning as planned. (Near Superior, AZ 25 miles east of where I live.) You could say I wimped out about half way up: it was windy and cold and overcast, with nerve-wracking drop-offs.  Steep I like, precipitous I don't.  I was alone, couldn't raise wifey on my cell phone, and the final pitch which required the use of hand-holds would have been difficult with my walking stick.  We'll leave the peak-bagging for another day.  But I did explore a good stretch of the Arizona trail which runs from the Mexican to the Utah border as a warm-up before tackling the mountain.  

On the way down the mountain, encountered this character who proved to be very interesting.  A fortuitous meeting in a two-fold sense: by chance, and fortunate.  (Interesting that 'fortunate' carries both a descriptive and an evaluative meaning: chancy and good.) I told him I'd take him for a hike in the Superstitions the next time he's in town.

The following shot looks roughly north-northwest.  The prominence smack dab in the middle on the horizon is Weaver's Needle, the central landmark of the Superstition Wilderness.  Superstition Mountain is on the far left and Buzzard's Roost on the far right.

IMG_0765

‘Superb’

'Superb' is still able to convey a hint of the Latin, superbia, pride. A thoughtful writer bears this in mind.  But in a world of thoughtless readers, there is not much call for thoughtful writers.

This reflection occasioned by a sentence from a secondary source on Pascal: "[The extrinsic proofs of Christianity] are humiliating to the superb power of reasoning that would like to judge of everything." 

The Converse Callicles Principle: Weakness Does Not Justify

Might does not make right, but neither does impotence or relative weakness. That weakness does not justify strikes me as an important principle, but I have never seen it articulated. The Left tends to assume the opposite.  They tend to assume that mightlessness makes right.  I'll dub this the Converse Callicles Principle.

The power I have to kill you does not morally justify my killing you. In a slogan: Ability does not imply permissibility.  My ability to kill, rape, pillage & plunder does not confer moral justification on my doing these things.  But if you attack me with deadly force and I reply with deadly force of greater magnitude, your relative weakness does not supply one iota of moral justification for your attack, nor does it subtract one iota of moral justification from my defensive response.  If I am justified in using deadly force against you as aggressor, then the fact that my deadly force is greater than yours does not (a) diminish my justification in employing deadly force, nor does it (b) confer any justification on your aggression.

Suppose a knife-wielding thug commits a home invasion and attacks a man and his family. The man grabs a semi-automatic pistol and manages to plant several rounds in the assailant, killing him. It would surely be absurd to argue that the disparity in lethality of the weapons involved diminishes the right of the pater familias to defend himself and his family.  Weakness does not justify.

The principle that weakness does not justify can be applied to the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict from the summer of 2006 as well as to the Israeli defensive operations against the terrorist entity, Hamas.  The principle ought to be borne in mind when one hears leftists, those knee-jerk supporters of any and every 'underdog,' start spouting off about 'asymmetry of power' and 'disproportionality.'  Impotence and incompetence are not virtues, nor do they confer moral justification or high moral status, any more than they confer the opposite.

The principle that mightlessness makes right seems to be one of the cardinal tenets of the Left.  It is operative in the present furor over the enforcement of reasonable immigration laws in Arizona.  To the south of the USA lies crime-ridden, corrupt, impoverished Mexico.  For millions and millions it is a place to escape from.  The USA, the most successful nation of all time, is the place to escape to.  But how does this disparity in wealth, success, and overall quality of life justify the violation of the reasonable laws and the rule of law that are a good part of the reason for the disparity of wealth, success, and overall quality of life?

Heather Mac Donald on The NYT’s Scurrilous Attack on AZ SB 1070

Here.  Excerpt:

The so-called 287(g) program acts as a “force multiplier,” as the Times points out, adding local resources to immigration law enforcement—just as Arizona’s SB 1070 does. At heart, this force-multiplier effect is what the hysteria over Arizona’s law is all about: SB 1070 ups the chances that an illegal alien will actually be detected and—horror of horrors—deported. The illegal-alien lobby, of which the New York Times is a charter member, does not believe that U.S. immigration laws should be enforced. (The Times’s other contribution today to the prevailing de facto amnesty for illegal aliens was to fail to disclose, in an article about a brutal 2007 schoolyard execution in Newark, that the suspected leader was an illegal alien and member of the predominantly illegal-alien gang Mara Salvatrucha.) Usually unwilling for political reasons to say so explicitly, the lobby comes up with smoke screens—such as the Times’s demagogic charges about SB 1070 as an act of “racial separation”—to divert attention from the underlying issue. Playing the race card is the tactic of those unwilling to make arguments on the merits.

