Category: Language Matters

Chauvinism and Male Chauvinism

In her President Obama's Silly, Sexist Defense of Susan Rice, Kirsten Powers writes,

It's absurd and chauvinistic for Obama to talk about the woman he thinks should  be Secretary of State of the United States as if she needs the big strong man to  come to her defense because a couple of Senators are criticizing her. 

Powers' article is good and I have no problem with its content.  But her misuse of 'chauvinistic' is a good occasion for a language rant.

A chauvinist is  someone who believes his country is the best in all or most respects. The word derives from 'Chauvin,' the name of an officer in Napoleon Bonaparte's army. This fellow was convinced that everything French was  unsurpassingly excellent. To use 'chauvinist' for 'male chauvinist' is  to destroy a perfectly useful word. If we acquiesce in this destruction, what then are we to call Chauvin? A 'country-chauvinist'?

Whether Obama is a male chauvinist, I don't know.  But he surely isn't a chauvinist!

Note also that Chauvin was himself a male chauvinist in that he was both a male and a chauvinist. Thus 'male chauvinist' is ambiguous, having different meanings depending on whether we take 'male' as a specifying adjective or as a sense-shifting (alienans) adjective. Taken the first way, a male chauvinist is a chauvinist.  Taken the second way, a male chauvinist is not a chauvinist any more than artificial leather is leather.  Think about it. 

This distinction between specifying and sense-shifting adjectives is an important one, and  one ought to be aware of it.  See my Adjectives category for more examples of alienans constructions. It's fun for the whole family.

While we are on this chauvinist business, there was a time when 'white chauvinist' was in use. Those were the days before leftists seized upon 'racism' as their bludgeon of choice. Vivian Gornick in The Romance of American Communism (Basic Books 1977, p. 170) tells the tale of a poor fellow who was drummed out of the American Communist Party in the 1950s on charges of 'white chauvinism.' His crime?  Serving watermelon at a garden party! And you thought that Political Correctness was something new?

PC originated with the CP.

John W. Carlson’s Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition

Dear Bill (if I may), 

I came across your interesting 2009 post on "The Dictionary Fallacy," and I would like to follow up.

I wonder whether you are aware of my recent work, Words of Wisdom: A Philosophical Dictionary for the Perennial Tradition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012).  Attached are the publisher's notice, plus an interview I did with the blog called "Catholic World Report."  My own thinking about dictionaries — and specifically philosophical dictionaries — can be gathered from the interview, as well as from the Introduction to my volume, which can be accessed as the "Excerpt" highlighted near bottom of p. 1 of the UNDP announcement. 

I would be pleased to see you mention Words of Wisdom on "Maverick Philosopher," and to learn what you think about my project. 

Best wishes from a philosopher who can't seem to get himself to retire,

John W. (Jack) Carlson
Professor of Philosophy
Creighton University
Omaha, Neb. 68142

Dear Professor Carlson,

I am pleased to announce your book on my weblog which, at the moment, is experiencing  traffic of over 2000 page views per day.  So I should be able to snag a few readers for your work.

I read the The Catholic World Report interview and I find myself in complete agreement with much of what you say. For example, I wholly agree with the following:

CWR:  Let’s begin with a Big Picture question: what is the state of philosophy today? I ask because philosophy today seems to be dismissed often by certain self-appointed critics. For example, the physicist (and atheist) Lawrence Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing, said in an interview with The Atlantic that philosophy no longer has “content,” indeed, that“philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, ‘Those that can’t do, teach, and those that can’t teach, teach gym.’” Why this sort of antagonism toward philosophy?

Dr. Carlson:So Krauss in a single sentence denigrates both philosophy and gymnasium. May we begin by remarking that Plato—who thought highly of both—would not be impressed? 

Your question, of course, is a good one.  A response to it requires noting salient features of Western intellectual culture, as well as key concerns of philosophers in the recent past. Over the last century and a half, our culture has come to be dominated by the natural or empirical sciences and technological advances made possible by their means. It thus is not surprising that there has arisen in various quarters a view that can be characterized as “scientism”—i.e., one according to which all legitimate cognitive pursuits should follow the methods of the modern sciences. Now, somewhat ironically, this view is not itself a scientific one. Rather, it can be recognized as essentially philosophical; that is, it expresses a general account of the nature and limits of human knowledge. But if it indeed is philosophical, we might well ask on what basis scientism is to be recommended.  Does this view adequately reflect the variety of ways in which reality can be known? To say the least, it is not obvious that the answer to this question is “Yes.”

