A tip of the hat to Bob Koepp for reminding me of Hist-Analytic, an extensive repository of analytic materials some of them hard to locate. No doubt you have heard of W. E. Johnson's determinable/determinate distinction. Perhaps you even understand it. But I'll bet you didn't get it from the horse's mouth. You can, here.
Author: Bill Vallicella
Merton, Marilyn, and David Carradine
Thomas Merton, Journal (IV, 240), writing about Marilyn Monroe around the time of her death in 1962:
. . .the death was as much a symbol as the bomb – symbol of uselessness and of tragedy, of misused humanity.
He’s right of course: Monroe’s was a life wasted on glamour, sexiness, and frivolity. She serves as a lovely warning: Make good use of your human incarnation! Be in the flesh, but not of the flesh.
The fascination with empty celebrity, a fascination as inane as its object, says something about what we have become in the West. We in some measure merit the revulsion of the Islamic world. We value liberty, and rightly, but we fail to make good use of it as Marilyn and Anna Nicole Smith failed to make good use of their time in the body. Curiously enough, a failure to make good use of one's time in the body often leads to its early destruction, and with it, perhaps, the possibility of spiritual improvement.
Curiously, Merton and Carradine both died in Bangkok, the first of accidental electrocution on 10 December 1968, the second a few days ago apparently of autoerotic asphyxiation. The extremity and perversity of the latter practice is a clear proof of the tremendous power of the sex drive to corrupt and derange the human spirit if it is allowed unfettered expression. One with any spiritual sensitivity and depth ought to shudder at the thought of ending his life in the manner of Carradine, in the heteronomy and diremption of the flesh, utterly enslaved to one's lusts, one's soul emptied out into the dust. To risk one's very life in pursuit of intensity of orgasm shows a mind unhinged. Thinking of Carradine's frightful example, one ought to pray, as Merton did thousands of times: Ora pro nobis peccatoribus. Nunc et in hora mortis.
Phil’s Trojan Horse Argument against PAP (Peter Lupu)
(I) In a post dated June 6, 2009 Philoponus presented the Trojan Horse Argument (THA) against thre Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) according to which a person is morally responsible for what he as done only if he could have done otherwise. He says:
(A) “So, if we say a agent shall be responsible for doing x only if conditions a and b and c obtain, and it turns out that c cannot obtain, or we can never ascertain or be sure that c obtains, we have rendered it impossible ever to hold someone responsible for doing x. Yes? The PAP is a Trojan Horse if we attach it to moral responsibility.”
Phil then maintains that
(B) “The criminal law wisely and steadfastly refuses to allow a Trojan Horse like the PAP into the criminal codes, … Think about what would happen if a PAP clause—“he could have done/chosen otherwise”– became a material element of a criminal charge. Then the prosecution would have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the perpetrator could have acted/chosen otherwise.”
In this post I shall examine Phil’s THA with respect to both claims (A) and (B).
Continue reading “Phil’s Trojan Horse Argument against PAP (Peter Lupu)”
A Question about Leibniz on Free Choice
Leibniz's Theodicy consists of two parts, the first on faith and reason, the second on the freedom of man in the origin of evil. I am trying to understand paragraph #37 (p. 144 of the Huggard translation):
. . it follows not that what is foreseen is necessary, for necessary truth is that whereof the contrary is impossible or implies contradiction. Now this truth which states that I shall write tomorrow is not of that nature, it is not necessary. Yet supposing that God foresees it, it is necessary that it come to pass; that is, the consequence is necessary, namely, that it exist, since it has been foreseen; for God is infallible. This is what is termed a hypothetical necessity. But our concern is not this necessity: it is an absolute necessity that is required, to be able to say that an action is necessary, that it is not contingent, that it is not the effect of a free choice.
Clearly, the proposition P expressed by 'BV writes on 13 June 2009' is logically contingent. There is no logical necessity that I write tomorrow or on any day. Both my writing tomorrow and my not writing tomorrow are logically possible. But given that God foreknows that P, P must be true. That is,
1. Necessarily (if God foreknows that P, then P is true).
We note that the necessity in (1) attaches to the conditional, not to its consequent. This is a case, then, of necessitas consequentiae, not of necessitas consequentiis. In Leibniz's jargon, (1) is a case of hypothetical necessity as opposed to absolute necessity. The consequence is necessary, not the consequent. From (1) one cannot infer
2. If God foreknows that P, then necessarily P is true.
So far, so good. If a proposition is known, by God or by anyone, then it must be true; but that is consistent with saying that the proposition known is contingently true. Given that I know that I am blogging, then I must be blogging; but that is not to say that I am necessarily blogging: I might not have been blogging now.
