Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Aporetics

  • On Ceasing to Exist: An Aporetic Tetrad

    John F. Kennedy ceased to exist in November of 1963.  (Assume no immortality of the soul.) But when a thing ceases to exist, it does not cease to be an object of reference or a subject of predicates. If this were not the case, then it would not be true to say of JFK that…

  • Excluded Middle, Presentism, Truth-Maker: An Aporetic Triad

    Suppose we acquiesce in the conflation of Excluded Middle and Bivalence.  The conflation is not unreasonable.  Now try this trio on for size: Excluded Middle: Every proposition is either true, or if not true, then false.Presentism: Only what exists at present, exists.Truth-Maker: Every contingent truth has a truth-maker. The limbs of the triad are individually…

  • Another Round on (Semantic) Presupposition: An Inconsistent Pentad

    Ed writes, p = *Socrates has just stopped talking* q  = *Socrates was talking just now* 1. p presupposes q 2. If p presupposes q, then (p or not-p) entails q 3. It is necessary that p or not-p 4. It is necessary that q 5. It is not necessary that Socrates was talking just…

  • If Nothing Exists, is it True that Nothing Exists? Well Yes, but Then . . .

    Here is a puzzle for London Ed and anyone else who finds it interesting. It is very simple, an aporetic dyad. To warm up, note that if snow is white, then it is true that snow is white.  This seems quite unexceptionable, a nice, solid, datanic starting point. It generalizes, of course: for any proposition…

  • Can One Reasonably Hold that Abortion is Murder but Ought to be Legal?

    Victor Reppert poses the following important question on his Facebook page: What, if anything, is wrong with holding, at the same time that a) Abortion is murder, and b) abortion should be legal? It's not a logical contradiction, is it? Is it merely counterintuitive? Is it un-Christian? One way of reaching this position might be to…

  • God, Simplicity, Freedom, and Two Senses of ‘Contingency’

    Fr. Aidan Kimel wants me to comment on his recent series of posts about divine simplicity, freedom, and the contingency of creation. In the third of his entries, he provides the following quotation: As Matthew Levering puts it: “God could be God without creatures, and so his willing of creatures cannot have the absolute necessity that his…

  • Millianism and Presentism: An Aporetic Pentad

    A Millian about proper names holds that the meaning of a proper name is exhausted by its referent. Thus the meaning of 'Socrates' is Socrates.  The meaning just is the denotatum. Fregean sense and reasonable facsimiles thereof  play no role in reference. If so, vacuous names, names without denotata, are meaningless. Presentism, roughly, is the…

  • Presentism, Truthmakers, and Ex-Concrete Objects: Some Questions for Francesco Orilia

     Here is an interesting little antilogism to break our heads against: A. Presentism: Only what exists at present, exists. B. Datum: There are past-tensed truths. C. Truthmaker Principle: If p is a contingent truth, then there is a truthmaker T such that (i) T makes true p, and (ii) T exists when p is true.…

  • Machiavelli, Arendt, and the Important Difference between Private and Public Morality

    Reader R. B. writes: I have been enjoying your posts about immigration because they are insightful. I'm on the border (haha) about the issue for the most part. I work with illegals from Mexico (in a restaurant) so you can imagine how that plays into my thinking. The problem as I see it is this:…

  • The Problem of Consciousness and Galen Strawson’s Non-Solution

    The problem can be set forth in a nice neat way as an aporetic triad: 1) Consciousness is real; it is not an illusion. 2) Consciousness is wholly natural, a material process in the brain. 3) It is impossible that conscious states, whether object-directed or merely qualitative, be material in nature. It is easy to…

  • Is a Dead Man Mortal?

    An Inconsistent Tetrad a. Socrates is mortal.b. Socrates is dead.c. A man is mortal only if there is a future time at which he dies.d. A man cannot die twice. If all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, then Socrates is mortal. But Socrates is dead. Now a man is mortal only if…

  • The Concept of ‘Standoff’ in Philosophy

    The following two propositions are collectively logically inconsistent and yet each is very plausible: 1. Being dead is not an evil for any dead person at any time.  2. Being dead at a young age is an evil for some dead persons. Obviously, the limbs of the dyad cannot both be true.  Each entails the…

  • Benatar on Annihilation and the Existence Requirement

    Herewith, the eighth installment  in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). We are still in the  juicy and technically rich Chapter 5 entitled "Death."  This entry covers pp. 102-118. People who dismiss this book unread are missing out on a lot of good philosophy. You are no philosopher if you refuse to examine arguments the…

  • The Puzzle of Dion and Theon

    This puzzle, similar to Peter Geach's Tibbles the Cat in content, is unlike it in vintage. Its origin is attributed by Philo of Alexandria (30 B.C. – 45 A. D.) to Chrysippus the Stoic (c. 280 B.C. – c. 206 B. C.) What follows is my take on the puzzle. I draw heavily upon Michael…

  • Creation, Existence, and Extreme Metaphysical Realism

     This entry is a continuation of the ruminations in The Ultimate Paradox of Divine Creation. Recapitulation Divine creation ex nihilo is a spiritual/mental 'process' whereby an object of the divine consciousness is posited as non-object, as more than a merely intentional object, and thus as a transcendent reality. By 'transcendent reality' I mean an item…