Author: Bill Vallicella

The Seven Deadly Sins of Pasta

One of my dinner partners last night chopped up his pasta with a fork.  I registered my disapprobation, and demonstrated the correct technique, but to no good effect.  He complained that doing it right was too much work.  So I had to write him off as unteachable in this particular despite his manifold excellences in virtually every other particular. The incident did, however, put me in mind of an old post from 7 April 2005 which richly deserves reposting.  One cannot say these things too often.

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The following are the Seven Deadly Sins pertaining to the cooking and eating of pasta. Infractions may incur a visit from my New Joisey cousin Vinnie and his pals Smith and Wesson.

1. Using too small of a pot. A capacious pot is essential for the proper cooking of pasta. For most purposes I use an 8 quart pot. When I make my famous lasagne, however, out comes the monster 16 quart job.

2. Insufficient water. Be sure the pot is filled three-quarters full. With a big pot, there is little chance of a boil-over. But in case of the latter, a little olive oil added to the water will quell any uprising.

3. Adding the pasta before the water is boiling. Wifey once broke this rule. I instructed her to add the pasta when the water boiled. She claims she did, and that led to a discussion of the meaning of ‘boiling.’ I hereby lay it down that water is not boiling unless it is ROILING and JUMPING. To put it a bit more scientifically, pure water at sea-level is not boiling until it is at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Since our tap water is pretty good, I use it, not wanting to burden my reverse osmosis purification system.

4. Breaking the pasta before putting it in the pot. This criminal act is particularly repellent to the true connoiseur, and a sure sign of a pasta greenhorn. It defeats the whole purpose of the eating of (long) pasta, a tactile experience that requires the twirling of the strands around the fork, and, therefore, unbroken strands. Deadly sin #4 usually follows upon sin # 1, as drinking upon gambling.

5. Overcooking the pasta. Pasta must never be overcooked. It is to be prepared al dente. That’s Italian for to the tooth, meaning that the pasta should put up a bit of resistance to the tooth that bites into it. The pleasure of pasta consumption is largely tactile: the stuff by its lonesome does not have much taste.

6. Failing to properly drain the pasta before the addition of sauce. The result of this is a disgusting dilution of the sauce. Proper drainage requires the proper tool, the collander. Invest in a good one made of stainless steel. Plastic is for wimps. And if you try to drain pasta using the pot top, then you mark yourself as a bonehead of the first magnitude and may scald yourself in the process.

7. Chopping pasta on the plate. When I see people do this, I am tempted to make like al-Zarqawi and engage in an Islamo-fascist act. Let’s say you are eating capellini, ‘angel hair.’ (This is the quickest cooking of the long pastas.) There it is on the large white plate, richly sauced, anointed with a bit of extra virgin olive oil — why buy any other kind? — besprinkled with fresh hand-grated Romano, (not something out of a cardboard cylinder), artistically set off with a small amount of finely chopped parsley, and awaiting your attention. It is a thing of beauty. So what does a bonehead do? He starts chopping it up.

Learn how to do it right. Take some strands in the fork tines, twirl, and you should end up with a ball of pasta at the end of your fork. Practice makes perfect. Now enjoy the tactile delight along with a glass of Dago red.

If Religions Contradict Each Other, Does it Follow that No Religion is True?

This from a piece in guardian.co.uk:

According to the Pew survey, 85% of humanity is religious in some way, and that's probably a low estimate, since nobody knows the true figures about China. This doesn't mean that religion is true (it can't, because religions contradict each other), but that there are strong cognitive and motivational factors that give religions an evolutionary advantage in the market of ideas. A scientific worldview is cognitively and emotionally more difficult, and hence at a disadvantage.

