Author: Bill Vallicella

Scholastic Realism and Predication

This post continues our explorations in the philosophy of The School. What is a scholastic realist? John Peterson (Introduction to Scholastic Realism, Peter Lang, 1999, p. 6) defines a scholastic realist as follows:

S is a scholastic realist =df i) S is a moderate realist and ii) S believes that universals exist in some transcendent mind, i.e., the mind of God.

A moderate realist is defined like this:

S is a moderate realist =df i) S denies that universals exist transcendently and ii) S affirms that universals exist immanently both in matter and minds.

Peterson A universal exists transcendently just in case it exists "independently of matter and mind." One who holds that universals exist independently of matter and mind is a Platonic or extreme realist. A moderate realist who is not a scholastic realist Peterson describes as an Aristotelian realist. Such a philosopher is a moderate realist who "denies that universals exist in some transcendent mind."   In sum, and interpreting a bit:

Platonic or extreme  realist:  maintains that there are universals and that they can exist transcendently, i.e., unexemplified (uninstantiatied) and so apart from matter and mind.

Moderate realist:  denies that there are any transcendent universals and maintains that universals exist only immanently in minds and in matter.

Scholastic realist: moderate realist who believes that there is a transcendent mind in which universals exist.

Aristotelian realist:  moderate realist who denies that there is a transcendent mind in which universals exist.

Continue reading “Scholastic Realism and Predication”

On Reading Philosophers For the Beauty of Their Prose

To read a philosopher for the beauty of his prose alone is like ordering a delicacy in a world-class restaurant for its wonderful aroma and artful presentation — but then not eating it.

I had that thought one morning while re-reading for the fifth time William James' magisterial essay, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life. So rich in thought, and yet so distracting in its beauty the prose in which the thoughts are couched. James and a few other philosophers are great writers — Schopenhauer and Santayana come to mind — but the thought's the thing.

Risks of Desert Hiking

Goldfields In a society made litigious by an excess of lawyers, the need for  various CYA maneuvers is correspondingly great. One such is the disclaimer. I particularly enjoy the disclaimers found in well-written hiking books. Rare is the hiking book that doesn't have one these days. The following is from local author,Ted Tenny, Goldfield Mountain Hikes, p.  4:

The risks of desert hiking include, but are not limited to: heatstroke, heat exhaustion, heat prostration, heat cramps, sunburn, dehydration, flash floods, drowning, freezing, hypothermia, getting lost, getting stranded after dark, falling, tripping, being stung, clawed or bitten by venomous or non-venomous creatures, being scratched or stuck by thorny plants, being struck by lightning, falling rocks, natural or artificial objects falling from the sky, or a comet colliding with the Earth.

Still up for a hike?

Feser on Stupak

Stupak's Enablers.  This is a very rich post bristling with important distinctions.  Excerpt:

There can be no question, then, that while the Church allows that government can legitimately intervene in economic life and in other ways come to the assistance of those in need, she also teaches that there is a presumption in justice against such intervention, a presumption which can be overridden only when such intervention is strictly necessary, only to the extent necessary, and only on the part of those governmental institutions which are as close as possible to those receiving the aid in question. This surely follows from the principles of subsidiarity and the priority of the family. And it surely rules out not only libertarianism but also the sorts of policy preferences typical of socialists, social democrats, and egalitarian liberals.

I wonder how many Catholic bishops could explain the principle of subsidiarity?  Too many of them are too busy being leftists to comprehend and transmit Catholic social teaching.

Why not be a Nominalist?

0. This post is a sequel to Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned.

1. On one acceptation of the term, a nominalist is one who holds that everything that exists is a concrete  individual.  Nominalists accordingly eschew such categories of entity as: universals, whether transcendent or immanent, Fregean propositions, Castaneda's ontological operators, mathematical sets, tropes (abstract particulars, perfect particulars), and concrete states of affairs.  Nominalists of course accept that there are declarative sentences and that some of them are true.  Consider the true

1. Peter is hungry.

Nominalists cheerfully admit that the proper name 'Peter' denotes something external to language and mind, a particular man, which we can call the 'ontological correlate' of the subject term.  But, ever wary of "multiplying entities beyond necessity," nominalists fight shy of admitting an ontological correlate of  'hungry,' let alone a correlate of  'is.'   And yet, given that (1) is true, 'hungry' is true of Peter.  (In a simple case like this, the predicate is true of  the the referent of the subject term iff the sentence is true.) Now philosophers like me are wont to ask:  In virtue of what is 'hungry' true of Peter?  Since 'hungry' applies to Peter in the way in which 'leprous,' 'anorexic,' and other predicates do not, I find it reasonable to put the same question as follows:  What is the ontological ground of the correct application of 'hungry' to Peter?

