Both his greatness as a thinker and the probity of his quest for truth are revealed in the fact that Plato is not only the father of the Theory of Forms, but also the author of the most penetrating criticisms of them.
(By the way, the above aphorism is crafted in such a way as to demonstrate that the antecedent of a pronoun need not be its antecedent in the order of reading.)
Between thought and action lies speech, which can substitute for either. It can just as easily mask thoughtlessness as impede action.
Right speech, however, does not substitute for thought or action, but mediates them. Giving expression to thought, it enables intelligent action.
Here is the full text of the complaint. Dive in if you can stomach it. It lends credence to Martin Luther's "Reason is a whore." But these days, with the upgrading of prostitutes to 'sex workers,' the saying should go, 'Reason is a lawyer.' Pay them enough, and they will argue anything.
The complaint alleges that S.B. 1070 violates the Supremacy Clause (article VI, paragraph 2) of the U. S. Constitution. How's that for a legal stretch? Said clause reads as follows:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding. U.S. Const. art. VI, Paragraph 2.
Under the Supremacy Clause, everyone must follow federal law in the face of conflicting state law. It has long been established that "a state statute is void to the extent that it actually conflicts with a valid federal statute" and that a conflict will be found either where compliance with both federal and state law is impossible or where the state law stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment and execution of the full purposes and objectives of Congress. Edgar v. Mite Corp., 457 U.S. 624, 631 (1982).
Since 1070 essentially mirrors Federal immigration law, I suppose the argument will not be that 1070 is in conflict with Federal law but that its enforcement will somehow interfere with the enforcement of Federal law. Good luck with that, government shysters.
I've often wondered about the etymology of 'shyster.' From German scheissen, to shit? That would fit well with the old joke, "What is the difference between a lawyer and a bucket of shit?' "The bucket." I am also put in mind of scheusslich: hideous, atrocious, abominable. Turning to the 'shyster' entry in my Webster's, I read, "prob. fr. Scheuster fl. 1840 Am. attorney frequently rebuked in a New York court for pettifoggery."
According to Robert Hendrickson, Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, p. 659:
Shyster, an American slang term for a shady disreputable lawyer, is first recorded in 1846. Various authorities list a real New York advocate as a possible source, but this theory has been disproved by Professor Gerald L. Cohen of the University of Missouri-Rolla, whose long paper on the etymology I had the pleasure of reading. Shakespeare's moneylender Shylock has also been suggested, as has a racetrack form of the word shy, i.e., to be shy money when betting. Some authorities trace shyster to the German Scheisse, "excrement," possibly through the word shicir, "a worthless person," but there is no absolute proof for any theory.
A little further research reveals that Professor Cohen's "long paper" is in fact a short book of 124 pages published in 1982 by Verlag Peter Lang. See here for a review. Cohen argues that the eponymous derivation from 'Scheuster' that I just cited from Webster's is a pseudo-etymology. 'Shyster' no more derives from 'Scheuster' than 'condom' from the fictious Dr. Condom. Nor does it come from 'Shylock.' It turns out my hunch was right. 'Shyster' is from the German Scheisser, one who defecates.
The estimable and erudite Dr. Michael Gilleland, self-styled antediluvian, bibliomaniac, and curmudgeon, who possesses an uncommonly lively interest in matters scatological, should find all of this interesting. I see that the ASU library has a copy of Gerald Leonard Cohen's Origin of the Term "Shyster." Within a few days it should be in my hands.
Amphiboly is syntactic ambiguity. "The foolish fear that God is dead." This sentence is amphibolous because its ambiguity does not have a semantic origin in the multiplicity of meaning of any constituent word, but derives from the ambiguous way the words are put together. On one reading, the construction is a sentence: 'The foolish/ fear that God is dead.' On the other reading, it is not a sentence, does not express a compete thought, but is a sentence-fragment: ' The foolish fear/that God is dead.'
A good writer avoids ambiguity except when he intends it.
To invigilate is to watch over students who are taking an exam so as to prevent cheating.
