Author: Bill Vallicella

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.

Crude or Earthy?

A past inamorata once offered, with some justice, that I am crude. "Not crude, but earthy," was my reply. A colleague once described my eyes as "beady." "Do you mean penetrating?"

Am I pigheaded in my opinions, or admirably firm? Monomaniacal or single-minded? Open-minded or empty-headed? Well-rounded or scattered? Am I precise or obsessive-compulsive? Is my rigor mentis in truth rigor mortis?

Cardinal Mahony, nAZi Hunter

When I first landed in Arizona, way back in 1991, I noticed bumper stickers that read, 'Do AZ I do.'  Well, if you do AZ I do, does that make you a nAZi?

Apparently, Cardinal Roger Mahony,  Catholic Archbiship of Los Angeles, thinks so: "I can't imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation."  Go read his entire post.  It's beneath refutation.  Yet another clear proof that the Roman church is on the skids.

I would advise my Catholic friends to consider what you are supporting when you support this church.  What matters in life is truth, not any old corrupt institution that claims to have it.  You should be skeptical of all institutions, while acknowledging the good that they have done and can do. They are easily corrupted.  Like the houses where I live,  they either have termites or they will get them.

What you have to understand about religious leftists like Mahony is that they have two religions, their nominal religion and the 'religion' of leftism.  And the second usually trumps the first.

Decadent Art

This by e-mail from a doctoral student in Canada:

I am writing to you because I have a couple of questions . . . about your  recent (May 12) blog post, and I was curious to hear a bit more about your views. [. . .]  My questions concern your assertion that "I also agree that if one is going to violate people's beliefs in the manner of  that 'artist' Andres Serrano then one ought to do it on one's own time and with one's own dime, as the saying goes." I assume that you're referring to "Piss Christ" and the controversy that surrounded it.

That's right.  Context is provided by Mike Valle's post to which I was responding.

1. Why do you feel that "Piss Christ" (or Serrano's other works–again, I assume you're referring here mostly to the religious icons and bodily fluids) is (are) a "[violation] of people's beliefs"? The claim that it "violates beliefs" is much stronger than simply saying that it is distasteful, since it ascribes an active quality to the work.

Of course, it is more than distasteful or disgusting, although it is that; it shows profound disrespect and contempt for Christianity.  And it is not the work itself that violates the beliefs and sensibilities of Christians and plenty of non-Christians as well, but the work in the context of its production and public display.  It should be offensive to any decent person, just as "Piss-Buddha," if there were such an 'art work,' would be offensive to me and other non-Buddhists.  Buddha was a great teacher of humanity and should be honored as such.  (That is why decent people were offended when the Taliban destroyed the ancient Buddhist statuary.) The same goes for Jesus and Socrates and so many others.  Christians of course believe that Jesus was much more than a great teacher of humanity, but whether he was or not is immaterial to the point at issue.  Or imagine "Piss-King" in which a figurine of Martin Luther King, Jr. is supended in urine. Everyone would take that, and rightly so, as expressive of contempt for the black American civil rights leader, as offensive as Southern racists' references to King back in the '60s as Martin Luther Coon.

Continue reading “Decadent Art”

On the Abstractness of Mathematical Sets

Let us agree that x is concrete iff x is causally/active passive and abstract otherwise.  Many say that mathematical sets ('sets' hereafter: 'mathematical' as opposed to 'commonsense') are abstract objects, abstract entities, abstracta.  Why?

Argument One:  In set theory there are singleton sets, e.g. {Quine}.  Obviously, Quine is not identical to {Quine}.  The second is a set, the first is not.  Yet the difference cannot be the difference between two concreta.  Quine is a concretum.  Therefore, {Quine} is an abstractum.  This is of course meant generally: singletons are abstracta.  Now if singletons are abstracta, then all sets are. 

Argument Two:  In set theory there is a null set.  It is not nothing, but something despite having no members. Yet it cannot be a concrete something.  Therefore, it is an abstract something.  And if one set is abstract, all are.

Contra Argument One:  A statue and the lump of clay that constitute it are numerically distinct.  (For the one has properties the other doesn't have, e.g., the lump, but not the statue, can exist without having the form of a statue.)  And yet both are concrete, i.e., both are causally active/passive.  If this is possible, why should it not also be possible that Quine and {Quine} both be concrete?  One could say that Quine and {Quine} occupy the same 'plime' to borrow a term form D. C. Williams, the same place-time, in the way statue and lump do.

Contra Argument Two:  Possibly, there is a concrete atomic entity. Being atomic, it has no parts.  So why should a set's having no members rule out its being concrete?

Are any of these arguments compelling?

Arizona SB 1070: The Threat is Stronger than the Execution

Eine Drohung ist stärker als eine Ausführung is a saying often attributed to grandmaster Aron Nimzovich.  (On the correctness of the attribution, chess aficionados will find interesting this piece by Edward Winter.)  It occurred to me this morning that the maxim also applies to SB 1070, about which I have said quite a bit of late. (Scroll down.) The law doesn't go into effect until July 29th, and already illegals are leaving the state in significant numbers.  See here, and here.

In the 1070 case, not only is the threat stronger than the execution, the perceived threat is stronger and far more effective  than the real threat.  But liberals, in their preternatural obtuseness, have only themselves to blame for this.  By egregiously and willfully misrepresenting the law, by their hyperbole and hysteria,   they are bringing about the very effect — the attrition of lawbreakers — that the framers of the law intended!  Way to go!

Another thing I get a kick out of  is the call to boycott, not merely the Grand Canyon State, but the Grand Effing Canyon herself.  Don't these nimrods understand that it is a national park and that revenues lost will be lost, not to Arizona, but  to the federal government that liberals want ever to expand?  The fewer visitors to the Grand Canyon the better.  More solitude for me and mine.

I'll bet the shade of old 'Cactus Ed' Abbey is having a good laugh over this.