2. In answering this question I introduce two posits that will enrage the nominalist and offend against his ontologcal parsimoniousness.   First of all, we need an o-correlate of 'hungry.' I admit of course that 'hungry' in our sample sentence functions differently than 'Peter.'  The latter is a name, the former is what Frege calls a concept-word (Begriffswort).  Nevertheless, there must be something in reality that corresponds to 'hungry,' and whatever it is it cannot be identical to Peter.  Why not?  Well, Peter, unlike my cat, is not hungry at every time at which he exists; and for every time t in the actual world at which  he is hungry, there is some possible world in which he is not hungry at t.  Therefore, Peter cannot be identical to the o-correlate of 'hungry.' 

We are back to our old friend (absolute numerical) identity which is an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetrical, transitive) governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Necessity of Identity.

3. But why do we need an o-correlate of 'hungry' at all?  I asked: in virtue of what is 'hungry' true of Peter?  One sort of nominalist, the 'ostrich nominalist,' will say that there is nothing in virtue of which 'hungry' is true of Peter.  For him is is just a 'brute fact,' i.e., an inexplicable datum, that 'hungry' correctly applies to Peter.  There is no need of an ontological ground of the correctness of this application.  There is no room for a special philosophical explanation of why 'hungry' is true of Peter.  It just applies to him, and that's the end of the matter.  The ostrich nominalist of course grants that Peter's being hungry can be explained 'horizontally' in terms of antecedent and circumambient empirical causes; what he denies is that there is need for some further 'philosophical' or 'metaphysical' or 'ontological' explanation of the truth of 'Peter is hungry.'

If a nominalist says that 'hungry' is true of Peter because Peter is hungry, then I say he moves in a circle of embarrasingly short diameter.  What we want to understand are the ontological commitments involved in the true sentence, 'Peter is hungry.'  We need more than Peter.  We need something that grounds the correctness of the application of 'hungry' to him.  To say that 'hungry' is true of Peter because Peter is hungry presupposes what we are trying to understand.  Apart from this diversionary tactic, the ostrich nominalist is back to saying that there is nothing extralingusitic that grounds the correct application of 'hungry' to Peter.  He is denying the possibility of any metaphysical explanation here.  He is saying that it is just a brute fact that 'hungry' applies to Peter.

4.  As for my second posit, I would urge that introducing an o-correlate for 'hungry' such as a universal tiredness does not suffice to account for the truth of the sample sentence.  And this for the simple reason that Peter and tiredness could both exist withough Peter being tired.  What we need is a concrete state of affairs, an entity which, though it has Peter and tiredness as constituents, is distinct from each and from the mereological sum of the two. 

5.  Now one can argue plausibly against both posits.  And it must be admitted that both posits give rise to conundra that cast doubt on them.  But what is the alternative?  Faced with a problem, the ostrich sticks his head in the sand.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Similarly. the ostrich nominalist simply ignores the problem.  Or am I being unfair?

Perhaps the issue comes down to this:  Must we accept the truth of sentences like (1) as a 'brute fact,' i.e. as something insusceptible of explanation (apart, of course, from causal explanation), OR is there the possibility of a philosophical account?

6. Finally, it is worth nothing that the nominalist blunders badly  if he says that Peter is hungry in virtue of 'hungry''s applying  to him.  For that is a metaphysical theory and an absurd one to boot: it makes Peter's being hungry depend on the existence of the English predicate 'hungry.'  To avoid an incoherent, Goodmanaical, linguistic idealism, the nominalist should give no metaphysical explanation and be content to say it is just a brute fact that Peter is hungry.

The Health Care Debate: What It’s Really About

Here.  Fidel congratulates Obama. Excerpt from the second article:

Doctors haven’t benefited very much,  either, from Cuba’s health care “miracle.” Because they earn the equivalent of only about $20 U.S. per month, Cuban physicians have quit the medical profession in droves — turning instead to the only industry that offers them any degree of economic opportunity: the Cuban tourism industry. It is not uncommon to see former doctors driving cabs, working as tour guides, or waiting tables in restaurants and family inns in Havana.