From the Greek ochlokratia, from the Greek ochlos (mob) + -kratia (-cracy): government by the mob, mob rule. Example from an esteemed member of the MavPhil Commenter Corps: "I just tell my students and anyone else I know not to read the Wikipedia article [Philosophy] except for a laugh. It's one of those areas where the ochlocratic nature of Wikipedia really comes a cropper."
In case anyone is unclear, and I was, 'to come a cropper' means to fail badly, to get caught out, to fall.
Liberals routinely complain that immigration laws such as the recently enacted Arizona Senate Bill 1070 are 'discriminatory.' This is nonsense, of course, but it is important to understand why.
1. Let's start with the very notion of discrimination. Discrimination as such is neither good nor bad. In this respect it is like change. Change as such is neither good nor bad: there is change for the good and change for the bad. Change for the good is improvement, but not all change is improvement. (Obama take note.) Similarly, there is justifiable discrimination and unjustifiable discrimination. As a matter of fact we all discriminate all the time. When you refuse to eat rotten food and insist on fresh, you are discriminating. When you forbid your children from associating with crackheads, you are discriminating. When you sort arguments into the valid and the invalid, you are discriminating. When you accept the true and reject the false, you are discriminating. Such discriminations are obviously justifiable. But that is to understate the point. Anyone who fails to discriminate between people with whom it would be dangerous for his children to associate and those with whom it would not be dangerous is guilty of dereliction of parental duty. Discrimination is not only in a vast range of cases permissible; it is obligatory.
2. The same goes for laws. Every law discriminates against those who either do or fail to do the actions either proscribed or prescribed by the law. A law that proscribes the operation of a motor vehicle while intoxicated discriminates against drunk drivers. Is that a problem? Of course not. Discrimination in cases like these is obviously justifiable.
3. So there is a clear sense in which SB 1070 is discriminatory: it discriminates against those who are in the country illegally. Now I hope our liberal pals are not opposed to 1070 for its being discriminatory in this sense. Presumably, what they will say is that it 'targets' Hispanics and discriminates against them unjustifiably. But this is a false and scurrilous allegation. It does not 'target' Hispanics, it targets illegal aliens. Of course, the vast majority of illegal aliens in the Southwest are Hispanics. But that is irrelevant. The objection to them is not that they are Hispanic, but that they are illegal.
It takes a little subtlety of mind to understand this, but not that much. Suppose someone said that drunk driving laws are unjust because they disproportionately affect those of Irish extraction. You would of course respond that if they are the ones who are doing most of the drunk driving, then it only right that they should be the ones who disproportionately suffer the penalty. You would point out that, even if it is true that most drunk drivers are Irish, the objection to them is not that they are Irish, but that they are drunk drivers.
4. 1070 does not unfairly 'target' Hispanics despite the barrage of lies emanating from the Left. So what are liberals/leftists really opposed to? They are opposed to the very notion of national sovereignty and national borders. They simply do not want border control. But being mendacious, they will not come out and clearly state that. So they use weasel phrases like 'comprehensive immigration reform' which either mean nothing or are code for amnesty and open borders.
'Superb' is still able to convey a hint of the Latin, superbia, pride. A thoughtful writer bears this in mind. But in a world of thoughtless readers, there is not much call for thoughtful writers.
This reflection occasioned by a sentence from a secondary source on Pascal: "[The extrinsic proofs of Christianity] are humiliating to the superb power of reasoning that would like to judge of everything."
This is an addendum to our earlier discussion which I hope will advance it a step or two. We heard Alan Rhoda claim that the following sentence is false: 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists.' Let's think further about this. We first note that 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists' can be parsed in two ways:
1. If nothing exists, then it is true that (nothing exists).
2. If nothing exists, then it is true (that nothing exists).
Call (1) the operator construal. 'It is true that ( )' is a sentential operator the operand of which is a sentence. The result of the operation is itself a sentence. If the operand is true, then the resulting sentence is true. If the operand is false, then the resulting sentence is false. Please note that prefixing 'It is true that' to a sentence cannot change the truth-value of the sentence. In this respect, the truth operator 'It is true that ( )' is unlike the negation operator 'It is not the case that ( ).' Assuming Bivalence — as I have been doing throughout — if you negate a true sentence you get a false one, and vice versa.
