Author: Bill Vallicella

On Mental Properties and the Subject of Experience

From a U. K. reader:

I'm currently reading up on my substance dualism for a philosophy of mind course, and thought I'd pose a question to you. I heartily agree with your frequent calls to eschew the parody of dualism as positing a kind of soul-stuff, but given this, I wonder how you think of the ontological status of mental properties. Most physicalists claim that such properties inhere in a physical substance, but if we avoid talk of substance in preference of a subject (as you have, in my opinion rightly, done  in the past) how are these mental properties a) grounded (to avoid a Humean bundle view) and b) ontologically possible. I remember you suggesting that say, the property of being odd was not based on a material substance, as it was associated with a non-material number. But presumably both properties and subjects (however these are related) are concreta. And I find it hard to see how that method works for them.

1. The reader asks about the ontological status of mental properties and how they are related to the items that instantiate them. First some examples.  If I say 'I am feeling anxious,' I self-ascribe the non-intentional mental property of feeling anxious.  If I say, 'I see a coyote,' I self-ascribe the intentional mental property of seeing a coyote. If I say, 'I weigh 180 lbs.,' I self-ascribe the physical property of weighing 180 lbs.  Properties in general can be defined in terms of instantiation: properties are instantiable entities. Thus:

P is a property =df P is possibly such that it is instantiated.

Not all entities are instantiable: neither Socrates nor his singleton are instantiable. I assume that properties are universals where universals are repeatable entities and particulars are not.  That properties are universals  is of course controversial and will be denied by trope theorists.  To maintain that properties are universals is to reject that form of nominalism according to which everything that exists is a particular.  I also reject the form of nominalism according to which properties are linguistic in nature.  What's more, I reject the conceptualist theory that properties are mental in nature.  Thus I tend to think that both physical and mental  properties are universals that can exist uninstantiated, and whose existence  is independent of the existence of any (finite) mind.  Mental properties are not 'in the mind' if what this means is that mental properties exist only as accusatives of mental acts.  Nor do mental properties require for their existence the existence of any (finite) minds.

I should also say something about 'abstract' and 'concrete' inasmuch as my reader speaks of concreta. ('Concreta' is the plural of 'concretum' the latter referring to any concrete item.)  I suggest the following definition:

X is concrete (abstract)  =df  X is (is not) causally active/passive.

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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fred Neil

Remember Fred Neil?  One of the  luminaries of the '60s folk scene,  he didn't do much musically thereafter.  Neil is probably best remembered  for having penned 'Everybody's Talkin' which was made famous by Harry Nilsson as the theme of Midnight Cowboy.  Here is Neil's version. 

Another of my Fred Neil favorites is "Other Side of  This Life."  Here is Peter, Paul, and Mary's version.

And it's been a long long time since I last enjoyed The Bag I'm In. 

The reclusive Neil died in 2001 at the age of 64.  Biography here.

Why Are Actors and Actresses Held in Such Low Esteem?

According to an August 4, 2009 Harris poll, the most prestigious occupation is that of firefighter, while near the bottom of the ranking falls that of actor.  62% of the Americans polled voted for firefighters while only 15% voted for actors.  At the very bottom of the ranking, however, were realtors, who garnered a measly 5% of the vote.

I don't understand why acting should be held in such low esteem.  After all, acting is is not easy to do well, and most of those likely to be polled are familiar with only the very best.  Good acting is not only difficult, but also very enriching to all our lives.  Consider Martin Landau's work in Woody Allen's masterpiece Crimes and Misdemeanors or Meryl Streep's performance in Sophie's Choice. Those are great movies and the actors in such movies make a profound contribution to the quality of our lives.   This is not to deny that most movies are worthless and that many great actors such as Robert De Niro waste their talents on worthless roles in worthless movies. 

So why should acting be held in low esteem?  But perhaps it is not acting but actors who are held in low esteem.  Perhaps it is not actors qua actors who are held in low esteem, but the people who act.  What I am suggesting, as a possible explanation of the fact of acting's low rating relative to other professions, is that the people polled conflate actors qua actors with the people who are actors, and project their dislike for these people onto their occupational role.

And why should the people likely to be polled dislike the people who are actors?  Because they are most of them flaming liberals who maintain views that are deeply offensive to ordinary Americans.  To take an example from a while back, Mike Farrell defended the the vicious murderer 'Tookie' Williams.  A very recent example is provided by that profound intellect, Janeane Garofalo, who maintains that the 'tea-baggers,' led by Limbaugh, are a white power movement motivated by 'racism.'  Read the the whole of her screed to get a sense of the level of lunacy to which HollyWeird liberals are ever inclined to succumb.  I shall not sully my site by quoting it.

Should one take polls seriously?  I rather doubt it.  Much depends on how exactly the questions are formulated.  The Harris 'result' that acting is held in low esteem may reflect only the low esteem in which average Americans hold the people who fill the occupational role.

How Can You Be Clever in a Meatgrinder?