Lawrence Krauss is one of a large number  (along wth Jerry Coyne, Stephen Hawking, et al.) of preternaturally ignorant scientists whose arrogance stands in inverse relation to their ignorance of what is outside their specialties.  They know nothing of philosophy and yet 'pontificate' (if I may be permitted the use of this term in the presence of a Catholic) in a manner most sophomoric.  Their education has been completely lopsided: they have no appreciation of the West and its traditions and so no appreciation of how natural science arose. 

I criticize Krauss's scientistic nonsense in a number of posts showing  him the same sort of contempt that he displays towards his superiors.  These posts can be found here. His book is so bad it takes the breath away.  If you haven't read it, you should, to get a sense of the lack of humanistic culture among too many contemporary scientists. 

What you say about scientism is exactly right.  I have made similar points over the years, but it seems one can never get the points through the thick skulls of the science-idolaters.

I have an entire category devoted to scientism.  My definition of the term is contained in What is Scientism?

So I salute you and your book, and look forward to reading it.

Yours in the love of philosophy,

Bill Vallicella

P. S. Retiring may be like marrying.  Wait too long and you'll never do it.

Why is the Gore Lane So-Called?

Gore LaneSee the triangle-like piece of roadway where the routes diverge?  That's called the gore lane.  Gore lanes are also found near on ramps and exit ramps. Driving across such a lane is a moving violation.  The gore lane is not, strictly, a lane, nor is it named after Al Bore Gore. 

This scintillating topic came up in conversation with Peter L. yesterday morning after we had done with Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos.    Peter maintained that the 'lane' was so-called because of one Officer Gore, a motorcycle cop who supposedly had been killed in a gore lane near an entry ramp to a freeway.  But I learned this morning that the noun 'gore' has among it meanings, "a small usually triangular piece of land."  This leads me to suspect that Peter's explanation is a bit of urban folklore.

Whether Atheism is a Religion

Yesterday I objected to calling leftism a religion.  Curiously, some people call atheism a religion.  I object to that too.

The question as to what religion is is not at all easy to answer.  It is not even clear that the question makes sense.  For when you ask 'What is religion?' you presuppose that it has an essence that can be captured in a definition that specifies necessary and sufficient conditions.  But it might be that the concept religion is a family resemblance concept like the concept game (to invoke Wittgenstein's famous example).  Think of all the different sorts of games there are. Is there any property or set of properties that all games have and that only games have?  Presumably not.  The concept game is a family resemblance concept to which no essence corresponds.  Noted philosophers of religion such as John Hick maintain the same with respect to the concept religion.

If you take this tack, then you can perhaps argue that Marxism and secular humanism and militant atheism are religions.

But it strikes me as decidedly odd to characterize  a militant anti-religionist as having a religion.  Indeed,
it smacks of a cheap debating trick:  "How can you criticize religion when you yourself have a religion?" I prefer to think along the following lines.

Start with belief-system as your genus and then distinguish two species: belief-systems that are theoretical, though they may have practical applications,  and belief-systems that are by their very nature oriented toward action.  Call the latter ideologies.  Accordingly, an ideology is a system of action-guiding beliefs.  Then distinguish between religious and non-religious ideologies.  Marxism and militant atheism are non-religious ideologies while the Abrahamic religions and some of the Eastern religions are
religious ideologies.

But this leaves me with the problem of specifying what it is that distinguishes religious from non-religious ideologies.  Perhaps this: all and only religions make reference to a transcendent reality, whether of a personal or impersonal nature, contact or community or identification with which is the summum bonum and the ultimate purpose of human existence.  For the Abrahamic faiths, Yahweh, God, Allah  is the transcendent reality.  For Taoism, the Tao.  For Hinduism, Brahman.  For Buddhism, the transcendent state of nirvana.  But I expect the Theravadins to object that nibbana is nothing positive and transcendent, being only the extinguishing or dissolution of the (ultimately illusory) self.  I could of course simply deny that Theravada Buddhism is a religion, strictly speaking.  I could lump it together with Stoicism as a sort of higher psychotherapy, a set of techniques for achieving equanimity.

There are a number of tricky and unresolved issues here, but I see little point in calling militant atheism a religion, though I concede it is like a religion in some ways.

