Paradoxes – Page 2 – Maverick Philosopher

A Question about Use and Mention

Here is a curious sentence suggested to me by London Ed:

1) The last word in this sentence refers to cats.

(1) is part of a larger puzzle the discussion which we leave for later.

My question is this: Can a word be both used and mentioned in the same sentence? It would seem so. (1) is no doubt an unusual sentence. But it is grammatical, makes sense, and is true.

It seems that the last word in (1) is being both used and mentioned. (Assume someone is uttering a token of (1).) The last word in the sentence is 'cats' and 'cats' refers to cats. So the last word in (1) is being used. But it is also being mentioned. It is mentioned by 'the last word in this sentence.'

So it seems that one and the same word can be both used and mentioned in one and the same sentence.

What say you, London Ed?

What Exactly is Kripke’s Puzzle About Belief?

I will try to explain it as clearly and succinctly as I can. I will explain the simplest version of the puzzle, the 'monoglot' version. We shall cleave to English as to our dear mother.

The puzzle is generated by the collision of two principles, one concerning reference, the other concerning disquotation. Call them MILL and DISQ.

MILL: The reference of a proper name is direct: not routed through sense as in Frege. The meaning of a name is exhausted by its reference. The semantic value of a name is just the object to which it refers. (Gareth Evans plausibly recommends 'semantic value' as the best translation of Frege's Bedeutung.)

DISQ: If a normal English speaker S sincerely assents, upon reflection, to 'p,' and 'p' is a sentence in English free of indexical elements, pronominal devices, and ambiguities, then S believes that p.

The puzzle is interesting, and not easily solved, because there are good reasons for accepting both principles. The puzzle is puzzling because the collision of the two principles takes the form of a flat-out logical contradiction.

And as we all know, philosophers, while they love paradoxes, hate contradictions.

(DISQ) strikes this philosopher as a principle than which no more luminous can be conceived. How could one who is competent in English and familiar with current events sincerely and reflectively assent to 'Hillary is a liar' and not believe that Hillary is a liar? The intellectual luminosity of (MILL), however, leaves something to be desired. And yet it is plausible, and to many experts, extremely plausible. Brevity being the soul of blog, I cannot now trot out the arguments in support of (MILL).

The collision of (MILL) and (DISQ) occurs at the intersection of Mind and World. It comes about like this. S may assent to

a. Cicero was a Roman

while failing to assent to

b. Tully was a Roman

even though

c. Cicero = Tully.

Given (DISQ), S believes that Cicero was a Roman, but may or may not believe that Tully was a Roman. But how is this possible given the truth of (c)? Given (c), there is no semantic difference between (a) and (b): the predicates are the same, and the names are semantically the same under (MILL). For on the latter principle, the meaning of a name is its referent. So sameness of referent entails sameness of meaning, which is to say: the semantic content of (a) and (b) is the same given the truth of (c).

How can S believe that Cicero was a Roman while neither believing nor disbelieving that Tully was a Roman when the sentences express the very same proposition? This is (an instance of) the puzzle. Here is another form of it. Suppose S assents to (a) but also assents to

d. Tully was not a Roman.

On (DISQ), S believes that Tully is not a Roman. So S believes both that Cicero was a Roman and that Tully was not a Roman. But Cicero = Tully. Therefore, S believes that Cicero was a Roman and S believes that Cicero was not a Roman. This certainly looks like a contradiction.

It seems that our governing principles, (MILL) and (DISQ), when applied to an ordinary example, generate a contradiction, the worst sort of intellectual collision one can have.

The Paderewski case is similar. On different occasions, Peter assents to 'Paderewski is musical' and 'Paderewski is not musical.' He has no qualms about assenting to both since he supposes that this is a case of two men with the same name. But in reality he is referring to one and the same man. By (DISQ), Peter believes both that Paderewski is musical and that Paderewski is not musical. Given (MILL), Peter believes contradictory propositions. How is this possible given that Peter is rational?