People need to bear in mind that there is more to health care than health care insurance.  The best coverage in the world is worthless without health care providers: doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and all the rest.  Socialist schemes, based as they are on ignorance of human nature,  remove incentives.  Why would any one put up with the rigors of medical school, internship, long hours, malpractice harrassment and the like to work for the government?

Brew 102

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I asked an old friend if he remembered the huge Brew 102 sign visible from a Los Angeles freeway back in the '50s and  '60s. (See photo below.)  His response:

'Deed I do remember Brew 102.
Over the Hollywood Freeway.
My arm 'round a cutie in a '55 Buick
Goin' long 'ol Highway 101.

Here is my verse response which is not meant autobiographically:

'Twas Brew 102 that did me in
 And got me to drownin' in liquid sin
 Soon I was a rollin' down that lost highway
 Where many a boy has been known to stray
 On 66 I got my kicks
 And on 101 I had my fun.
 But now I'm here to tell you true
 We ain't on this earth to booze and screw
 The female ass and the whisky glass
 Have brought many a man to a sorry pass.
 That's my wisdom take it straight
 And head while there's time for the narrow gate
 It's not too late and it's not too far
 As long's  you don't stop at the next whisky bar.

LaLaLand in the 1950s, Hollywood Freeway, and Brew 102 sign (left-click to enlarge):

Brew 102 Building

Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned

IMG_0677 For Peter Lupu discussions with whom helped me clarify my thoughts on this topic.

0. What David Armstrong calls Truthmaker Maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker.  Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every truth has a truthmaker.  Thus I question Truthmaker Maximalism.

1.  Compare *Peter is tired* and *Every concretum is self-identical.*  I will argue that propositions like the first have truthmakers while propositions like the second do not.  (A declarative sentence enclosed in asterisks names the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.  I will assume that the primary truthbearers are Fregean propositions.  By definition, a truth is a true truthbearer.) 

2. Intuitively, the first truth is in need of something external to it that 'makes' it true or determines it to be true, or serves as the ontological ground of its truth.  By 'external to it,' I don't just mean that the truthmaker of a truth must be distinct from it:  this condition is satisfied by a distinct proposition that entails it.  What I mean is that the truthmaker must be both distinct from the truthbearer and not, like the truthbearer, a 'representational entity' where the latter term covers such items as sentences, contents of judgments, and Fregean propositions (the senses of context-free sentences in the indicative mood.)  In other words, a truthmaker of a first-order truth such as *Peter is tired* must be outside the sphere of representations: it must be extralinguistic, extramental, and extra-propositional.  Truthmakers, then, are 'in the world' in one sense of 'world.'  They are ontological grounds of truth.  Thus the truthmakers of propositions like *Peter is tired* cannot belong to the category of propositions.  The ontological ground of such a proposition cannot be an entity within the sphere of propositions.

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A Strange Experience in the Charles Doughty Memorial Suite

I had a strange experience in the late 1980's. Although my  main residence at the time was in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, near the bohemian district called Coventry, I was teaching at the University of Dayton and during the school year rented rooms not far from the University. One night, spirited philosophical   conversation with a graduate student aroused the ire of a bitter old man by the name of Charles Doughty. He occupied an adjoining  efficiency and thought we were being too loud. So he started shouting  at us through the closed door: "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch, God damn you, etc." Just to be on the safe side, when back in Cleveland Heights I  fetched my snub-nosed Colt .38 Detective Special — which I had   purchased from yet another graduate student — but luckily did not   have to use on old Doughty.

The lonely and miserable old bastard obliged me some time later by dying of a heart attack. Conversation with Mrs.  Brunner, my landlady, confirmed that he had had a heart condition and knew that he was not  long for this earth. Since Doughty's apartment was bigger and better situated than the ones I usually occupied, I took it over. I dubbed it  the Charles Doughty Memorial Suite at the Paul Brunner Estates.

Now in those days, I never ever listened to the AM band on the radio.   I was still something of a liberal and stuck to the FM band where not only  the frequency is modulated but the voices of the announcers are as  well. I listened mainly to WYSO out of Antioch College in Yellow  Springs, Ohio, a sleepy little dorf redolent of the '60s where the scents of sandalwood and  patchouli still hung in the air. WYSO was the local NPR affiliate, and I listened regularly to "All Things Considered."  (For more on Yellow Springs and Antioch College, see my Death By Political Correctness.) 