Jkerouacmom  It's October again, my favorite month, and Kerouac month in my personal literary liturgy.  Here is Kerouac on the road, not in a '49 Hudson with Neal Cassady, but in a bus  with his mother:

Who are men that they can insult men? Who are these people who wear pants and dresses and sneer? What am I talking about? I'm talking about human helplessness and unbelievable loneliness in the darkness of birth and death and asking "What is there to laugh about in that?" "How can you be clever in a meatgrinder?" "Who makes fun of misery?" There's my mother a hunk of flesh that didnt ask to be born, sleeping restlessly, dreaming hopefully, beside her son who didnt ask to be born, thinking desperately, praying hopelessly, in a bouncing earthly vehicle going from nowhere to nowhere, all in the night, worst of all for that matter all in noonday glare of bestial Gulf Coast roads — Where is the rock that will sustain us? Why are we here? What kind of crazy college would feature a seminar where people talk about hopelessness forever?

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Desolation Angels, 1960, p. 339.

Compare Mexico City Blues, 1959, 211th Chorus:

The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . .
. . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel
and safe in heaven dead.

Of the Beat triumvirate, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, "sweet gone Jack" alone really moves me, and the quotations above I find to be among the most moving in all his writings.

Topical Insanity

There is temporary insanity as when a middle-aged man buys a Harley on which to ride though his midlife crisis, wisely selling the bike after the crisis subsides. But my theme is topical insanity, that species of temporary insanity that can occur when certain topics are brought to one’s attention. Someone so afflicted loses the ability to think clearly about the topic in question for the period of time that the topic is before his mind.

Try this. The next time you are at a liberal gathering, a faculty party, say, calmly state that you agree with the National Rifle Association’s position on gun control. Now observe the idiocies to flow freely from liberal mouths. Enjoy as they splutter and fulminate unto apoplexy.

Some will say that the NRA is opposed to gun control. False, everyone is for gun control, i.e., gun control legislation; the only question being its nature and scope. Nobody worth mentioning wants no laws relating to the acquisition and use of firearms. Everyone worth mentioning wants reasonable laws that are enforceable and enforced.

Others will say that guns have only one purpose, to kill people. A liberal favorite, but spectacularly false for all that, and quickly counterexampled: (i) Guns can be used to save lives both by police and by ordinary citizens; (ii) Guns can be used to hunt and defend against nonhuman critters; (iii) Guns can be used for sporting purposes to shoot at nonsentient targets; (iv) Guns can be collected without ever being fired; (v) Guns can be used to deter crime without being fired; merely ‘showing steel’ is a marvellous deterrent. Indeed, display of a weapon is not even necessary: a miscreant who merely suspects that his target is armed, or that others in the vicinity are, may be deterred. Despite liberal mythology, criminals are not for the most part irrational and their crimes are not for the most part senseless. In terms of short-term means-ends rationality, it is quite reasonable and sensible to rob places where money is to be found — Willy Sutton recommends banks — and kill witnesses to the crime.

Still others will maintain that gun ownership has no effect on crime rates. False, see the work of John Lott.

Here then we have an example of topical insanity, an example of a topic that completely unhinges otherwise sane people.  There are plenty of other examples.  Capital punishment is one, religion is another.  A. C. "Gasbag" Grayling, for example, sometimes comes across as extremely intelligent and judicious.  But when it comes to religion he degenerates into the worst form of barroom bullshitter.  See my earlier post. 

State and Local Gun Laws and the Fourteenth Amendment

SCOTUS is set to decide whether or not state and local gun laws violate Second Amendment rights. Suppose your city disallows the possession of handguns.  Then the local law would be in at least apparent conflict with the Second Amendment which has recently been recognized by SCOTUS as granting an individual (as opposed to collective) right to keep and bear arms.  Now it strikes me that the Fourteenth Amendment resolves the matter.  In Section One we read, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property , without due process of law . . . ." 

If we interpret 'privileges' to cover rights, then the right to keep and bear arms falls under the first clause.  Accordingly, the citizen's constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms cannot be nullified by any state or local law.  And if we interpret 'liberty' in the second clause to cover the liberty to defend oneself with appropriate means against a deadly attack, then the second clause too rules out any state or local abridgement of the right to keep and bear arms. 

So what's to discuss? [He said with a grin.]

Errol Harris on Material Implication

Errol E. Harris, Formal, Transcendental, and Dialectical Thinking: Logic and Reality (SUNY Press, 1987), pp. 38-39:

Sometimes an excuse is offered for the paradoxical (one might say, illogical) character of material implication on the ground that the Philonian interpretation of the conditional is the weakest which will satisfy the requirement that the rule of detachment gives a valid inference. But it is obvious from the foregoing that it does not satisfy this requirement; for unless there is some essential connection between p and q we cannot validly argue "If p then q, and p; therefore q." We ought not even to assert, "If p then q" except on the condition that there is a connection between what the propositions express. The Philonian interpretation licenses the schema "If p, then q" whether or not there is any connection, so we might argue:

If pigs cannot fly, Socrates is mortal;
but pigs cannot fly,
therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Although this argument is valid according to the current doctrine, the conclusion, as long as it includes the word "therefore," is false, because it alleges in effect that the reason for Socrates' mortality is the flightlessness of pigs. Accordingly, we have an implicitly false conclusion from true premisses, and that is precisely what the rule of detachment is supposed to preclude.

