While in many religions the aim is to save one's soul, in Buddhism the aim is to disembarrass oneself of the conceit that one has one.
Author: Bill Vallicella
How To Look At Things
Look at them as if for the first time — and the last.
Debate Neither Sophists Nor Dogmatists
One cannot have a profitable discussion with someone who does not care about the truth, nor with someone who believes himself to be in such secure possession of it as to render further investigation unnecessary .
On Forming Societies at Faint Provocation
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 154, #56:
I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and it is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste time.
Well said. Would Thoreau have joined the Thoreau Society? Merton the Merton Society? Would Groucho Marx have joined a club that would have him as a member, let alone make him the cynosure of its interest?
Seriously, there is something dubious about societies. Were I to read a paper the least bit critical of Thomas Merton at the Merton Society, I would receive a hostile response no matter how good the paper was. I would be taken as attacking their man, someone with whom they identify. In a one-on-one exchange, it is not uncommon for an interlocutor to 'get his back up' if one criticizes, however judiciously, something or someone in whom the interlocutor has invested time and energy. But when there is a bunch of these people reinforcing each other, look out! They close ranks and their critical acumen goes to zero.
Merton, Heidegger, Ayn Rand, and so many others who inspire a following need to have their works discussed critically, and that means: not by followers and not by dismissers, but by the independent. But what happens for the most part is that their works get chewed over lovingly in uncritical enclaves while being ignored or dismissed by those outside the charmed circles. Case in point: the Rand cult.
Four Uses of ‘Of’ and Non-Intentional Conscious States
The thesis of intentionality can be stated roughly as follows: Every consciousness is a consciousness of something. I claim that this Brentano thesis is false because of the existence of non-intentional states of consciousness. Peter Lupu understands and agrees but no one else hereabouts does. So I need to take a few steps back and issue some clarifications. I begin by distinguishing among four uses of 'of.' I'll call them the subjective, the objective, the dual, and the appositive. Once these are on the table one or two impediments to the understanding of my point — which of course is not original with me — will have been removed.
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On Replying in Kind
Suppose A launches a vicious verbal attack on B. B will be tempted to respond in kind, but ought to give some thought to the point of so doing. For even if B does not escalate the attack, but merely throws back what was thrown at him, the attacker may well feel justified in having made his initial assault. He will be tempted to rationalize his behavior as follows:
You see what a worthless fellow B is? How dare he call me names! I'm glad I attacked him; he deserved it. In fact, I attacked him just to expose him, just to show what nastiness he is capable of.
Given the likelihood of such perverse self-justification on A's part, B is wise not to respond at all, but to view matters with Olympian detachment. If B cannot be harmed materially by A's attacks, then he wastes time, energy, and peace of mind by responding to them. What others think of us is of no consequence except insofar as it translates or is likely to translate into actions physically harmful to us. For those who have imbibed and implemented the Stoic wisdom, it is surely true that
Sticks and stones can break my bones
But words can never hurt me.
A prime exception, however, is the politician. Someone whose livelihood and efficacy depend on being favorably perceived must counter assaults and slanders. If he does not, they may stick to him. The politician is a slave to public opinion. Therein lies one of the reasons for the inferiority of the political to the philosophical life, a reason appreciated early on in our tradition by Aristotle and recorded in the Nicomachean Ethics.
The No True Scotsman or No True Atheist Fallacy
In logic, a fallacy is not a false belief but a pattern of reasoning that is both typical and in some way specious. Specious reasoning, by the very etymology of the term, appears correct but is not. Thus a fallacy is not just any old mistake in reasoning, but a recurrent mistake that is seductive. A taxonomy of fallacies is useful insofar as it helps prevent one from seducing oneself and being seduced by others.
Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman. Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"
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Is Religious Instruction Child Abuse? Is Religion the Greatest Social Evil?