But as I pointed out yesterday, if one thing is like another, that is not to say that the one thing is the other or is a species of the other.

Leftism: The World’s Most Dynamic Religion?

Dennis Prager answers in the affirmative:

For at least the last hundred years, the world’s most dynamic religion has been neither Christianity nor Islam.

It has been leftism.

Most people do not recognize what is probably the single most important fact of modern life. One reason is that leftism is overwhelmingly secular (more than merely secular: it is inherently opposed to all traditional religions), and therefore people do not regard it as a religion. Another is that leftism so convincingly portrays itself as solely the product of reason, intellect, and science that it has not been seen as the dogma-based ideology that it is. Therefore the vast majority of the people who affirm leftist beliefs think of their views as the only way to properly think about life.

While I agree with the rest of Prager's column, I have trouble with his characterization of leftism as a religion. 

It is true that leftism is like a religion in certain key respects.  But if one thing is like another it does not follow that the first is a species of the other. Whales are like fish in certain key respects, but a whale is not a fish but a mammal. Whales live in the ocean, can stay underwater for long periods of time and have strong tails to propel themselves. Just like fish.  But whales are not fish.

I should think that correct taxonomies in the realm of ideas are just as important as correct taxonomies in the realm of flora and fauna.

Leftism is an anti-religious political ideology that functions in the lives of its adherents much like religions function in the lives of their adherents. This is the truth to which Prager alludes with his sloppy formulation, "leftism is a religion."  Leftism in theory is opposed to every religion as to an opiate of the masses, to employ the figure of Karl Marx.  In practice, however, today's leftists are rather strangely soft on the representatives of the 'religion of peace.'

Or you could say that leftism is an ersatz religion for leftists. 'Ersatz' here functions as an alienans adjective. It functions  like 'decoy' in 'decoy duck.'  A decoy duck is not a duck.  A substitute for religion is not a religion.

An ideology is a system of action-guiding beliefs.  That genus divides into the species religious ideologies and nonreligious ideologies.  Leftism, being "overwhelmingly secular" just as Prager says, is a nonreligious ideology. It is not a religion, but it shares some characteristics with religions and functions for its adherents as a substitute for religion.

You might think to accuse me of pedantry.  What does it matter that Prager sometimes employs sloppy formulations? Surely it is more important that leftism be defeated than that it be fitted into an optimal taxonomy!

Well yes, slaying the dragon is Job One.  But we also need to persuade intelligent and discriminating people.  Precision in thought and speech is conducive to that end.  And that is why I say, once more:  Language matters!

The Constructive Curmudgeon

I don't know whether he is an antediluvian and a bibliomaniac, but Douglas Groothuis is a self-professed curmudgeon, albeit of a constructive stripe. I am not persuaded by his case for Biblical inerrancy, but I find his political observations astute, as in this list of reasons not to vote for Obama.  Read the list!

By the way, my opening sentence illustrates the principle that the antecedent of a pronoun need not come before  (in the order of reading) the pronoun of which it is the antecedent despite the following bit of schoolmarmishness from Grammar Girl:

Our second antecedent problem is what’s called “anticipatory reference,” which Bryan Garner calls “the vice of referring to something that is yet to be mentioned (5)," meaning that the writer puts the pronoun before the antecedent—a no no.

I say to hell with that.  I opened with a beautiful classy sentence.  Grammar Girl needs a good spanking not only for endorsing this stupid rule of the dumbed-down and inattentive but also for her use of 'no no' baby talk.

I should rant more fully on pronouns, their antecedents, with an application to Obama's "You didn't build that."

I do have a fine rant here on baby talk and first-grade English.

“Possible Tornado Touches Down in Brooklyn and Queens”

Story here.  "Only a possible tornado?  It is the actual ones that worry me." 

"Did you hear about Jack? He died of an apparent heart attack."  "Wow, hs heart must have been in terrible condition if all it took was an apparent heart attack to do him in."

Bad jokes, no doubt, but they do get us thinking about the various senses of 'possible' and 'apparent.'  How many of each are there?

 

Michelle Malkin on Racial Code Words

Here are her recent additions to the list.   By the logic of the Left, cosmologists are racists because they study, among other things, black holes.

The willful stupidity of liberals is evidenced by the umbrage they take at the apt description of Obama as the food stamp president:

At the dawn of the modern federal food stamp program, one in 50 Americans was enrolled. This year, one in seven Americans is on the food stamp rolls. The majority of them are white. Obama’s loosening of eligibility requirements combined with the stagnant economy fueled the rise in dependency. “Food stamp president” is pithy shorthand for the very real entitlement explosion.