What I don't understand, though, is the last sentence in the passage quoted. The last sentence strikes me as false. Leibniz seems not to appreciate that if a contingent state of affairs is necessitated by something other than the agent, then there is a prima facie difficulty about reconciling it with freedom of choice. The source of necessitation might be divine foreknowledge (theological fatalism), or the laws of logic (logical fatalism), or the past and the laws of nature (causal determinism). No matter what the source of necessitation, one cannot dissolve the problem of reconciling free will and the necessitation of the act willed simply by pointing out the difference between hypothetical and absolute necessity.
In other words, Leibniz appears to be taxing the fatalist and the determinist with a sophomoric error, namely, that of confusing (1) and (2) above. But no sophisticated fatalist or determinist need make that error. It is clear that my blogging now is a logically contingent state of affairs. But if determinism is true, then it is not nomologically possible that I be doing anything other than blogging now: past events under the aegis of the laws of nature necessitate my blogging now. How then can my blogging now be free? What Leibniz fails to see is that simply distinguishing the necessity of the consequence from the necessity of the consequent does nothing to answer the question.
A Further Thought on State-Run Lotteries: The Morality of Accepting a Payout
In Good Societies and Good Lives I argued against the morality of state-run lotteries. Now let's consider the morality of accepting a payout. Suppose you win big, in the millions. Chances are excellent that this will ruin you for the rest of your life, but that is not my present point. Suppose you can handle the windfall, the onslaught of long-lost cousins, the openly-displayed envious hatred of your 'friends,' the army of 'financial planners' and tax advisors who will beat a path to your door, etc. Aren't the winnings ill-gotten gains?
Continue reading “A Further Thought on State-Run Lotteries: The Morality of Accepting a Payout”
Against Irrationalism
The problem is not that we conceptualize things, but that we conceptualize them wrongly, hastily, superficially. The problem is not that we draw distinctions, but that we draw too few distinctions or improper distinctions. Perhaps in the end one must learn to trace all distinctions back to the ONE whence they spring; but that is in the end. In the beginning people must be taught to conceptualize, discriminate, and distinguish.
A superficial Zen training that attacks the discursive intellect in those who have never properly developed it does a great disservice.
The Strange Case of U. G. Krishnamurti
Some people are gullible and credulous, without a skeptical bone in their bodies. Others are skepticism incarnate, unable to believe anything or admire anything. A strange case of the latter is U. G. Krishnamurti, the anti-guru and 'anti-charlatan.' Please don't confuse him with the much better known J. Krishnamurti.
An obsessive doubter and debunker, U. G. Krishnamurti is a bit like the atheist who can't leave God alone, but must constantly be disproving him. U.G. can't leave the enlightenment quest and 'spirituality' alone. It's all bunk, he thinks, but he can't be done with it. Buddha, Jesus, and the rest were all just kidding themselves and misleading others. But U. G. can't just arrive at this conclusion and move on to something he deems worthwhile. For he is an 'anti-quester' tied to what he opposes by his self-defining opposition to it. Curiously perverse, but fascinating. He is a little like the later Wittgenstein who, though convinced that the problems of philosophy arose from linguistic bewitchment, couldn't move on to something worth doing, but instead obsessively scribbled on in any attempt to show a nonexistent fly the way out of a nonexistent fly-bottle.
U. G. can't seem to take seriously any experience. Each is just an experience. None is revelatory or finally veridical. Religious and mystical experiences are no different than sexual or drug experiences. Before any experience can put him in contact with any reality, his skepticism dissolves it. "Just an experience! What do I need more experiences for!"
Consciousness, Free Will, and Illusion
This just over the transom:
I'm an occasional reader of your wonderful blog, "Maverick Philosopher". I was wondering if I could probe you a bit regarding an argument you make in your post, "Could Freedom of the Will be an Illusion?"
You make the statement, "An illusion is an illusion to consciousness, so that if there is no consciousness there are no illusions either." I know this logic is not unique to you, as Descartes used similar reasoning to conclude that he exists. I firmly believe that free will is not an illusion, but I'm having trouble convincing myself of this particular argument.
