Bill Vallicella – Page 770 – Maverick Philosopher

‘He’s Only Reading’

This just over the transom from Londiniensis:

Your last post puts me in mind of the hoary old story of the timid student hovering outside his tutor’s door not knowing whether to knock and disturb the great man. At that moment one of the college servants walks past: “Oh, it’s all right dear, you can go in. The professor’s not doing anything, he’s only reading”.

Ambivalence towards reading and other activities in the life of the mind reflects the fact that we are embodied spirits. As spirits, we dream and imagine, think and question, doubt and despair. We ask what is real and what is not. It is no surprise, then, that we question the reality and importance of reading and writing and study when these activities are not geared to what is immediate and utilitarian such as the earning of money. Our doubts are fueled in no small measure by the lethargy and hebetude of the body with its oppressive presence and incessant demands. The spectator of all time and existence, to borrow a beautiful phrase from Plato's Republic, should fully expect to be deemed one who is 'not really doing anything' by the denizens of the Cave.

The bias against the spirit is reflected in the phrase 'gainful employment.' What is intended is pecuniary gain, as if there is no other kind. The bias, however, is not without its justification, as we are embodied beings subject to all the vicissitudes and debilities of material beings generally.

Companion post: Work, Money, Living, and Livelihood

Books and Reality and Books

I am as confirmed a bibliophile as I am a scribbler. But books and bookishness can appear in an unfavorable light. I may call myself a bibliophile, but others will say 'bookworm.' My mother, seeing me reading, more than once recommended that I go outside and do something. What the old lady didn't appreciate was that mine was a higher doing, and that I was preparing myself to live by my wits and avoid grunt jobs, which is what I succeeded in doing.

All things human are ambiguous and so it is with books and bookishness by which I mean their reading, writing, buying, selling, trading, admiring, collecting, cataloging, treasuring, fingering, storing, and protecting. Verbiage, endless verbiage! Dusty tomes and dry paper from floor to ceiling! Whether written or spoken, words appear at one or more removes from reality, assuming one knows what that is.

But what exactly is it, and where is it to be found? In raw sensation? In thoughtless action? In contemplative inaction? In amoral animal vitality? In the fool's paradise of travel? In the diaspora of entertainment and amusement? In the piling up of consumer goods? In finite competitive selfhood? In the quest for name and fame? Is it to be found at all, or rather made? Is it to be discovered or decided?

It appears that we are back to our 'unreal' questions about reality and the real, questions that are asked and answered at the level of thought and written about in books, books, and more books . . . .

Be Positive!

The Cloudview Trailhead is the one nearest to my house. It is a bit hard to get to as one must negotiate a number of turns. One fellow didn't like people driving onto his property in search of it so he posted a sign: Not the Trailhead! Some time ago I notice he had replaced his sign with a new one depicting an arrow that pointed in the trailhead's direction.

Therein lies a moral: how much better to be positive than negative! The first sign said where the trailhead is not. The second one did that too (by implication) but also pointed out where the trailhead is.

Jimmy Carter, Race-Baiter

This is hard to believe. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African American," Carter tells us in the video clip to which I have just linked.

First of all, what is being "intensely demonstrated" at town hall meetings and mass rallies throughout the land is not animosity toward the person Barack Obama, but disagreement with the ideas and policies he champions. Fiscal irresponsibility and socialism are what the protesters primarily oppose. Obama they oppose secondarily as the spokesman of these ideas. Second, disagreement with Obama's ideas and policies has nothing to do with the man's race. If Jimmy Carter were now president and forwarded the same proposals the opposition would be the same.

It's about ideas, not about a man or his race.

Since Mr Carter is not unintelligent, he is capable of understanding the two simple points I have made. So we must conclude that his injection of race into the debate is nothing more than an attempt to distract attention from the issues. 'Playing the race card' is perhaps the signature liberal-left tactic. The race card has become the liberal-left calling card. They play it because it works. And every time they do it we must call them on it.

So, Mr. Carter, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You really ought to be above this sort of thing. We expect this from a two-bit scribbler like Maureen Dowd, but from you?

Are there racists among the those who stand against socialism and for fiscal responsibility? Yes indeed. But so what? There are disreputable elements in every group. Think of the dubious characters among Obama's associates.

An Inappropriate Use of ‘Inappropriate’

Too many people nowadays are afraid to use no-nonsense words like ‘wrong,’ ‘immoral,’ and the like. So they employ ‘inappropriate’: ‘Clinton’s behavior in the Oval Office with Monica Lewinsky was inappropriate.’

Sorry, but that is an inappropriate use of ‘inappropriate.’ Mr. Clinton’s behavior with his subordinate was morally wrong. The following sentence illustrates an appropriate use: ‘It would have been inappropriate of Mr. Clinton had he attended the black tie affair dressed in a swimsuit.’

For My Divorced Friends

A little poem by Dorothy Parker:

Comment

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

(From the front matter of Joseph Epstein, Divorced in America: Marriage in an Age of Possibility, E. P. Dutton, 1974.)

Rorty on Truth: An Argument Refuted

In an earlier Rorty installment I said, among other things, that "He wants to substitute rhetoric for argument but without quite giving up argument. So he ends up giving shoddy arguments . . . ." You think I'm being unfair, don't you? Well, let's see. Here is a passage from Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Cambridge UP 1989, p. 5:

Truth cannot be out there — cannot exist independently of the human mind — because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own, — unaided by the describing activities of human beings — cannot.