One night after moving into Doughty's old digs, I woke up in the   middle of the night to the sound of the radio in the living room. I  would not have left the radio on, being a very careful and cautious sort of fellow. So I got up to investigate. The radio was indeed on,  but what amazed me was that it was set to the AM band, which, as I said, I never listened to in those days.

Was the ghost of Doughty still hanging around the place? He was a bitter old man who ended his miserable life without family or friends in a crummy, shabbily furnished couple of rooms in an old 1940's building in a third-rate Midwestern city. Did he have nothing better to do than screw around with the radio of a sleeping philosopher who once disturbed him with the sounds of his dialectic?

So there you have it. The facts are that I awoke that night to a radio tuned to the AM band. Is that good evidence of a ghost? No. Did I  sleep well on succeding nights? Absolutely. I've trained myself to be skeptical. You can't be a philosopher without being at least a methodological sceptic. Doubt is the engine of inquiry and the mother-in-law, if not the mother, of philosophy.

But when Halloween approaches, and black cats cross my path, I give a thought to old Doughty and his crummy efficiency, the Chas. Doughty  Memorial Suite at the Paul Brunner Estates.

If you want to read an excellent, balanced book on the paranormal by a very sharp analytic philosopher, I recommend Stephen E. Braude, Immortal Remains: The Evidence of Life After Death (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).

Welcome to Civil War

To Dennis Prager's "The bigger the government the smaller the citizen," I add my "The bigger the government, the more to fight over."  The more the government takes over, the more they violate the individual liberty of the citizens, the more they insinuate themselves into every aspect of your life, the more protests, the more lobbying, the more lawsuits, the more money and time wasted on pointless bickering.  I floated my observation months ago and recent events demonstrate its accuracy.  Brace yourself  for ever larger doses of acrimony as the months and years wear on.  Some are speaking of civil war.  It's a Civil War: What We Do Now.

David Harsanyi's The Mugging of Personal Freedom is worth reading.

The Left’s Hatred of Conservative Talk Radio

The qualifier 'conservative' borders on pleonasm: there is is scarcely any talk radio in the U.S. worth talking about that is not conservative.  This is part of the reason the Left hates the conservative variety so much.  They hate it because of its content, and they hate it because they are incapable of competing with it: their own attempts such as Air America have failed miserably. And so, projecting their own hatred, they label conservative talk 'hate radio.'

In a 22 March op-ed piece in the NYT, Bob Herbert, commenting on the G.O.P., writes, "This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry."

I find that vile outburst fascinating.  There is no insanity, hatred, or bigotry in any of the conservative talk jocks whom I listen to:  Laura Ingram, Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager or Michael Medved.  There is instead common sense, humanity, excellent advice, warnings against extremism, deep life wisdom, facts, arguments, and a reasonably high level of discourse.  Of the six I have mentioned, Prager and Medved are the best, a fact reflected in their large audiences.  See for yourself!

So what is it about Herbert and people  of his ilk that causes them to react routinely in such delusional fashion?

It is a long story, of course, but part of it is  that lefties confuse dissent with hate.  They don't seem to realize that if I dissent from your view, it doesn't follow that I hate you.  This confusion goes hand in hand with the strange notion that the Left owns dissent, which I duly refute in a substantial post.

I leave you with a quotation from David Horowitz, Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (Spence, 2003), p. 273, emphasis added:

The image of the right that the left has concocted — authoritarian, reactionary, bigoted, mean-spirited — is an absurd caricature that has no relation to modern conservatism or to the reality of the people I have come to know in my decade-long movement along the political spectrum — or to the way I see myself. Except for a lunatic fringe, American conservatism is not about "blood and soil" nostalgia or conspiracy paranoia, which figure so largely in imaginations that call themselves "liberal," but are anything but. Modern American conservatism is a reform movement that seeks to reinvent free markets and limited government and to restore somewhat traditional values. Philosophically, conservatism is more accurately seen as a species of liberalism itself — and would be more often described in this way were it not for the hegemony the left exerts in the political culture and its appropriation of the term "liberal" to obscure its radical agenda.

One more thing.  You can see from Herbert's picture that he is black. So now I will be called a racist for exposing his outburst.  That is right out of the Left's playbook:  if a conservative disagrees with you on any issue, or proffers any sort of criticism, then you heap abuse on him.  He's a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, a 'homophobe,' a bigot, a religious zealot . . . .