Language Matters – Page 44 – Maverick Philosopher

My Preferred Modes of Locomotion

Ambulatory and cursory, primarily, and then in distant second and third places respectively, natatory and saltatory.

Apples and Sparkplugs

All too frequently people say, ‘You’re comparing apples and oranges’ in order to convey the idea that two things are so dissimilar as to to disallow any significant comparison. Can’t they do better than this? Apples and oranges are highly comparable in respects too numerous to mention. Both are fruits, both are edible, both grow on trees, both are good sources of fiber, both contain Vitamin C, etc.

Why not say, ‘You are comparing apples and sparkplugs’? Apples are naturally occurrent and edible while sparkplugs are inedible artifacts. That’s a serious difference.

This reminds me of a story I read as a boy in my hometown newspaper, the Post Advocate. (We paper boys called it the Pest Aggravate.) A man ate an entire car, sparkplugs and all. A feat of automotive asceticism to rival the pillar antics of Simon Stylites. He did it by cutting the car and its parts into small pieces that he then washed down with generous libations of buttermilk.

But a car is not just solid parts, but various fluids. You’ve got your gasoline, your crankcase oil, your tranny fluid, not to mention coolant, windshield wiper liquid, and what all else. How did he negotiate that stuff? Well, I suppose anything can be passed throught the gastrointestinal system if sufficiently watered down. So if a man gets it into his head to eat an entire car, he can do it. As my 4th grade teacher Sr. Elizabeth (Lizard) Marie used to say, "Where there’s a will there’s a way."

Questions: Their Raising and Their Begging

To raise a question is not to beg a question. 'Raise a question' and 'beg a question' ought not be used interchangeably on pain of occluding a distinction essential to clear thought. To raise a question is just to pose it, to bring it before one's mind or before one's audience for consideration. To beg a question, however, is not to pose a question but to reason in a way that presupposes what one needs to prove.

Suppose A poses the question, Does Allah exist? B responds by saying that Allah does exist because his existence is attested in the Koran which Allah revealed to Muhammad. In this example, A raises a question, while B begs the question raised by A. The question is whether or not Allah exists; B's response begs the question by presupposing that Allah does exist. For Allah could not reveal anything to Muhammad unless Allah exists.

The phrase 'beg the question' is not as transparent as might be hoped. The Latin, petitio principii, is better: begging of the principle. Perhaps the simplest way to express the fallacy in English is by calling it circular reasoning. If I argue that The Los Angeles Times displays liberal bias because its reportage and editorializing show a left-of-center slant, then I reason in a circle, or beg the question. Fans of Greek may prefer hysteron proteron, literally, the later earlier. That is, what is logically posterior, namely, the conclusion, is taken to be logically prior, a premise.

Punchline: Never use 'beg the question' unless you are referring to an informal fallacy in reasoning. If you are raising, asking, posing a question, then say that. Do your bit to preserve our alma mater, the English language. Honor thy mother! Matrix of our thoughts, she is deeper and higher than our thoughts, their sacred Enabler.

Of course, I am but a vox clamantis in deserto. The battle has already been lost. So why do I write things like the above? Because I am a natural-born scribbler who takes pleasure in these largely pointless exercises.

Call it What it Is!

In the swimming pool the other morning, conversation drifted onto the topic of recipes. One lady who hails from Texas proceeded to give me her recipe for what she referred to as cornbread 'dressing.' In my preferred patois, 'stuffing' is the word, not 'dressing.' And so in our little conversation I kept using the 's' word. In mock irritation she finally replied, "It's dressing; call it what it is." She was not really irritated, but she was serious that things should be called what they are.

Thereon hinges a philosophical point, one which of course I did not pursue with the matron. The point is that people often succumb to what Rudolf Carnap at the beginning of Chapter 12 of An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science calls "a magical view of language":

Many people hold a magical view of language, the view that there is a mysterious natural connection of some sort between certain words (only, of course, the words with which they are familiar!) and their meanings. The truth is that it is only by historical accident, in the evolution of our culture, that the word 'blue' has come to mean a certain color. (116)

As between 'stuffing' and 'dressing' there is nothing to choose; neither captures the nature of their common referent. The incantation of neither has the power to conjure up the edible reality. Both words stand in a merely conventional relation to their common referent.