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‘The Wrong Side of History’

I once heard  a prominent conservative tell an ideological opponent that he was 'on the wrong side of history.'  But surely this is a phrase that no self-aware and self-consistent conservative should use.  The phrase suggests that history is moving in a certain direction, toward various outcomes, and that this direction and these outcomes are somehow justified by the actual tendency of events. But how can the mere fact of a certain drift justify that drift?  For example, we are moving in the United States, and not just here, towards more and more intrusive government, more and more socialism, less and less individual liberty.  This has certainly been the trend from FDR on regardless of which party has been in power.  Would a conservative want to say that the fact of this drift justifies it?  Obviously not.

'Everyone today believes that such-and-such.'  It doesn't follow  that such-and-such is true.  'Everyone now does such-and-such.'  It doesn't follow that such-and-such ought to be done.  'The direction of events is towards such-and-such.'  It doesn't follow that such-and-such is a good or valuable outcome.  In each of these cases there is a logical mistake.  One cannot validly infer truth from belief, ought from is, or values from facts. 

One who opposes the drift toward socialism, a drift that is accelerating under President Obama, is on the wrong side of history. But that is no objection unless one assumes that history's direction is the right direction.  Now an Hegelian might believe that, one for whom all the real is rational and all the rational real.  Marxists and 'progressives' might believe it.  But no conservative who understands conservatism can believe it.

As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative don't talk like a liberal.  Don't validate, by adopting, their question-begging phrases.

 

The Bigger the Government, the More to Fight Over

Taking a page from Prager, I've already noted that big government makes for small citizens.  Let us also note that government expansion exacerbates political divisions and sets citizen against citizen. 

Suppose we get to the point where Washington bureaucrats  dictate what types of cars and trucks will be manufactured.  Then you can be sure that there will be more lobbying, more corruption and the buying of votes, more fighting.    Or suppose the czars of Obamacare begin dictating how many cardiologists we need, how many gastroenterologists, etc.  Do you think medical students, physicians, and their patients will take that lying down?  Hell no, they will organize and fight and protest and lobby.  They will be justified in doing so because of the constitutionally protected right to a redress of grievances.

Do you like contention and division?  Then support bigger government.  We are coming apart as a nation as Patrick J. Buchanan documents here.   The rifts are deep and nasty.  Polarization and demonization of the opponent are the order of the day.  Do you want more of this?  Then give government more say in your life.  Do you want less?  Then support limited government and federalism.

Federalism, roughly, is (i) a form of political organization in which governmental power is divided among a central government and various constituent governing entities such as states, counties, and cities; (ii) subject to the proviso that the central and constituent governments retain their separate identities and assigned duties. A government that is not a federation would allow for the central government to create and reorganize constituent governments at will and meddle in their affairs.  Federalism is implied by the Tenth Amendment tothe U.S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to it by the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." 

Federalism would make for less contention, because people who love high taxes and liberal schemes could head for the People's Republic of Taxachusetts or the Left coast state of Californication,  while the  conservatively inclined who support gun rights and capital punishment could gravitate toward states like Texas.

The fact of the matter is that we do not agree on a large number of divisive, passion-inspiring issues (abortion, gun rights, capital punishment, wealth redistribution . . .) and we will never agree on them.  These are not merely 'academic' issues since they directly affect the lives and livelihoods and liberties of people.  And they are not easily resolved because they are rooted deep in fundamental worldview differences.  When you violate a man's liberty, or mock his moral sense, or threaten to destroy his way of life, you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it. 

Recognizing these facts, we must ask ourselves: How can we keep from tearing each other apart literally or figuratively?  I am floating the suggestion that federalism and severe limitations on the reach of the central government are what we need.  Example:  Suppose Roe v. Wade is overturned and the question of the legality of abortion is returned to the states.  Some states will make it legal, others illegal.  This would be a modest step in the direction of mitigating the tensions between the warring camps.  If abortion is a question for the states, then no federal monies could be allocated to the support of abortion.  People who want to live in abortion states can move there; people who don't can move to states in which abortion is illegal.

A. C. Grayling on the Roman Polanski Statutory Rape Case

I find myself in complete agreement with Professor Grayling's commentary on the Polanski case.  Read it carefully; he makes several important points.  What is astonishing to me, however, is how this man can be so sane and judicious on this topic, and yet such a blithering gasbag of a lunatic when it comes to religion, as I document  here.  There is something I call topical insanity, and Grayling on religion is an example of it. Sometimes otherwise sane people simply 'lose it' when it comes to certain topics. 

Dangers of Psychological Projection

I have found that it is dangerous to assume that others are essentially like oneself.

Psychologists speak of projection. As I understand it, it involves projecting into others one's own attitudes, beliefs, motivations, fears, emotions, desires, values, and the like.  It is classified as a defense mechanism.  Suppose one is stingy, considers stinginess an undesirable trait, but doesn't want to own up to one's stinginess.  As a defense against the admission of one's own stinginess, one projects it into others.

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