Call (2) the predicate construal. The consequent of (2) is of course a sentence, but it is not the result or product of a sentential operator operating upon a sentence. For what is within the parentheses is not a sentence. 'That nothing exists' is not a sentence. It does not have a truth-value. If I assertively utter it I do not convey a complete thought to my audience. 'That nothing exists' is the name of a proposition. It follows that 'it is true' in the consequent of (2) functions as a predicate as one can more clearly see from the equivalent
3. If nothing exists, then that nothing exists is true.
In (2) and (3) a predicate is attached to a name, whereas in (1) this is not the case: a sentential operator is attached to a sentence.
Not only are the parsings different, the ontological commitments are as well. (2) commits us to propositions while (1) doesn't. And (1) seems to commit us to operators while (2) doesn't.
Here is the place to comment on my asterisks convention. Putting asterisks around a declarative sentence forms a name of the proposition expressed by the sentence. 'The Moon is uninhabited' is a declarative sentence. '*The Moon is uninhabited*' is not a sentence but a name. It names an entity that has a truth-value, but it itself does not have a truth-value. (2) and (3) can also be rendered as
4. If nothing exists, then *Nothing exists* is true.
With the operator/predicate distinction under our belts we may be in a position to see how one philosopher (Alan) could reasonably reject 'If nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists' while another accepts it. The one philosopher gives the original sentence the predicate construal which is committed to propositions. This philosopher then reasons that, if nothing exists, then no propositions exist either, and are therefore not available to instantiate the property of being true. The other philosopher gives the original sentence the operator construal and finds it impossible to understand how anyone could reject the original sentence so construed. This philosopher insists that if nothing exists, then it is true that nothing exists; that this truth is not nothing, and that therefore it is something, which implies that it cannot be the case that nothing exists.
Ever fret over the correct use of these terms? This Venn diagram will set you straight. (HT: Mike Valle. From this site.)
Spencer Case, 'on the ground' in Afghanistan, writes:
Try translating the following sentence into logic: "No news is good news."
Whenever I try it, I end up saying that there isn't any good news and that's not what I mean to say. If you're not too terribly busy, I'd like to see how the trick is done.
Also, the Idaho State Journal has been publishing my blog online. It is available here.
Clearly, the translation cannot be: (x)(Nx –> ~Gx). For what the sentence means is not that no news report is a good news report. What it means is that it is good not to receive news reports. (For if one receives no news, one will not receive any bad news.) But even this is not quite right. To be precise, what the target sentence expresses in standard contexts of use is that every report that there is nothing to report is a good report. For any x and y, if x is a first-order report of recent events, and x expresses the proposition *There is nothing to report*, then x is a good report. In symbols: (x)(y)(Rx & Exy & y = *There is nothing to report* –>Gx).
But there may be a better parsing.
I just heard Dennis Prager say that there are both true and false cliches. Now Prager is a font of wisdom and good sense and a national treasure. The fact that the Left hates him is proof positive of that. But I can't see that he is right on this point.
A cliche is a trite or hackneyed expression. It is a form of words regularly and often thoughtlessly repeated. 'Haste makes waste.' 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket.' 'He who hesitates is lost.' 'The early bird gets the worm.' 'As old as the hills.' 'Dead as a doornail.' 'Proof positive.' 'First and foremost.' What makes a cliche a cliche is a lack of novelty or originality but not a lack of truth. One typically 'parrots' a cliche, and those whose conversations are filled with them we suspect of being shallow and unreflective. One can, of course, repeat a cliche without 'parroting' it. We conservatives like many cliches since they are as it were the distillate of hard-won wisdom. After all, in most instances, haste does make waste as experience teaches. I can point that out both thoughtlessly and thoughtfully. Think of how foolish it would be to refuse to teach a child this truth on the ground that it is a cliche! Only a liberal could be so foolish. Better a stale truth than a false novelty. Think of all the Madoff investors who to their serious detriment violated ' Don't put all your eggs in one basket.'
Politicians and popular writers who retail in bogus quotations should have a close cousin of the logic stick applied to their silly heads.