This passage cries out for logico-philosophical analysis.  One of the claims that the author is making is that religion cannot be true because religions contradict each other.  What this presumably means is that no religion can be true because every religion contradicts every other religion.  If so, we are being offered the following argument:  (1) Every  religion contradicts every other other religion; therefore, (2) no religion is true.  I grant the premise arguendo.    In any case, it is plausible.  To supply an example, Christians affirm what both Jews and Muslims deny, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate.  So there is no question but that some religions contradict other religions in respect of some doctrinal propositions.  (But it is also true that some religions agree with other religions in respect of some doctrinal propositions.  For example, the three Abrahamic religions all agree on the proposition that God exists, and on plenty of others.) 

Generalizing, we can say that every religion  contradicts every other religion in the sense that no two religions share all the same central doctrinal commitments.  (I will refine this in a moment.) So even though Christianity  and Islam agree that there is but one God, they disagree on whether this one God is triune. And although Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians agree on much, they disagree on the filioque.  To make this a bit more precise, I suggest the following definition:

Religion R contradicts religion R* =df there is some central doctrinal proposition p which is affirmed by the adherents of R but denied by the adherents of R* or vice versa.

If this is what we mean by one religion contradicting another, then most religions contradict most other religions.  But consider a religion that affirms the existence of an immortal soul and another that takes no position on this question — neither affirming nor denying an immortal soul — on the ground that worrying about this doctrinal point merely distracts one from the unum necessarium, namely, working out one's salvation with diligence.  Assume further that these two religions are otherwise completely alike as to doctrine.  These two religions do not contradict each other by the above definition.

So one may wonder about the truth of (1).  For the sake of argument, however, let's grant it. Our main question is whether (2) follows from (1).  It obviously does not.  Consider Christianity and Islam.  They contradict each other by the definition I just gave.   But it doesn't follow that both are false.  For it could be that one is true and the other false.

Our author has committed an egregious logical blunder.  The logical mistake is not confined to the context of religon.  Suppose you and I disagree on any sort of point at all.  Suppose you affirm that anthropogenic global warming is taking place and I deny it.  It does not follow from our disagreement that we are both wrong.  What follows is that one of us is right and the other wrong.  This follows from the Law of Non-Contradiction according to which, necessarily, one member of a pair of contradictory propositions is true and the other not true.

The rest of the article is equally pisspoor as you may discover for yourself.

Richard Gaskin on the Unity of the Proposition

The following is my contribution to a symposium on Richard Gaskin's The Unity of the Proposition. The symposium, together with Gaskin's replies, is scheduled to  appear in the December 2009 issue of Dialectica.

GASKIN ON THE UNITY OF THE PROPOSITION

William F. Vallicella

While studying Richard Gaskin’s The Unity of the Proposition (Oxford 2008), the word ‘magisterial’came repeatedly to mind. Gaskin’s mastery of the history, literature, and dialectical intricacies of the problem of the unity of the proposition in all its ramifications is in evidence on every page. More than a treatment of a particular problem, Gaskin’s book is a systematic treatise in the philosophy of language organized around a particular but centrally important problem. To my knowledge, it is the most thorough and penetrating discussion of the unity of the proposition ever to appear. The fact that Gaskin’s solution to the unity problem is set within a systematic philosophy of language contributes to the book’s depth and richness, but also makes the task of the critic difficult. In a few pages, the critic cannot properly convey the systematic underpinnings of Gaskin’s formulation of the problem and his solution to it. And when the critic evaluates, he is forced to acknowledge that he is evaluating a solution embedded in a far-flung system whose ideas are mutually reinforcing. His critical points may then appear as ‘dialectical potshots’ if he cannot, as he cannot in a few pages, bring a competing system of mutually reinforcing ideas onto the field. These caveats having been registered, I proceed to sketch Gaskin’s project and raise some questions about his formulation of the unity problem. After conceding that Gaskin has solved the problem as he understands it, I will suggest that the problem lies deeper than he recognizes, and that the linguistic idealism in which he embeds his solution is problematic.

