Author: Bill Vallicella

Independent Thought About Ultimates

Such thinking is not in the service of self-will or subjective opining, but in the service of submission to a higher authority. We think for ourselves in order to find a truth that is not from ourselves, but from reality. The idea is to become dependent on reality, rather than on institutional and social distortions of reality. Independence subserves a higher dependence.

It is worth noting that thinking for oneself is no guarantee that one will arrive at truth.  Far from it.  The world is littered with conflicting opinions  generated from the febrile heads of people with too much trust in their own powers.  But neither is submission to an institution's authority any assurance of safe passage to the harbour of truth.  Both the one who questions authority and the one who submits to it can end up on a reef.  'Think for yourself' and 'Submit to authority' are both onesided pieces of advice.

You thought things were easy?

How To Roast Oneself in Five Different Ways

IMG_0199 The infernal hike of 28 August 2005  began at 5:20 AM at first light, that phase of dawn at which one can just make out the trail and its hazards. Sunrise was about forty minutes off. If one hopes to survive a desert hike in August, especially in environs as rugged and unforgiving as the Superstition Wilderness, one does well to start at first light and be finished by high noon. I once finished such a hike around two or three in the afternoon with the distinct impression that I had pushed the envelope about as far as possible.

It is a curious sensation to feel oneself being slowly roasted in five different ways.

There is first of all the air temperature. Today's for example was 112 degrees Fahrenheit at its high. At any temperature above 90 the human body starts to absorb heat through the skin.

Then there is conduction. One gains heat by contact with the ground, rocks, ledges, anything one touches while hiking or climbing if the object is hotter than 90 degrees.

In third place comes convection. Hot air blows against the skin and imparts heat to the body. Even a slight breeze at 112 degrees has quite an effect.

Fourth, there is solar radiation. Once up, Old Sol beats down unmercifully, which is why I wear a long-sleeved white shirt and a broad-brimmed hat. My legs remain exposed, though, since hiking in long pants is unbearably confining.

Finally, there is metabolism. The internal organs and the muscles at work generate body heat.

I finished at 11:10 with the day's high of 112 degrees Fahrnheit fast approaching. I was well-roasted and dehydrated, but very satisfied with the five hours and fifty minutes I spent hiking over washed-out, overgrown, ankle-busting trails.

I concur with Colin Fletcher: Hiking is "a delectable madness, very good for sanity, and I recommend it with passion." (The Complete Walker III, p. 3)

How to Lose Weight

I don’t doubt that Americans are the fattest people in the world. Some years back I landed at New York’s JFK airport after a year in Turkey. Walking from the plane into the terminal, and without having given any thought to the matter, the first thing that struck me was how obese Americans are.

Many are now speaking of an ‘epidemic’ of obesity in the USA as if obesity were a disease. This is liberal nonsense, of course, and needs to be exposed as such. It is nonsense raised to the second power when calls are issued for Federal programs to combat the problem. First of all, obesity is not a disease, but a condition caused and maintained by the voluntary act of overeating. No doubt, some people have more of a propensity to put on weight than others: basal metabolic rates and other factors vary from person to person. But this does nothing to change the fact that one’s weight depends on the quality and quantity of what one freely shovels into one’s mouth. Second, obesity is a personal problem to be solved at the personal level. The last thing we need are more Federal programs.

How to Become Wealthy Overnight

John Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Buddhist and Taoist Mysticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974), p. 153:

For the sake of wealth, people already well above the poverty line slave all their lives, not realising that withdrawal from the rat-race would immediately increase rather than diminish their wealth. Obviously anyone who finds the full satisfaction of all his material desires well within his means can be said to be wealthy; it follows that, except by the truly poor, wealth can be achieved overnight by a change of mental attitude that will set bounds to desires. As Laotzu put it, "He who is contented always has enough."

How to Avoid God

C. S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections (Eeerdmans, 1967), pp. 168-167:

Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you'd be safer to stick to the papers. You'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

How the World is Like Chess

A wise saying about chess, often attributed to Goethe, but apocryphal for all I know, goes like this. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."

