Liberals emphasize the value of diversity, and with some justification. Many types of diversity are good. One thinks of culinary diversity, musical diversity, artistic diversity generally. Biodiversity is good, and so is a diversity of opinions, especially insofar as such diversity makes possible a robustly competitive market place of ideas wherein the best rise to the top. A diversity of testable hypotheses is conducive to scientific progress. And so on.
Author: Bill Vallicella
Remembering John Lennon
John Lennon was gunned down this night in 1980 by Mark David Chapman. I remember that night well: a student of mine called me in the middle of it to report the slaying. Lennon was my least favorite Beatle due to his silly utopianism, but this tune of his from the 1965 Rubber Soul album is a gem, and more than fit to remember him by.
John Heidenry’s Zero at the Bone
There is serious reading and there is bed reading. Serious reading is for stretching the mind and improving the soul. It cannot be well done in bed but requires the alertness and seriousness provide by desk, hard chair, note-taking and coffee-drinking. It is a pleasure, but one stiffened with an alloy of discipline. Bed reading, however, is pure unalloyed pleasure. The mind is neither taxed nor stretched or improved, but entertained.
I came across Heidenry's Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease (St. Martin's 2009) by chance at a local library. I would never buy a book like this because at best it is worth reading only once. But its skillful noir recounting of a 1953 kidnapping and murder most definitely held my interest over the few days it took me to read it in those delicious intervals lying abed before nod-off. But I have to wonder about books that anatomize depravity while eschewing all moral judgment. A large topic this, one that I will get around to eventually.
I now hand off to Janet Maslin's NYT review.
A Philosopher’s Motto
Distinguo ergo sum.
Like, What Does It Mean? Notes on Nagel
Thomas Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” (Philosophical Review, 1974, reprinted in Mortal Questions, Cambridge, 1979, pp. 165-180) is a contemporary classic in the philosophy of mind, and its signature ‘what is it like’ locution has become a stock phrase rather loosely bandied about in discussions of subjectivity and consciousness. The phrase can be interpreted in several ways. Clarity will be served if we distinguish them.
The Sociology of Philosophy: A PhilPapers Survey
What percentage of philosophers are atheists? What percentage theists? Are there more compatibilists than libertarians when it comes to the freedom of the will? More libertarians than deniers of free will? These are questions in the sociology of philosophy. The general public has wildly inaccurate beliefs in this area, but practicing philosophers also cherish misconceptions. Here are the results of a sophisticated PhilPapers survey.
Mildly interesting, but what does this contribute to philosophy? I was pleased to see that a solid majority favors the analytic-synthetic distinction. But surely I cannot use this merely sociological fact as any part of my justification for accepting the distinction. Or can I?
Amiel Blames the Absolute for his Maladjustment
Henri-Frederic Amiel, journal entry of 12 September 1861:
I think the Absolute has rendered you forever incapable of attaching yourself to relative things . . . .
Against Postponing Self-Mastery
Wait too long to develop self-control and you may find that your vices have abandoned you before you have had a chance to abandon them. In divorces of all kinds it is better to be the one who sends packing rather than the one sent packing.
Aff-ability
Success in this world often depends as much on affability as on ability.
Are the Souls of Brute Animals Subsistent? Considerations Anent the Unity of Consciousness
We have been discussing the view of Thomas Aquinas according to which (i) the soul is the form of the body, and (ii) the souls of some animals, namely rational animals, are subsistent, i.e. capable of an existence independent of matter. I have registered some of my misgivings. Here is another. If our souls are subsistent forms, then why are not the souls of non-human animals also subsistent? If that in us which thinks is a life-principle and the substantial form of our bodies, and subsistent to boot, by what principled means do we not ascribe subsistent souls to all living things or at least to many non-human living things?