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Pessimistic Thoughts on Political Discourse in America

Mark Crispin Miller The following piece was written on 12 April 2006.  I repost it, slightly emended, because events since then have led me to believe that the grounds for pessimism are even stronger now than they were before.  It is becoming increasingly clear that conservatives and liberals/leftists live on 'different planets.'  And it is becoming increasingly clear which planet bears the name 'Reality.'  A return to federalism may help mitigate tensions, as I suggest here.  But that is not likely to happen.

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A few nights ago on C-Span I listened to a talk by Mark Crispin Miller given at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). His theme was that of a book he had authored alleging that the 2004 election was stolen by the Republicans and how democracy is dead in the USA. Not having read Crispin's book, I cannot comment on it. But I will offer a few remarks on his talk.

Miller, a tenured professor at New York University, is obviously intelligent and highly articulate and entertaining to listen to, his mannerisms and delivery reminiscent of Woody Allen. He takes himself to be a defender of the values of the Enlightenment. But then so do I. So here is the beginning of a 'disconnect.' From my point of view, Miller is an extremist motivated by the standard Leftist fear of, and hostility toward, religion. (Miller's NYU colleague, Thomas Nagel, owns up to his fear of religion, as I document here.) Miller's hostility was betrayed a dozen or so times during his speech by mocking turns of phrase. But of course he doesn't see himself as an extremist but as a sober defender of values he feels are threatened by Christian Reconstructionism, also know as  Dominion Theology.

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Continental Philosophy Criticized: Levinas

Levinas-portrait Another example of Continental obscurity in my ongoing series comes from a philosopher I mainly respect, Emmanuel Levinas. The following passage is from Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, tr. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985, p. 106). It first appeared in French in 1982. It goes without saying that the numerals in brackets are my interpolation.

[1] The "invisible God" is not to be understood as God invisible to the senses, but as [2] God non-thematizable in thought and nonetheless as [3] non-indifferent to the thought which is not thematization, and [4] probably not even an intentionality.

Got that?  I will go through this passage bit by bit to show you what is wrong with this sort of writing and thinking.

Ad 1. To be properly formulated, this first clause must contain a word like ‘merely’ right after ‘understood.’ God is obviously invisible to the senses, and a formulation that suggests that he is not is inept. This sort of mistake is often made. For example, if what you want to say is that religion is not merely matter a matter of doctrine (because it is a matter of practice as well), then don’t say: Religion is not a matter of doctrine. For if you say the latter, then you say something that is just plain false.

Ad 2. We are being told that God is non-thematizable in thought. In plain English: God cannot be a theme or topic or object of thought. I am very sympathetic to this idea if what is intended is that God cannot be reduced to a mere object of thought whose being is exhausted by his objecthood. But since we are talking about God right now, there is some sense or other in which God is an object of thought. In some sense, we are thematizing God; we are thematizing him as a being whose being surpasses his thematicity.

You will note that I am now starting to write like a Continental philosopher. I know the idiom and can break into it when it suits me. I know their typical moves, althought they wouldn’t say ‘move’ inasmuch as that suggests something rigorous and logical like chess — and we can’t have that. The point, however, is that there is a problem here, and Levinas and Co. don’t do enough — or much of anything — to bring it into the open. The problem is to explain how we can think correctly of God as nonthematizable in thought if God has this very property. Or at least that is one aspect of the problem.

Ad 3. We are being told that there is a non-thematizing or non-objectifying mode of thinking and that God is non-indifferent to this mode of thinking. But what does ‘non-indifferent’ mean? Does it mean not different, so that the non-objectifying thinking of God just is God? Or does it perhaps mean that God cares about this mode of thinking? Who knows? And that’s the problem. Levinas takes no pains to be clear about what he means.  And the context does not help.

Ad 4. Finally, we are informed that the non-objectifying mode of thinking is "probably not even an intentionality." ‘Intentionality’ is a philosopher’s term of art for the peculiar of-ness, aboutness, or directedness of (some) mental states to their objects. So what Levinas is saying is that the non-objectifying mode of thinking lacks aboutness. But then what is it? Something like a mute sensory state, a pain, for example? Clearly, there is some sense in which a non-objectifying mode of thinking about God is about God – and about nothing else. This sense needs clarification.

