Author: Bill Vallicella

The Past as Burden

The past is a burden one is free to put down — if others will let us. In this regard as in others, the less fame the better. Others like to keep us in the past, safely categorized, pinned to our deeds. To their ossifying gaze, we are what we were, a fixed essence rather than a project. If I rightly recall, Hegel summed up the Aristotelian to ti en einai and the scholastic quod quid erat esse in the phrase, Wesen ist was gewesen ist: essence is what was. But Dasein, said Heidegger, is essentially futural. And that despite all Geworfenheit, thrownness.  Sound is the existentialist insight that man  is a project.

Each day is new, but we make it old with our thoughts and habits. We drag the past along with us like a penal chain. But every day is a beginning. Some say: "of the rest of your life." But that formulation is too retrospective: it evaluates the present and the future by the standard of the past, as time that remains. Better to say: "Each day begins a new life." Of course, it cannot be all that new, but no matter. Let the continuities take care of themselves, seek the novelty in the moment.

There are possibilities yet unexplored in this present which is not merely a boundary between past and future, but a source of the new. 

The Demise of the Dollar

An important article by Robert Fisk in the The Independent.  (HT: Seldom Seen Slim)

Frugal bastards like me, who live according to the old virtues, play by the rules, are totally debt-free, save and invest, exercise 'due diligence' across the board — we are now going to get the shaft through no fault of our own.  What's a poor philosopher to do as his stash of cash threatens to transmogrify into a pile of trash?  Three simple suggestions:

1. Buy gold and other precious metals.  But gold is at an all-time high of $1038.65 a troy ounce, and you know what they say about buying high.  Gold is extremely volatile and has no intrinsic value.  Nor does it have any growth potential like stocks.  Because the world's gold supply increases very slowly, its exchange value is mainly driven by demand.  But the demand is perception-driven, so be careful.  Still, gold is and always has been the money of last resort, money for when the crap hits the fan, and thereafter.

2. Stockpile nonperishable goods, including those you don't use yourself.  What you don't need or want can be used later on for barter.  While prices are low and the dollar still has purchasing power, lay in a supply of clothes and footwear, tools, mountain bikes and musical instruments, wine and liquor, canned food and dry staples such as rice and beans, guns and ammunition, and so on.

3. Make repairs and improvements on your domicile.

Yet More Evidence of a Lack of Common Sense Among Democrats

It is hard to believe, but then again, given how preternaturally stupid and politically correct Dems are, maybe it is not so hard to believe:  a significant number of these jokers oppose photo ID when it comes to applying for Medicare and Medicaid benefits!  Here is John Fund, Making the World Safe for Medicaid Fraud:

Americans expect to show a photo ID when they board a plane, enter many office buildings, cash a check or even rent a video — but rarely in voting or applying for government benefits such as Medicaid. Many Democrats seem to view asking citizens for proof of identity as an invasion of privacy — though what's really being protected is the right to commit identity fraud.

Exhibit A is Tuesday's 13 to 10 party-line vote in the Senate Finance Committee rejecting a proposal to require that immigrants prove their identity when signing up for federal health care programs. [. . .]

This shows that the Dems are not serious about health care reform.  If they were serious they would begin by solving pressing and solvable problems such as the fraud and waste in existing programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.  But they refuse to take the simplest steps toward this end.

Misplaced Moral Enthusiasm and Mel Gibson

The L. A. Times reports that Mel Gibson's 2006 drunk driving conviction has been expunged.  Here is what I wrote about the case at the time (1 August 2006): 

What's worse: Driving while legally drunk at 87 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, or making stupid anti-Semitic remarks? The former, obviously. And yet a big stink is being made about Gibson's drunken rant. I call this misplaced moral enthusiasm. Calling a Jew a bad name won't kill him, but running him over in your speeding 2006 Lexus LS 430 will.

On the one hand, offensive words that no reasonable person could take seriously; on the other hand, a deed that could get people killed. Here is what Gibson said: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and, addressing the arresting officer, "Are you a Jew?"

Now compare Gibson with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who repeatedly has called for the destruction of the State of Israel. Ahmadinejad's is speech that incites unspeakable violence, unlike Gibson's drunken rant which is no threat to anyone. So let's forget about Gibson, and concentrate on real threats.

Epictetus Advises Imelda Marcos

Epictetus, Enchiridion, tr. E. Carter, XXXIX:

The body is to everyone the measure of the possessions proper for it, as the foot is of the shoe. If, therefore, you stop at this, you will keep the measure; but if you move beyond it, you must necessarily be carried forward, as down a precipice; as in the case of a shoe, if you go beyond its fitness to the foot, it comes first to be gilded, then purple, and then studded with jewels. For to that which once exceeds a due measure, there is no bound.

Indeed, as one may observe here.

How Sartre Saw the USA

Jean-Paul Sartre's "Americans and Their Myths" appeared in The Nation in the issue of 18 October, 1947. The article concludes:

The anguish of the American confronted with Americanism is an ambivalent anguish; as if he were asking, "Am I American enough?" and at the same time, "How can I escape from Americanism?" In America a man's simultaneous answers to these two questions make him what he is, and each man must find his own answers.

It sounds like projection to me. Anguish? Ambivalence? Had I been able to drag Jean-Paul's sorrily citified Parisian ass away from his cafes, Gauloises, and Stalinist comrades and through the Superstition Mountains in June — well, perhaps the univocity of rock and sun and the reality of a world that is not man-made but also not a featureless surd-like en soi would have cured his anguished ambiguity.

Serious Conversation

It is best avoided with ordinary folk. Serious conversation about matters beyond the mundane demands effort and people resent being made to work. Besides, ordinary folk do not 'believe in conversation' the way some philosophers do. They don't believe that truth can be attained by dialectical means. They might not believe in truth at all, or in its value. Or they may have the notion that 'truth is relative.' Thoughtlessly, many dismiss all thought with 'It's all relative.' So if you try to engage them on a serious topic, they may interpret your overture as an initial move in an ego game whereby you are trying to dominate them, even if that is the farthest thing from your mind. Not believing in truth, they believe in power, and interpret everything as a power ploy and a power play. And this goes double if, like me, you are intense of mien. For your seriousness will appear either threatening or comical to those for whom nothing matters except life's surfaces.

A good maxim, then:  Among regular guys be a regular guy.

The Body’s Graffiti

Tattoos are the graffiti of the human body. And just as the graffiti 'artist' defaces property public and private, the tattoo 'artist' defaces the human body, torturing the skin with needles and injecting it with ugly dyes. When I see yet another tattooed, pierced, tackle-box head, I wonder what this phenomenon means. Some thoughts of Theodore Dalrymple are worth pondering:

First, it [tattooing] was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.

Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.

And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.

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.

Continue reading “On Mental Properties and the Subject of Experience”

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.