As a computer programmer, I can write a program that tries to comprehend things in its environment (identifies animals from images, for example). It might come across a particularly tricky image, and get the wrong answer. I could then say that the program was tricked by an illusion. But, the program does not have consciousness.
Is there something wrong with this example?
The Irrationality of Playing the Lottery
I have posted several times over the years on the irrationality of playing the lottery and on the immorality of state sponsorship and promotion (via deceptive advertising) of lotteries. The following e-mail, however, raises an interesting question that gives me pause:
As I was reading this story of an impoverished young rancher who won $88 million net with a Powerball ticket, I was wondering whether you'd allow that a case could be made for the rationality of his gamble. The young man and his whole family were in desperate financial circumstances with no way to cover back taxes, livestock loans, etc. They faced foreclosures, eviction, etc. The young man bought one ticket. He was not a chronic heavy lotto-gambler. The one ticket did not make his situation worse. Arguably, the lottery gamble was his only hope of salvaging his situation. If you have only ONE way to save yourself, the odds don't really matter.
Actually, according to the account linked to above, the cowboy bought $15 worth of tickets. So he bought more than one ticket. But no matter. Let us assume that this $15 was the only money he ever spent on the lottery. And let's also assume that the cowpoke was at the end of his rope — pun intended — facing foreclosure and imminent residency on Skid Row. We may also safely assume that the young man will never again play the lottery. (For he seems resolved not to fritter away his winnings on loose women and fast cars.) The question is whether it was rational for him in his precise circumstances to spend $15 on lottery tickets.
Now one question to ask is whether the rationality of a decision can be judged ex post facto. I would say not. A rational agent agent is one who chooses means that he has good reason to believe are conducive to the ends he has in view. A rational decision is one made calmly and deliberately and with 'due diligence' on the basis of the best information the agent has available to him within the limited time he has at his disposal for acquiring information. A rational decision cannot be rendered irrational by a bad outcome, and an irrational decision cannot be rendered rational by a good outcome.
So I am inclined to say that our cowboy made an irrational decison when he decide to spend $15 on a chance to win millions. The fact that, against all odds, he won is irrelevant to the rationality of his decision. The decision was irrational because the chances of winning anything significant were astronomically small, whereas the value of $15 to someone who is down to his last $15 is substantial.
But I can understand how intuitions might differ. Suppose we alter the example by supposing that the man will die and knows that he will die if he does not win today's lottery. Suppose he has exactly $15 to spend and he spends it on lottery tickets. He now has nothing to lose by spending the money. It is perhaps arguable that, in these precise circumstances, it is prudentially if not theoretically rational for the cowpoke to blow his last $15 on lotto tickets.
Just what is rationality anyway?
Good Societies and Good Lives: On State-Run Lotteries
Good societies are those that make it easy to live good lives. A society that erects numerous obstacles to good living, however, cannot count as a good society. By this criterion, present day American society cannot be considered good. It has too many institutionalized features that impede human flourishing. Here I discuss just one such feature, state lotteries.
Any government that promotes lotteries is promoting behavior that is harmful to many and positively good for none, not even the few winners who are morally if not economically undermined by them. Sufficiently disciplined people can of course gamble without harming themselves economically. They gamble for diversion and they know when to stop. They have no illusions about it and they appreciate that in the long run it is a losing proposition. But even these people are not doing themselves much good by gambling: they are wasting time that could otherwise be used in some productive way. The undisciplined, however, positively harm themselves, and not only by going into debt. They wallow in irrationality and ‘innumeracy’ (the mathematical analog of illiteracy). How many gamblers could explain the Gambler’s Fallacy? They associate with people who are likely to have a bad influence on them. Since the virtues and vices tend to come in clusters, the gambler is likely to become a drinker, a glutton, and so on. In the words of an old Mose Allison tune: "Drinkin’ and gamblin’, stayin’ out all night; . . . livin’ in a fool’s paradise."
I am not saying that gambling should be illegal; nor am I saying that it is immoral. Some gamble for relaxation, and no ill comes of it. I am saying that gambling ought not be state-sponsored. Government should cause no harm. Some will respond by pointing to the supplemental revenue that state lotteries generate, revenue that can be put to good uses. The tacit assumption seems to be that, if X is a source of supplemental revenue, then X is a good thing.