Senator Charles Grassley (R) was on C-Span the morning of 7 March 2005 talking about Social Security reform among other things. He attributed the following quotation to Albert Einstein: "Compound interest is the only miracle in the world." Did Einstein say that? I rather doubt it. It is too stupid a thing for Einstein to say.
There is nothing miraculous about compound interest, and there is no 'magic' in it either. It is very simple arithmetic. Suppose you invest $2000 at 10% compounded annually. At the end of the first year, you have $2,200. How much do you have at the end of the second year, assuming no additions or subtractions from the principal? $2,400? No. What you have is $2,200 + 220 = $2, 420. Where did the extra twenty bucks come from? That is interest on interest. It is the interest on interest on interest . . . that make compounding a powerful tool of wealth enhancement.
But there is nothing miraculous or magical about it. Words mean things. Use them wisely.
And don't look to Einstein for advice on personal finance.
A reader inquires:
I find your blog interesting and educational. A while ago you mentioned that there is a term for an adjective which is used not to specify a particular sort of the noun which it modifies, but rather a thing which does not meet the definition of that noun. (I've likely somewhat mangled the description of this term in trying to recall it.) For example 'polished leather' and 'red leather' are kinds of leather, but 'artificial leather' refers to things which aren't leather at all. I have tried to find the post that talked about this but I forgot what the topic was when you mentioned it. Can you please tell me the name for this?
'Artificial' in 'artificial leather' functions as an alienans adjective. It 'alienates' the sense of the noun it modifies. In the case of specifying adjectives, an FG is a G, where F is an adjective and G a noun. Thus a nagging wife is a wife, a female duck is a duck, cow's leather is leather, and a contingent truth is a truth. But if 'F' is alienans, then either an FG is not a G, or it does not follow from x's being an FG that x is a G. For example, your former wife is not your wife, a decoy duck is not a duck, artificial leather is not leather, and a relative truth is not a truth. Is an apparent heart attack a heart attack? It may or may not be. One cannot validly move from 'Jones had an apparent heart attack' to 'Jones had a heart attack.' So 'apparent' in 'apparent heart attack' is alienans.
Note that I was careful to say 'artificial' in 'artificial leather' is an alienans adjective. For it does not function as such in every context. 'Artificial' in 'artificial insemination' is not alienans: you are just as inseminated if it has come about artificially or naturally.
Two more examples of alienans adjectives that I borrow from Peter Geach: 'forged' in 'forged banknote' and 'putative in 'putative father.' If x is a forged banknote it does not follow that x is a banknote. And if x is the putative father of y, it does not follow that x is the father of y. Here is an example I got from the late Australian philosopher Barry Miller: 'negative' in 'negative growth.' If my stock portfolio is experiencing negative growth, then it is precisely not experiencing growth.
Of course, I am not suggesting that every adjective (as employed in some definite context) can be classified as either specifying or alienans. Consider the way 'mean-spirited' functions in 'mean-spirited Republican.' In most contexts, the implication is not that some Republicans are mean-spirited and some are not; the implication is that all are. To be a Republican is just to be mean-spirited. Is there a name for that sort of adjective? I don't know. But there ought to be, and if I ever work out a general theory of adjectives, I'll give it one.
Now consider 'Muslim terrorist.' A politically correct idiot might take offense at this phrase as implying that all Muslims are terrorists or even that all and only Muslims are terrorists. But no intelligent person would take it this way. If I say that Hasan is a Muslim terrorist , then the plain meaning to anyone with his head screwed on properly is that Hasan is a Muslim and a terrorist, which obviously does not imply that all Muslims are terrorists.
My Aunt T. was married to a gruff and taciturn Irishman who rejoiced under the name of 'Morris.' Thinking to engage Uncle Mo in conversation during one of my infrequent visits to the Big Apple, and knowing that Morris drove a beer truck, I once made some comment about the superiority of German over American beer. Uncle Mo, not to be seduced into the bracing waters of dialectic, replied, "Beer is beer." End of conversation.
But the beginning of an interesting line of thought. A tautology is a logical truth. To be precise, a tautology is a logical truth within the propositional calculus. (Every tautology is a logical truth, but not every logical truth is a tautology. The logical truths of the predicate calculus are not tautologies, strictly speaking.)