To sum up. I am not trying to ‘refute’ Levinas.  I like him and agree with some of his ideas in Totality and Infinity, his critique of Heidegger for example.  I am not charging him with incoherence or self–contradiction above. What I am objecting to is the lack of time and energy spent on clarification, and on setting forth clearly the problems and questions implied by his ideas. Brentano, Husserl, and the early Sartre were clear-headed thinkers. After that, the early standards go by the board.

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Greenwich Village Folkies

Davedylan Remember Dave van Ronk?  I haven't heard his version of "Cocaine" in maybe 45 years.  Enjoy it before it is pulled.  Last Saturday I reminded you of Fred Neil.  Here is another delightful tune of his, I've Got a Secret.  Based loosely on Elizabeth Cotten's  Shake Sugaree.  And then there was a young cat who named himself after a Welsh poet, a callow youth who in his early days played guitar and harmonica much better than in later days and sang better too as you can hear in his versions of Cocaine and Rocks and Gravel.  But the Zeitgeist chose the unlikely Jewish kid from Hibbing, Minnesota as its avatar, and you know the rest of the story

Milton Munitz on Boundless Existence, Cosmic Spirituality, and the Meaning of Life

MKM_ForWebsite The last book Milton K Munitz published before his death in 1995 is entitled Does Life Have a Meaning? (Prometheus, 1993).  It is a fitting capstone to his distinguished career and exemplifies the traits for which I admire him: he is clear and precise like a good analytic philosopher, but he evinces the spiritual depth conspicuous by its absence in most analysts.  Philosophy for him was not a mere academic game: he grappled with ultimates.  Herewith, some notes toward a summary and critique of Munitz's position on the meaning-of-life question.  I will also draw upon his penultimate book, The Question of Reality (Princeton 1990), as well as Existence and Logic (NYU Press, 1974)  and The Mystery of Existence (NYU Press, 1974).  These titles will be abbreviated by 'LM,' ' QR,'  'EL,' and 'ME,'  respectively.  Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are quotations from Munitz; otherwise I use single 'quotation' marks.

 

 


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Adding Insult to Injury

That we are formed and malformed by our environments from birth on is bad enough. It is made worse by those who want to see us as nothing but products of environment. These reductionists of course make an exception in their own cases. It is as if they say to us: "We are able to discern truth, but you are not. What we say expresses our insight, but what you say only expresses your conditioning."  That is the injustice of the psychologizer.

First Impressions

You will find it difficult to undo the damage of a bad first impression. One must realize that too many people base lasting judgments on them. This is folly of course, but it may be even worse folly to attempt to disembarrass  them of their folly. The world runs on appearances, a fact made worse by the pseudo-authority of first appearances. One eventually learns that this world of seeming not only really is a world of seeming but is necessarily one. One learns to deal with it and abandons the attempt to find plenary reality where it can exist only fitfully and in fragments.

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Can Philosophy be Taught?

In one sense a philosophy is a set of conclusions, systematically set forth, on ultimate matters. To appreciate the conclusions, however, one must appreciate the arguments and counterarguments the sifting of which first led the philosopher to the conclusions. But to understand the arguments and counterarguments one must understand the issues and problems that they revolve around. Appreciation of the issues and problems, in turn, is rooted in wonder  the presupposition of which is a contemplative detachment from the taken-for-granted.

And so we must distinguish: doctrines, arguments, problems, wonder.  Philosophy as the study of the doctrines of the philosophers is philosophy in its most superficial sense.  Studying that, one is not studying philosophy, but philosophies, and them in their most external form.  Philosophy as the grappling with the arguments whose conclusions  are the doctrines is closer to the real thing.  Philosophy as the exfoliation and penetration of the problems themselves, under suspension of the need to solve them at all costs, is closer still to philosophy's throbbing heart.   This is philosophy as aporetics.  But without wonder there can be no appreciation of problems, let alone solutions.  Thus we have it on the excellent authority of both Plato and Aristotle that philosophy begins in wonder.