This assumption is false. State-sponsored prostitution would be an excellent source of revenue — there would be no lack of eager customers — but prostituion is not something a state should sponsor. If it is wrong for the government to promote prostitution, the use of tobacco products, the drinking of alcohol, and the taking of drugs, then it is wrong for the government to support gambling in the form of lotteries.
One can argue with some show of plausibility that governments should permit the aforementioned activities; but I cannot see how any rational person could argue that governments should support or promote them.
Companion post: The Lottery Player
Not a Joiner
Paul Brunton, Notebooks, vol. II, p. 117:
He is not a joiner because of several reasons: one of them is that joiners are too often too one-sided in approach, too limited in outlook, too exclusive to let truth in when it happens to appear in a sect different from his own. Another reason is that too frequently there is a tyranny from above, imitated by followers, which forbids any independent thought and does not tolerate any real search.
On the other hand, going it alone does not guarantee safe or speedy arrival in the harbor of truth. It can just as easily leave one rudderless in the samsaric storm.
Life's a predicament.
Avoidance Always Possible
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 20, Loeb Classical Library no. 58, p. 141, tr. Haines:
Suppose that a competitor in the ring has gashed us with his nails and butted us violently with his head, we do not protest or take it amiss or suspect our opponent in future of foul play. Still we do keep an eye on him, not indeed as an enemy, or from suspicion of him, but with good-humoured avoidance. Act much the same way in all the other parts of life. Let us make many allowances for our fellow-athletes as it were. Avoidance is always possible, as I have said, without suspicion or hatred.
This is indeed Sage Advice. Avoidance is always possible and sometimes necessary if one would live well. Marcus bids us avoid, if not our "fellow-athletes," then their rude antics. But I would add to the list certain thoughts, words, and deeds.
Thoughts that weaken, demean, or are otherwise useless are best avoided. For as Marcus says in another place (V, 16), "The character of thy mind will be such as is the character of thy frequent thoughts, for the soul takes its dye from the thoughts." Would close inquiry into the particulars of Anna Nicole Smith's ill-starred life improve me? Do I really need to know why David Carradine was found dead in Bangkok hanging from a rope?
Idle talk is another source of needless vexation. The teachable soon learn that the occasions are rife on which keeping one's mouth shut is the best policy.
The wise also avoid the vexation of unnecessary action. Having burdened yourself with boat, RV, jet ski and motorcycle, you are now both owner and owned, and you will expend your spirit in actions for the maintenance of these mere conveyances.
‘Could Have Done Otherwise’ Disambiguated
Here again is how Harry Frankfurt formulates the principle of alternate possibilities in his 1969 J. Phil. article:
PAP. A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.
It is now time to put 'could have done otherwise' under our logico-linguistic microscopes. The phrase is ambiguous. On one reading, 'could' is the past indicative of 'can' where 'can' signifies ability: If I can do X, then I am able to do X. Accordingly, if I could have done otherwise, then I was able to do otherwise. Suppose I failed to lock the door last night. Then to say that I could have done otherwise is to say that I was able to lock the door last night. So, on the first reading, 'could have done otherwise' means 'was able to do otherwise.'
Continue reading “‘Could Have Done Otherwise’ Disambiguated”
If You Are Finding Things a Bit Dry Around Here . . .
. . . head over to What's Wrong With the World. Feser on Leiter on Feser. Feser et al. on Tiller.
Some bloggers warn their readers that 'blogging will be light.' I should warn my readers that 'blogging will be dry and technical for the foreseeable future' as I work my way through the recent free will literature.
I've never met a philosophical problem that didn't turn my crank. How could anyone be bored in a world so riddled with philosophical difficulties? There are no boring topics; there are only bored people.
On Tipping
Here, in no particular order, are my maxims concerning the practice of tipping.
1. He who is too cheap to leave a tip in a restaurant should cook for himself. That being said, there is no legal obligation to tip, nor should there be. Is there a moral obligation? Perhaps. Rather than argue that there is I will just state that tipping is the morally decent thing to do, ceteris paribus. And it doesn't matter whether you will be returning to the restaurant. No doubt a good part of the motivation for tipping is prudential: if one plans on coming back then it is prudent to establish good relations with the people one is likely to encounter again. But given a social arrangement in which waiters and waitresses depend on tips to earn a decent wage, one ought always tip for good service.