Democrats fumed when former GOP candidate Newt Gingrich bestowed the title on Obama and decried its purportedly racist implications. But who are the racists? As Gingrich scolded the aforementioned race troll Chris Matthews last week: “Why do you assume food stamp refers to blacks? What kind of racist thinking do you have? You’re being a racist because you assume they’re black!” Time to find a new code word.

You have to ask yourself whether you want a culture of dependency or a culture of self-reliance.  What is so offensive about Obama and his ilk is their undermining of such traditional American values as self-reliance.

And as I said yesterday, many of these same liberals such as the "race troll' Chris Mathews got where they did in life precisely because of such virtues as self-reliance.  And yet they refuse to promote them and pass them on.  It shows the contempt they have for their clients such as blacks who keep them in power.

If it hasn't happened already, some liberal will now besmirch the beautiful word 'self-reliance' as racial code.  There is just no level of scumbaggery to which a leftist will not descend.

Montaigne on Why Language Matters

Allan J. writes,

You often speak of the importance of using language responsibly, i.e. not like a librul.
So I thought you would enjoy this:

“Our understanding is conducted solely by means of the word: anyone who falsifies it betrays public society. It is the only tool by which we communicate our wishes and our thoughts; it is our soul’s interpreter: if we lack that, we can no longer hold together; we can no longer know each other. When words deceive us, it breaks all intercourse and loosens the bonds of our polity.” – Montaigne

Montaigne's point is mine.  Language matters.  It deserves respect as the vehicle and enabler of our thoughts and — to change the metaphor — the common currency for the exchange of ideas.  To tamper with the accepted meanings of words in order  to secure argumentative or political advantage is a form of cheating.  Wittgenstein likened languages to games.  But games have rules, and we cannot tolerate those who change the rules mid-game.  We must demand of our opponents that they use language responsibly, and engage us on the common terrain of accepted usage.

The violation of accepted usage is a common ploy of contemporary liberals.  Some examples: 

Minimal ID requirements are said to disenfranchise certain classes of voters.  The common sense requirements amount to voter suppression.  They are described absurdly as an onerous barrier to voting."
Onerous?  Barrier?  In Pennsylvania a photo ID can be had free of charge.  In Arizona it costs a paltry $12 and is good for 12 years.  If you are 65 or older, or on SS disability, it is free.

People who insist on the rule of law with respect to immigation are called xenophobic.  And then there are the cheaply-fabricated  neologistic  '-phobe' compounds.  One who rationally articulates a principled position against same-sex marriage is dismissed as homophobic.  One who draws attention to the threat of radical Islam is denounced as Islamophobic.

The sheer stupidity of these mendacious coinages ought to disgust anyone who can think straight.  A phobia is an irrational fear.  But the proponents of traditional marriage have no fear of homosexuals or their practices, let alone an irrational fear of them.  And those alive to the threat of radical Islam may be said to fear it, but the fear is rational.

Liberals can't seem to distinguish dissent from hate.  So they think that if you dissent from liberal positions, then you hate liberals.  How stupid can a liberal be?  "You disagree with liberal ideas, therefore you are a hater!"   Even worse: "You differ with a black liberal's ideas, therefore you are a hater and a racist!"

'Unilateral.'  John Nichols of the The Nation appeared on the hard-Left show, "Democracy Now," on the morning of 2 September 2004. Like many libs and lefties, he misused 'unilateral' to mean 'without United Nations   support.' In this sense, coalition operations against Saddam Hussein's regime were 'unilateral' despite the the fact that said operations were precisely those of a coalition of some thirty countries.  The same willful mistake was made by his boss Victor Navasky on 17 July 2005 while being
interviewed by David Frum on C-Span 2.

There are plenty more examples, e.g., 'white Hispanic.'   When Republicans had control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, Dems whined about a 'one-party system.'  Exercise for the reader: find more examples of liberal misuse of language.

The ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Speech Revisited: Wieseltier Says Romney and Ryan are Lying

In His Grief and Ours: Paul Ryan's Nasty Ideal of Self-Reliance, Leon Wieseltier taxes Ryan and Mitt Romney with a simple lie (emphasis added):

It is no wonder that Ryan, and of course Romney, set out immediately to distort the president’s “you didn’t build that speech” in Roanoke, because in complicating the causes of economic achievement, and in giving a more correct picture of the conditions of entrepreneurial activity, Obama punctured the radical individualist mythology, the wild self-worship, at the heart of the conservative idea of capitalism. An honest reading of the speech shows that Romney and Ryan and their apologists are simply lying about it. The businessman builds his business, but he does not build the bridge without which he could not build his business. That is all. Is it everything? Surely it takes nothing away from the businessman, who retains his reason for his pride in his business. But it is not capitalist pride that Romney and Ryan are defending, it is capitalist pridefulness.

Here is the key passage from Obama's speech (emphasis added):

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

What is the antecedent of the pronoun 'that' in the fifth sentence?  The general rule, one admitting of exceptions, is that the antecedent of a pronoun is the noun or noun phrase immediately preceding it in the context in question.  By that rule 'business' is the antecedent of 'that'  and Obama is saying that business owners did not build their businesses.  But since the rule allows exceptions, the context permits a   charitable reading: 'If you've got a business, you didn't build the roads and bridges and other infrastructuire without which your business would have been impossible.'

So there are two readings of Obama's words.  Both are permitted by the words themselves, but one is uncharitable and the other charitable.  On the first what he is saying is plainly false: no business person built his business.  On the second, what he is saying is trivially true and disputed by no one, namely, that no business could be built without various infrastructure already being in place. 

On either reading, there is a serious problem for Obama and his apologists.  Either Obama is is saying something that everyone, including Obama, knows is false, in which case he is lying, or he is saying something that goes without saying, something disputed by no one.  On the second reading Obama is commiting a straw man fallacy: he is portraying his opponents as holding a position that none of them holds. 

So if we are going to be charitable, then we ought to tax the president with a straw man fallacy.  But there is worse to come.  Behind the latter fallacy is a fallacy of false alternative.  Obama assumes, without justification, that if you didn't build the infrastructure without which your business could not exist, then government built it.  Or, to put it in the form of a disjunction: Either you as an individual built the the roads and bridges and tools or government built them for you.  But that is a false alternative.  Not everything that arises collectively is brought about by the government.  Obama confuses government with society.  Only some of what we achieve collectively is achieved by government agency.

Uncharitably read, Obama is lying.  Charitably read, his claim is doubly fallacious and doubly false.  It is false that conservatives maintain a rugged individualism according to which each of us creates himself ex nihilo.  And it is false that what is achieved collectively is achieved by government agency.

Now did Romney and Ryan lie about Obama's message?  No.  They interpreted his words in a way that the English language permits.  Their interpretation, of course, is uncharitable in the extreme.  After all, no one really believes that business people pull themselves up out of nothing by their own bootstraps. 

Is Wieseltier lying about Romney and Ryan? No, he is is just being stupid by failing to make an elementary distinction between sentence meaning and speaker's meaning.

Obama's gaffe will be and ought to be exploited to the hilt by the Republicans.  Politics is not dispassionate inquiry but war conducted by other means. 

Obama must be defeated.  Four more years of his collectivism  may harm the country irreparably.

To Call it an Exaggeration Would be an Understatement

There are statements so extreme that to call them exaggerations would be an understatement.  There are plenty of examples to be found in liberal precincts.

"The photo ID requirement is voter suppression. It disenfranchises minorities, the poor, the elderly.  It is an onerous barrier to voting."

Onerous?  In Pennsylvania a photo ID can be had free of charge.  In Arizona it costs a paltry $12 and is good for 12 years.  If you are 65 or older, or on SS disability, it is free.

Are our liberal pals exaggerating?  Actually it is more like lying.  It is the willful misuse of language to win at all costs.  Linguistic hijacking.

Generation Screwed May Support Ryan

Gen-Xers (those born between 1965 and 1980) are the cohort sandwiched between the Boomers  and the Millennials.  Now they have one of their own in contention for high office.  And Paul Ryan, 42, is no slacker.  Romney's pick of the man for VP was a brilliant stroke and may gin up support for the Republican ticket as Kirsten Powers argues.

She quoted a word I had never seen before, 'athazagoraphobia':

Generation X chronicler Jeff Gordiner, has written that Gen-Xers suffer from “athazagoraphobia”—“an abnormal and persistent fear of being forgotten or ignored.” Except it’s not really a phobia; it’s been reality for a long time. Maybe that is about to change.