The confusion of words and things is a mistake to avoid. A cognate mistake is the notion that there are such things as true definitions. Definitions merely register our free decisions as to how words will be used. Questions of true and false arise only after we have fixed our terms.

So is religious language based on elementary confusion? "Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name." "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Or is the Carnap point superficial like so much in Carnap?

If You are a Conservative, Don’t Talk Like a Liberal!

I saw Michael Smerconish on C-Span one morning. His conservative credentials are impressive, but he used the word 'homophobe.'

I've made this point before but it bears repeating. We conservatives should never acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism. Battles in the culture war are often lost and won on linguistic ground. So we ought to resolutely oppose the Left's attempts at linguistic corruption.

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Positive and Privative Constructions and the Case of Causa Sui

God is traditionally described as causa sui, as self-caused. Construed positively, however, the notion appears incoherent. Nothing can function as a cause unless it exists. So if God causes his own existence, then his existence as cause is logically prior to his existence as effect. God must 'already' (logically speaking) exist if he is to cause himself to exist — which teeters on the brink of incoherence if it does not fall over.

So I suggest that causa sui be read privatively rather than positively, as affirming, not that God causes himself, but that God is not caused by another. This reading may gain in credibility if we look at some similar constructions.

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The Dictionary Fallacy

What I will call the Dictionary Fallacy is the fallacy of thinking that certain philosophical questions can be answered by consulting dictionaries. The philosophical questions I have in mind are those of the form What is X? or What is the nature of X? High on the list: What is justice? Knowledge? Existence? Goodness? But also: What is hypocrisy? Lying? Self-deception? Envy? Jealousy? Schadenfreude? Socialism? Taxation? And so on. The dictionaries I am referring to are ordinary dictionaries, not philosophical dictionaries.

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Attaching Useful Senses to ‘Negative Atheism’ and ‘Positive Atheism’

I have already sufficiently explained why 'atheism' and 'negative atheism' cannot be usefully defined in terms of mere absence of theistic belief. (See also Peter Lupu's comments on this topic.) But sense can be attached to these phrases and to their near relatives 'negative atheist' and 'positive atheist.' I suggest that a negative atheist is a practical atheist while a positive atheist is a theoretical atheist. But what do these terms mean?

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Against Terminological Mischief: ‘Negative Atheism’ and ‘Negative Nominalism’

This from the seemingly reputable site, Investigating Atheism:

More recently, atheists have argued that atheism only denotes a lack of theistic belief, rather than the active denial or claims of certainty it is often associated with.

I'm having a hard time seeing what point there could be in arguing that "atheism only denotes a lack of theistic belief." Note first that atheism cannot be identified with the lack of theistic belief, i.e., the mere absence of the belief that God exists, for that would imply that cabbages and tire irons are atheists. Note second that it won't do to say that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons, for there are persons incapable of forming beliefs. Charitably interpreted, then, the idea must be that atheism is the lack of theistic belief in persons capable of forming and maintaining beliefs.

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The Definition of ‘Atheist’ and the Burden of Proof

Some define atheism in terms of the absence of the belief that God exists. This won't do, obviously, since then we would have to count cabbages and sparkplugs as atheists given the absence in these humble entities of the belief that God exists. But the following could be proffered with some show of plausibility: An atheist is a person whose psychological makeup is such as to permit his standing in the propositional atttude of belief toward the proposition that God exists, but who as a matter of fact does not stand in this relation, nor is disposed to stand in this relation were he to be queried about the existence of God. Note that it does not suffice to say that an atheist is a person in whom the belief that God exists is lacking for then the neonatal and the senile would count as atheists, which is surely a bit of a stretch.

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Word of the Day: Inconcinnity

My elite readers no doubt know this word, but I learned it just today. It means lack of suitability or congruity: INELEGANCE. 'Concinnity' is also a word. From the Latin concinnitas, from concinnus, skillfully put together, it means: harmony and often elegance of design especially of literary style in adaptation of parts to a whole or to each other. (Webster's New Collegiate, 1977, p. 234.)

Never allow a word to escape your comprehension. If you encounter a word you don't know, write it down and look it up. Keep a list of words and definitions in a notebook you regularly consult. It might be an online notebook like this one. Having written this post, 'inconcinnity' is a word I am not likely to forget. For there is nothing I write on this weblog that I do not reread, with pleasure, many times.

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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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.