That religious instruction constitutes child abuse is another theme of contemporary militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and A. C. Grayling. Consider the competing 'truths' taught by different faith-based schools, e.g. that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is not, etc. Grayling complains that
. . . in schools all over the country these antipathetic 'truths' are being force-fed to different groups of pupils, none of whom is in a position to assess their credibility or worth. This is a serious form of child abuse. It sows the seeds of apartheids capable of resulting, in their logical conclusion, in murder and war, as history sickeningly and ceaselessly proves. There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity. Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated, so religion will always exist, at least among the uneducated. The only way to manage the dangers it presents is to confine it entirely to the private sphere, and for the public domain to be blind to it in all but one respect: that by law no one's private beliefs should be allowed to cause a nuisance or any injury to anyone else. For whenever and wherever religion manifests itself in the public arena as an organised phenomenon, it is the most Satanic of all things. (A. C. Grayling, Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, Oxford 2003, 34-35, emphasis added.)
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A. C. Grayling and a Stock Move of Militant Atheists
Since A. C. Grayling has surfaced in the ComBox here, it it will be useful for people to see just what sort of fellow he is. So over the next few days I will reproduce three or four of my Grayling posts from the old site.
Militant atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling writes,
Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.
This remark outrages the sensibilities of those who have deep religious convictions and attachments, and they regard it as insulting. But the truth is that everyone takes this attitude about all but one (or a very few) of the gods that have ever been claimed to exist.
No reasonably orthodox Christian believes in Aphrodite or the rest of the Olympian deities, or in Ganesh the Elephant God or the rest of the Hindu pantheon, or in the Japanese emperor, and so endlessly on – and officially (as a matter of Christian orthodoxy) he or she must say that anyone who sincerely believes in such deities is deluded and blasphemously in pursuit of "false gods".
The atheist adds just one more deity to the list of those not believed in; namely, the one remaining on the Christian's or Jew's or Muslim's list.
What Grayling is saying above is often heard from atheists. It is a stock item in their repertoire. But is there an argument here, and if so, what exactly is the argument? The conclusion is clear enough: Religious belief of every sort is irrational, unsupported by evidence, and not intellectually respectable. (One wonders if Grayling has given any thought to the nontheistic religion of Buddhism, but let that pass.) A bold thesis indeed, very significant if true or even if rationally supportable. But what is the argument? Is there an argument? If there is no argument, then we have gratuitous assertion which can be met with gratuitous counter-assertion. But our man does seem to be trying to give an argument. After all, isn't that what philosophers are supposed to do? Or is Grayling just gassing off? Let's be charitable and ascribe an argument to him. It appears to be this:
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Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?
It seems to me that there is a sort of 'disconnect' in theist-atheist debates. It is as if the parties to the dispute are not talking about the same thing. Jim Ryan writes,
The reason I'm an atheist is straightforward. The proposition that there is a god is as unlikely as ghosts, Martians amongst us, and reincarnation. There isn't the slightest evidence for these hypotheses which fly in the face of so much else that we know to be true. So I believe all of them to be false.
This is a fairly standard atheist response. Since I picked up the use of 'boilerplate' in philosophical contexts from Jim, I hope he won't be offended if I refer to the quoted passage as atheist boilerplate. It puts me in mind of Russell's Teapot part of the drift of which is that there is no more reason to believe in God than there is to believe that "between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit . . . ."
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The Recent Dennett-Plantinga A. P. A. Debate and the Question of Tone in Philosophy
This just over the transom (interspersed comments in blue by BV):
I regularly follow your blog, and have for a couple of years now. I have considerable respect for you as both a philosopher and a communicator in general – you seem to get curt or impatient at times, but you still manage to be civil even then, and your treatment of arguments in your posts always comes across as fair and in the spirit of trying to best represent the views of those you are discussing.