Aquinas discusses this question in Summa Theologica, Q. 75, art. 3. He attempts to navigate a middle course between a form of materialism according to which sense and intellect are both "referred to a corporeal principle," and the view he takes to be Platonic according to which both sense and intellect are "referred to an incorporeal principle." On the Platonic view, both sensing and understanding "belong to the soul as such." Thomas points us to Theaetetus 184 c. This is a fascinating passage which, according to Paul Natorp, anticipates Kant's transcendental unity of apperception.
In this passage, Socrates puts the following question to Theaetetus: ". . . which is more correct — to say that we see or hear with the eyes and with the ears, or through the eyes and through the ears?" Theatetus obligingly responds with through rather than with. Socrates approves of this response:
Yes, my boy, for no one can suppose that in each of us, as in a sort of Trojan horse, there are perched a number of unconnected senses which do not all meet in some one nature, the mind, or whatever we please to call it, of which they are the instruments, and with which through them we perceive the objects of sense. (Emphasis added, tr. Benjamin Jowett)
The issue here is the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold of sensory data. Long before Kant, and long before Leibniz, the Plato was well aware of the problem of the unity of consciousness. (It is not for nothing that Whitehead described Western philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato.)
Sitting before a fire, I see the flames, feel the heat, smell the smoke, and hear the crackling of the logs. The sensory data are unified in one consciousness of a selfsame object. This unification does not take place in the eyes or in the ears or in the nostrils or in any other sense organ, and to say that it takes place in the brain is not a good answer. For the brain is a partite physical thing extended in space. If the unity of consciousness is identified with a portion of the brain, then the unity is destroyed. For no matter how small the portion of the brain, it has proper parts external to each other. Every portion of the brain, no matter how small, is a complex entity. But consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold is a simple unity. Hence the unity of consciousness cannot be understood along materialist lines.
This argument from the unity of consciousness, which of course needs to be more rigorously developed, is present in nuce in Plato in the passage cited. According to Aquinas, if this argument is sound, ". . . it follows that even the souls of brute animals are subsistent." This seems to be a correct inference.
Aquinas hopes to block the inference with the help of Aristotle's De Anima 429 a 24. Thomas gives an argument that I interpret as follows:
1. Although understanding alone is performed without a corporeal organ, as Aristotle maintains, sensation and the operations of the sensitive soul are accompanied by changes in the body at our sensory receptors.
Therefore
2. The sensitive soul has no per se operation of its own, and every operation of the sensitive soul belongs to the soul-body composite.
Therefore
3. The souls of brute animals, having no per se operations, are not subsistent.
Unfortunately, I cannot see that this is a good argument. The gist of the argument is that while there are specific corporeal organs for seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, namely, eyes, ears, etc., there is no corporeal organ for understanding. From this it is concluded that there is a crucial difference between sensing and understanding: it is broadly logically possible that there be understanding without a body; but it is not broadly logically possible that there be sensing without a body. And since we alone among animals are rational, or capable of understanding, we alone have subsistent souls.
What this ignores is that sensing is not merely a mechanical or material process. When my cat simultaneously sees, smells, and tastes her food (or my food as she much prefers) there is a unity of consciousness in her no less than there is one in me when I lay into my food. There is no specific corporeal organ that does this unifying of sensory data, neither in me nor in my cat. The unity-of-consciousness argument against materialism can be 'run' both for man and cat. If it works for me it should work for her. So if the possibility of my disembodied existence follows from there being no physical organ that unifies my consciousness, then we get the same result for my cat, and the difference between man and brute in respect of subsistence of souls cannot be maintained.
To sum up. Thomas wants to say that men, but no brutes, have subsistent souls. This is because men, but no brutes, understand. But sensing is a form of consciousness, and consciousness cannot be understood in materialist terms. Sensing is not a mere collision of atoms in the void. Sensory consciousness, besides displaying unity across its several modalities, reveals qualia. And qualia are a well-known stumbling block to materialism. It is difficult to see why, if understanding supports the possibility of disembodied existence, sensing should not also support this possibility. There is after all only one soul which both senses and understands. The phrases 'sensitive soul' and 'intellective soul' are not to be taken to refer to distinct souls.