Upshot? Teaching philosophy is well-nigh impossible. One can of course teach the lore of the philosophers, but that is not what philosophy is in its vital essence.  And although argumentative and logical skills are impartable to the moderately intelligent, the aporetic sense, the feel for a philosophical problem, is not readily imparted regardless of the intelligence of the student. A fortiori, the wonder at the source of the aporetic sense is a gift of the gods, and nothing a mere mortal teacher can dispense.

So I propose to go Kant one better. Somewhere deep in the bowels of   The Critique of Pure Reason,  he remarks that "Philosophy cannot be taught, we can at most learn to philosophize." I say that neither philosophy as doctrinal system nor the art of philosophizing can be taught. For there is no one extant doctrinal system called philosophy, and neither the aporetic sense nor the wonder at its root can be taught.   As I used to say in my teaching days, "Philosophy cannot be a mass consumption item." Logic perhaps, philosophy no.

Or to paraphrase a remark I once heard Hans-Georg Gadamer make, "Just as there are the musical and the unmusical, there are the philosophical and the unphilosophical."  One cannot teach music to the unmusical or philosophy to the unphilosophical.  The muse of philosophy must have visited you; otherwise you are out of luck.

Too Old to Learn?

This just over the transom from a reader in Virginia: 

I stumbled across your blog a year or two ago, and since then I've periodically dropped in to see what's going on.  I enjoy what I understand of your material but, to be honest, I find much of it quite difficult to follow.  I think the main problem is that, having never studied philosophy formally, I simply haven't developed sufficient fluency in the vocabulary and methods of thinking required by the discipline.  (At the risk of sounding arrogant, I'm certain I possess the native intelligence to grasp at least the basics.)  With less than a year to go until my fortieth birthday it may be a little late to start learning, but, for reasons that I won't get into unless you really want to know, I'd like to try.  With that said, could you (and would you) suggest one or two books by way of introductory reading?
You are not even forty and you consider yourself too old for study?  Nonsense.  Nietzsche says somewhere that at thirty a man is yet a child when it comes to matters of high culture.  Well, to employ a trendy manner of speaking, forty is the new thirty.  Actually, fifty is the new thirty.  It is a good bet that you have another forty years ahead of you.  It is never too late to be learning new things.  The mind declines much more slowly than the body and its decline is much more easy to offset by preventative measures.  See Studiousness as Prophylaxis Against the Debilities of Old Age.  It is also worth noting that the waning of one's libido is conducive to the sort of peace of mind that makes study a pure delight.
 
As for your native intelligence, I too am certain that you possess enough of it to grasp the basics.  This is obvious from your letter which is flawlessly written and a model of clarity. Never start with the assumption that any subject matter is beyond your understanding.  Always start with the opposite assumption and let experience teach you your limits.  She will not fail to do so!
 
You say that you find much of what I write on this weblog hard to follow.  That is only to be expected when the post is of a technical nature as many of my posts are, or when I simply presuppose even in non-technical posts that the reader has read Aristotle, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Quine . . . . 
 
You would like me to recommend one or two introductory books.  I cannot think of anything I could wholeheartedly recommend in good conscience, but the following are worth a look:  Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, and Jay F. Rosenberg, The Practice of Philosophy.  Mr. Google will be glad to assist you in locating copies.  These books will give you some idea of what philosophy is about, even though I cannot endorse their particular slants or emphases.
 
But you really cannot learn philosophy by reading about it or attending lectures.  You have to do it.  It is an activity first and foremost, not a body of doctrine there to be learned.   You have to have one or more burning questions that torment you, and then you have to try to work out (in writing!) your own answers to those questions as best you can, all the while consulting what others have said about them.