Something similar is true of the world. The world is is too real, too much with us, for us to detach ourselves from it easily; but it is too deficient in being to satisfy us. One cannot take it with utmost seriousness, and one cannot dismiss it as a mere game either. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."

How the Left Sees the Right

David Horowitz, Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (Spence, 2003), p. 273:

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.

I've bolded the crucial thought. Note the qualifier 'modern American.' One of the reasons the original neocons (Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, et al.) called themselves such was to differentiate their classically liberal position from the leftism into which liberalism was transmogrifying. Of course, there is much to discuss here. There is a paleocon element in contemporary American conservatism to which Horowitz is perhaps not sufficiently attending. But this is a huge topic . . . .

How Philosophers Should Greet One Another

Wittgenstein1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80:

Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!"

This is how philosophers should greet each other: "Take your time!"

A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this:

Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.

One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.

Philosoblogging, I should think, is one way to avoid hurrying things into print: one tests one's ideas in the crucible of the 'sphere before submitting them to a journal.

Go For Broke and Die with Your Boots On

Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, pp. 56-57:

Moore's health was quite good in 1946-47, but before that he had suffered a stroke and his doctor had advised that he should not become greatly excited or fatigued. Mrs. Moore enforced that prescription by not allowing Moore to have a philosophical discussion with anyone for longer than one hour and a half. Wittgenstein was extremely vexed by this regulation. He believed that Moore should not be supervised by his wife. He should discuss as long as he liked. If he became excited or tired and had a stroke and died — well, that would be a decent way to die: with his boots on. Wittgenstein felt that it was unseemly that Moore, with his great love for truth, should be forced to break off a discussion before it had reached its proper end. I think that Wittgenstein's reaction to this regulation was very characteristic of his outlook on life. A human being should do the thing for which he has a talent with all of his energy his life long, and should never relax this devotion to his job merely in order to prolong his existence. This platonistic attitude was manifested again two years later when Wittgenstein, feeling that he was losing his own talent, questioned whether he should continue to live. (Emphasis added)

Yes!  No wife, only fair Philosophia herself, should preside over and super-vise a philosophical discussion.  If an interlocutor should  expire in the heat of the dialectic, well then, that is a good way to quit the phenomenal sphere. 

Give In or Stand One’s Ground?

Should we give in to others or stand our ground? It depends on the circumstances. It is foolish to try to conciliate or accommodate someone who will be made worse by our conciliation, someone who will be emboldened in his wrongdoing. Conciliation in such a case becomes appeasement. There were bullies in the schoolyard who deserved and were improved by the punches we threw. Criminals, for a second example, must be opposed to the point of killing them if necessary. And the same goes for terrorists. Oppose them, and oppose them resolutely, even unto killing them en masse, but with detachment. We will recall that Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita enjoins the warrior to kill with detachment.

But in other cases one should give in and not insist, not even on one's rights. One should seize the opportunity for self-denial. Thereby one profits oneself and sets a good example for others. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last."

Who knows which case is which? The one with good judgment knows.

Germans as Luftmenschen

Here is a delightful little passage from Brand Blanshard's outstanding essay, "The Philosophic Enterprise," in Bontempo and Odell, eds., The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, p. 170. Don't take the passage too seriously, especially you denizens of the Land von Dichter und Denker.

It used to be said that to the English had been given the realm of the sea, to the French the domain of the land, and to the Germans the kingdom of the air; this meant of course the stratosphere, where philosophers are supposed to live, and indeed have been living ever since Thales wandered abroad with his head in the clouds and fell into a well.

The Philosopher as Luftmensch

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin, 2002), p. 11:

Philosophy today gets no respect. Many scientists use the term as a synonym for effete speculation. When my colleague Ned Block told his father that he would major in the subject, his father's reply was "Luft!" — Yiddish for "air." And then there's the joke in which a young man told his mother that he would become a Doctor of Philosophy and she said, "Wonderful! But what kind of disease is philosophy?"

Well, to adapt a chess player's expression, better to make Luft than to make war! (One 'makes Luft' in chess by moving a pawn in front of the castled king's position as prophylaxis against back rank mate.)