I mention all this because my question is this. What do you make of exchanges along the lines of what was recently recounted on Prosblogion, between Dennett and Plantinga? I'm not talking about the content in this case, but the tone. Is it really the case that arguments in favor of God/theism in general, and Christianity in particular, are treated with open mockery and derision even in what is supposed to be a professional exchange by a respected philosopher? Is Dennett representative of how naturalists treat theists/Christians in discussion, or is he exceptional?
The ACLU and Mardi Gras
Fat Tuesday, coming as it does the day before Ash Wednesday, derives its very meaning from the beginning of Lent. The idea is to get some serious partying under one's belt just before the forty-day ascetic run-up to Easter. So one might think the ACLU would wish to lodge a protest against a celebration so religious in inspiration. Good (contemptible?) lefties that they are, they are ever crusading against religion. Perhaps 'crusade' (L. crux, crucis) is not the right word suggestive as it is of the cross and Christianity; perhaps 'jihad' would be better especially since many loons of the Left are curiously and conveniently ignorant of the threat of militant Islam and much prefer going after truly dangerous outfits like the Boy Scouts.
Mardi Gras
I penned the following observation on Mardi Gras 2005 around the time of hurricane Katrina, but even I found it too 'insensitive' for posting at that time. But 'insensitive' is what we conservatives are supposed to be, right? The thought is correct, in any case, and political correctness be damned.
If the good folks down Nawlins* way spent less time letting the good times roll and more on the deferral of gratification, they might be better prepared for nature's little surprises.
_____
*New Orleans
Three Senses of ‘Or’
‘Or’ is a troublesome particle in dire need of regimentation. Besides its two disjunctive meanings, the inclusive and the exclusive, there is also what I call the ‘or’ of identity. The inclusive meaning, corresponding to the Latin vel, is illustrated by ‘He is either morally obtuse or intellectually obtuse.’ This allows that the person in question may be both.
The exclusive meaning, corresponding to the Latin aut, is exemplified by the standard menu inscription, ‘soup or salad,’ which means one or the other, but not both. Logicians view the inclusive ‘or’ as a basic propositional connective. Thus our first example would be symbolized by p v q, where p is the proposition expressed by ‘He is morally obtuse’; q the proposition expressed by ‘He is intellectually obtuse’; with ‘v’ — in honor of vel — standing for inclusive disjunction. Exclusive ‘or’ can now be defined as follows: p aut q =df p v q & ~(p & q), where the tilde and the ampersand, both propositional connectives, represent negation and conjunction respectively.
How is ‘or’ functioning in this sentence: ‘Philosophers of a realist bent posit facts or states of affairs as truth-makers.’ Clearly, no disjunction is being conveyed. The idea is that facts just are states of affairs, or that ‘fact’ and ‘state of affairs’ are being used interchangeably. Indeed, the preceding sentence exemplifies a use of ‘or’ that does not express a disjunction. Hence, ‘or’ of identity. Such uses of ‘or’ can be replaced by ‘i.e.,’ id est.
Why is this important? Well, it is important if your aim to is write and think with precision and self-awareness. If that is not your aim, then it ought to be.
Volition and Modality (Peter Lupu)
This is a guest post by Peter Lupu. Minor editing by BV.
1) In One Fallacy of Objectivism (henceforth, OFO) I gave an argument that a distinction Objectivists insist upon between “metaphysical” or natural-facts vs. volitional-facts logically presupposes the traditional modal distinction between contingent vs. necessary – a logical presupposition they vehemently deny. Three kinds of objections were presented against my argument. The first kind challenged my argument by questioning the sense in which the distinction between natural vs. volitional facts logically presupposes the modal distinction. The second kind of objection alleges that since the contingent and the possible are the offspring of human volitional action, they cannot possibly exist antecedently to and independently from the sphere of human volition. The third kind of objection maintains that a certain Objectivist theory about concept acquisition and concept formation refutes my argument. I shall ignore here objections that belong to this last category because they deserve a separate treatment. So I shall focus exclusively on the first two objections.