Continue reading “Rorty on Truth: An Argument Refuted”

Digital Camera Warnings

My Canon PowerShot SD600 digital camera is a marvel of engineering. The amount of human intelligence embodied in this object the size of a pack of cigarettes — please forgive the politically incorrect comparison — is staggering to this old engineering student. All the more remarkable, therefore, is the ineptitude of the writing found in the User Guide. The following bolded passages are verbatim quotations:

Do not look directly at the sun or at other intense light sources through the viewfinder that could damage your eyesight.

But isn't a viewfinder that could damage one's eyes a serious design flaw?

Wrist strap: Placement of the strap around the child's neck could result in asphyxiation.

So it is not just any child that could be asphyxiated in this manner, but only some particular child? A child whose head is so tiny that one could get the wrist strap over it?

Memory card: Dangerous if accidentally swallowed. If this occurs, contact a doctor immediately.

Is swallowing it harmless if done deliberately?

Continue reading “Digital Camera Warnings”

A Punctilio Anent the Post Immediately Preceding

I just wrote, quite consciously, "There are expressions whose currency is due to no good reason . . ." Strictly correct would have been, "There are expressions the currency of which is due to no good reason . . . ." Since 'whose' is the possessive form of the personal pronoun 'who,' it ought not be used when the antecedent denotes an inaminate referent. Or at least that is a rule purists will obey. It is a trade-off between strict correctness and stiltedness.

In the very next sentence I have "you can be sure" for the strictly correct "one can be sure." It is a similar trade-off. Do you want a tone that is formal or familiar?

The main thing, I suppose, is that a good writer writes consciously, aware of the rules, but breaking them when it serves his purpose. Split the infinite, begin with a conjunction, end with a preposition if it gives your sentence the flow and feel you desire.

On Being Impacted

There are expressions whose currency is due to no good reason, but simply reflects the suggestibility of people. Let someone prominently placed commit a linguistic howler, and you can be sure that others will fall in line. The perfectly good word ‘affect,’ used as verb, has fallen into desuetude to be replaced by the miserable ‘impact’ used as a verb. Thus, ‘Mary was deeply impacted by her father’s death.’ You mean her sire’s demise induced constipation in the poor girl? Why this barbarism when ‘Mary was deeply affected by her father’s death’ is available? Part of the answer has to be that people are lemmings who uncritically repeat whatever they hear.

'Impactation' is correctly used in this curious medical article dredged up from the bowels of the Internet: Rectal Impactation Following Enema With Concrete Mix.

Why Am I So Hard on Liberals?

A reader comments by e-mail:

I sometimes read your website. I'm generally impressed by (and envy) your clear-headedness and detail when it comes to technical questions, but I find myself turned off by some of the more "poetic" stuff and the political analysis (the former because I hate poetry, more on the latter below).

[. . .]

Why are you so harsh with liberals? I can see why you might be annoyed by the mainstream liberal media . . . but I don't think the mainstream conservative media is any better. [. . .]

Continue reading “Why Am I So Hard on Liberals?”

Dunmovin and a Blogger’s Final Post

Dunmovin is a California ghost town, now little more than a wide spot in the road on U. S. 395, one of my favorite highways. I have driven past it many a time, but never stopped to explore, not that there is much there to explore. But I thought of it today, did a search and found an interesting post, dated 15 September 2008, The Ghost Town of Dunmovin, California.

After reading the post, I brought up the current page of the Harry Helms Blog and was both surprised and saddened to find that the relatively young Mr. Helms is losing his battle with cancer. Here is his farewell post. May we all accept our deaths with as much peace and equanimity.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Rock Salt and Nails

The best version of this haunting Utah Phillips song is the one by Joan Baez. But it has been removed from YouTube. Here is Rosalie Sorrel's version. And here is Dylan's.

If your ladies was blackbirds/And your ladies was thrushes/I'd lie there for hours/In the chilly cold marshes/If your ladies was squirrels, with high bushy tails/I'd load up my shotgun with rock salt and nails.

Contra Negantem Prima Principia Non Esse Disputandum

"One should not dispute with those who deny first principles." I found this Latin tag in Luther's Tischreden (Table Talks) in a section entitled Unnütze Fragen (Useless Questions), Weimarer Ausgabe, III, 2844. He applied it to those who deny the authority of the Bible. I agree with the maxim but I find that the good doctor has misapplied it. One who is serious about the truth should want to enter into dialogue with intelligent, sincere, civil, and serious people regardless of their point of view, and this includes those who deny the authority of the Bible. How can one care about the truth and not want to study every philosophy, every religion, and every political ideology? Study everything! How can a serious inquirer not want to know whether what he holds to be true really is true?

But a maxim that can be misapplied can also be correctly applied. There are some principles so fundamental that they cannot be rationally disputed. Among these are the principles that make possible rational discourse. There was a nincompoop of a leftist commenter at the now defunct Right Reason once who opined that truth is a social construction. Anyone who maintains a thesis of such stark absurdity is not one on whom one should waste any words. That truth is absolute, and as such the opposite of a social construction, is a first principle to which Luther's maxim applies. If you have truth, you have something absolute — which is not to say that you have truth!

The Diplomat

Not an original aphorism, but a good one nonetheless: A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.

This illustrates the principle that in human affairs it is less what one says than how one says it that matters. Perverse as people are, they ignore or downplay what is primary, the message, to fixate on the 'packaging.'