The Arizona law is not about race; it’s not an attack on Latinos or legal immigrants. It’s about one thing and one thing only: making immigration enforcement a reality. It is time for a national debate: Do we or don’t we want to enforce the country’s immigration laws? If the answer is yes, the Arizona law is a necessary and lawful tool for doing so. If the answer is no, we should end the charade of inadequate, half-hearted enforcement, enact an amnesty now, and remove future penalties for immigration violations.

Exactly right.  Race is not the issue.  Either enforce the nation's immigration laws or get rid of them and open the borders.

More on Immigration Law: Arizona House Bill 2162. Response to Reppert

On Friday, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed HB 2162 which modifies and clarifies SB 1070 which was signed into law the week before.  Here is a passage from 1070 which is constantly misrepresented in the liberal press, including the Arizona Republic newspaper:

FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS  UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE,  WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON. (lines 20-26, p. 1)

The misrepresentors leave out (intentionally?) the bit about 'lawful contact.'  Where the bill has 'lawful contact,' the 1070 fact sheet has 'legitimate contact.'  It amounts to the same: lex, legis, is Latin for 'law.'  Now 'lawful contact' would naturally be interpreted to refer to contact between a law enforcement officer and a person during the course of a traffic stop and similar situations where a law has been broken.  Victor Reppert, in his response to me, makes a good point.  Because 1070 makes it a state crime to be an illegal alien, "it would seem to me that any attempt to determine whether the crime of being here illegally had been committed would constitute a legitimate [lawful] contact. "  Whether or not this is so, the house bill  provides clarification of 'lawful contact' and removes Reppert's worry:


Continue reading “More on Immigration Law: Arizona House Bill 2162. Response to Reppert”

Right and Wrong Order

Right Order: Finish your schooling; find a job that promises to be satisfying over the long haul and stick with it; eliminate debts and save money; get married after due consultation with both heads,   especially the big one; have children.

Wrong Order: Have children; get married; take any job to stay alive; get some schooling to avoid working in a car wash for the rest of your life.

More on Arizona Senate Bill 1070

Joseph A.  e-mails:

I greatly admire Victor Reppert for a number of reasons – I think the Argument from Reason is pretty amazing and effective when formulated and defended well, and Victor remains one of the most soft-spoken and polite bloggers around.

Agreed.

But a number of thoughts occurred to me when reading his and your post.

Victor shows some deep distrust of law enforcement officials – he mentions how there's plenty of Mark Fuhrmans on the police force, and basically asserts that he doesn't trust them to enforce laws like this appropriately.

Continue reading “More on Arizona Senate Bill 1070”

On Exercise in Nature

There is the beauty, the silence, the peace, the nonsocial reality of nature, but there is also the shift away from the mind back to the sweating, toiling body on earth. Exercise in an artificial environment is not the same, nor is 'windshield tourism.' You should take your Nature straight, in a direct encounter, boots to the trail, not mediated through glass.

Arizona Senate Bill 1070

Arizona Senate Bill 1070 "requires a reasonable attempt to be made to determine the immigration status of a person during any legitimate contact made by an official or agency of the state or a county, city, town . . . if reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the U.S."  See here and here for the full text.

That illegal aliens and those who profit from them should object to this legislation comes as no surprise.  But it does come as a bit of surprise to find native Arizonan Victor Reppert, who to my knowledge neither employs, nor defends in courts of law, nor otherwise profits from illegal aliens, saying this at his blog:

Police in our state have now been given the authority to demand papers on anyone of whom they have a reasonable suspicion that they are illegal aliens. The trouble is, about the only reason for suspicion that I can think of that someone is in the country illegally is if they have brown skin, or speak Spanish instead of English, or English with an Mexican accent.

I'm afraid Victor isn't thinking very hard.  He left out the bit about " during any legitimate contact made by an official . . . ."  Suppose a cop pulls over a motorist who has a tail light out. He asks to see the motorist's driver's license.  The driver doesn't have one.  That fact, by itself, does not prove that the motorist is an illegal alien; but together with other facts (no registration, no proof of insurance, speaks no English . . .) could justify an inquiry into the motorist's immigration status.  Hundreds of examples like this are generable ad libitum.

S. B. 1070 is a reasonable response  to the Federal government's failure to enforce U. S. immigration law.  Border control is a legitimate, constitutionally-grounded function of government. (See Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution.)  When the Feds fail to uphold the rule of law, the states, counties, etc. must do so.  If you don't understand why we need border control, I refer you to my longer piece, Immigration Legal and Illegal.

According to one 'argument,' Arizona Senate Bill 1070 disproportionately targets Hispanics and is objectionable for that reason.  That's like arguing that the RICO statutes disproportionately target Italians.  I don't know whether people of Italian extraction are disproportionately involved in organized crime, but if they are, then that is surely no valid objection to the RICO statutes.  The reason Hispanics will be disproportionately affected is because they disproportionately break the immigration laws.    The quota mentality is behind this 'argument.'