Carl Schmitt on Romanticism as a Form of Occasionalism
One of the theses advanced by Carl Schmitt in his Political Romanticism (MIT Press, 1986, tr. Guy Oakes; German original first appeared in 1919 as Politische Romantik, 2nd ed. 1925) is that romanticism is a form of occasionalism. As Schmitt puts it, “Romanticism is subjectified occasionalism.” (PR 17) In this set of notes I attempt to interpret and develop this thought. I will take the ball and run with it, but I won’t quit the field of Schmitt’s text. Before proceeding, a preliminary point about metaphysics needs to be made.
Continue reading “Carl Schmitt on Romanticism as a Form of Occasionalism”
Public Education and Intelligent Design
A 2008 article by Thomas Nagel. Ladder Man calls it "comically bad." You decide who the joker is.
Imago Dei in Relation to Aquinas and Christology
This just over the transom from Will Duquette:
A fool rushes in…
In your comment on Peter Lupu's guest post, you say
> Man was not created in God's material image, since he has none; he
> was created in God's spiritual image. But this implies that what is
> essential to man is not his animal body which presumably can be
> accounted for in the naturalistic terms of evolutionary biology, but
> his spirit or consciousness.However, St. Thomas would say that it is man's nature to be a
rational animal, and hence man's animal body most certainly is
essential. I appreciate that you might be working in a broader
theistic context rather than an explicitly Christian context; but
given that Christ is God Incarnate, and now dwells in eternity,
it seems to me that man now just is created in God's image, body
and soul both. From the standpoint of eternity God created the
universe, man in it, and become incarnate as a man as one single
act.I enjoy your blog; it's part of my continuing education. Thanks
for providing it.
You're welcome, Mr. Duquette. Your comment is pertinent and raises a number of difficult and important questions.
Continue reading “Imago Dei in Relation to Aquinas and Christology”
A Modal Fallacy to Avoid: Confusing the Necessity of the Consequence with the Necessity of the Consequent
No one anywhere can utter 'I am talking now' without saying something true. Indeed, that is necessarily the case: it doesn't just happen to be the case. Letting T = 'I am talking now,' we can write
1. Necessarily, for any speaker S, if S utters T, then T is true.
But it would be a mistake to infer
2. For any speaker S, if S utters T, then T is necessarily true.
The same goes for 'I exist now.' It cannot be tokened, in language or thought, without it being the case that a truth is expressed; but it does not follow that the one who tokens it necessarily exists. Its negation, 'I do not exist now,' cannot be tokened in language or thought without it being the case that a falsehood is expressed; but it does not follow that the nonexistence of the one who tokens it is impossible.
The illicit inferential move from (1) to (2) illustrates the ancient modal fallacy of confusing the necessitas consequentiae with the necessitas consequentiis, the necessity of the consequence with the necessity of the consequent.
The point is not to confuse 'Nec(p –> q)' with 'p –> Nec q.'
A sophomoric fatalist might argue like this. "Necessarily, whatever happens, happens. Therefore, whatever happens, necessarily happens, so that whatever occurs could not have been otherwise." But this reasoning commits the modal fallacy in question.
Or take someone who argues that, necessarily, whatever is known is true; ergo, whatever is known is necessarily true. This reasoning likewise confuses the necessity of the consequent with the necessity of the consequence.
If someone argues that 'I exist' is not a first-level predication of existence on the ground that if it were then the sentence in question would be necessarily true — which it isn't — then I would tax such a person with the modal fallacy in question.
And if someone were to argue that 'I do not exist' is nonsense on the ground that it is necessarily false, then I would suspect him of falling into the same trap.
A Double Standard
The wrongs done us seem so real, so inexcusable, so unjust. But the wrongs done others by ourselves and by others appear in a less unfavorable light: not that important, excusable, and horribile dictu __ entertaining.