Given the luminosity of (DISQ), one might think the solution to Kripke's puzzle about belief is simply to jettison (MILL).

Not so fast. There are powerful arguments for (MILL).

Nothing is Written in Stone

The curiosity to the left, sent to me without commentary by the inscrutable and seldom seen Seldom Seen Slim, raises a number of deep and fascinating questions.

The sentence to the left can be read either literally or metaphorically. My analysis in this entry is concerned with a literal reading only.

1. If nothing is written in stone, then no sentence is written in stone. But the sentence to the left is written in stone. Therefore, it is not the case that nothing is written in stone. Therefore, the sentence to the left, if true, is false. And if it is false, then of course it is false. (Our sentence is not like the Liar sentence which, if true is false, and if false is true.) Therefore, whether the stone sentence is true or false, it is false. Therefore, it is necessarily false, and its negation — 'Something is written in stone' — is necessarily true. (Bivalence is assumed.)

But this is paradoxical! For while it is the case that the sentence is false it could have been true. For it is possible that nothing ever have been written in stone. Therefore, it is not the case that the sentence in question is necessarily false. Something has gone wrong with my analysis. What has gone wrong, I think, is that I have failed to observe a distinction I myself have drawn in earlier entries between propositional self-refutation and performative self-refutation.

2. Consider 'There are no true propositions.' This is a proposition and it is either true or false. If true, then false. And if false, then false. So necessarily false. This is a clear example of propositional self-refutation. The proposition refutes itself by itself. No human act or performance comes into the picture. 'There are no assertions' is quite different. This is either true or false. And we know it is false as a matter of contingent fact. But it is not self-refuting because if it were true it would not follow that it is false. It does not refute itself by itself. For if it were true that there are no assertions, then it would be true that there are no assertions. (Compare: if it were true that that there are no true propositions, then it would be false that there are no true propositions.)

All we can say is that 'There are no assertions,' while it can be asserted, cannot be asserted with truth. For the performance of assertion falsifies it. We thus speak here of performative inconsistency or performative self-refutation. The truth of 'There are no assertions,' if it is true, is assertively inexpressible. It is impossible that I, or anyone, assert, with truth, that there are no assertions; but it it does not follow that it is impossible that there be no assertions.

'I do not exist' is another example of performative self-refutation. I cannot assert, with truth, that I do not exist. For I cannot make the assertion without existing. Indeed, I can't even think the thought *I do not exist* without existing. But the impossibility of my thinking this thought does not entail the necessity of my existence. Necessarily, if I think, then I exist. But the necessity of the consequence does not transfer to the consequent. Both of the following are true and thus logically consistent: I cannot think without existing; I exist contingently. I cannot use the Cartesian cogito to show that I am a necessary being. (Nor can you.)

And similarly with 'Nothing is written in stone' inscribed in stone. The 'performance' of inscribing in stone falsifies the sentence while 'verifying' its negation: if I inscribe in stone 'Something is written in stone,' I provide a concrete instance of the existentially general sentence. (Am I punning on 'concrete'?)

My point, then, is that our lapidary example is not an example of strictly propositional self-refutation but of performative self-refutation where the performance in question is that of inscribing in stone. But why is this so interesting?

3. One reason is that it raises the question of inexpressible propositions. Interpreted literally, though perhaps not charitably, our stone sentence expresses a proposition that cannot be expressed salva veritate in stone. For if we try to express the proposition by producing an inscription in stone, we produce a sentence token whose existence falsifies the proposition. This holds in every possible world. In no world in which nothing is written in stone can this proposition be expressed in stone.

But the proposition expressed by the stone sentence can be expressed salva veritate in speech. Consider a possible world W in which it is literally true that nothing is written in stone, i.e., a world in which there are no stone inscriptions, in any language, of any declarative sentence. If a person in W assertively utters the sentence 'Nothing is written in stone,' he expresses a proposition true in W.

'There are no sayings' cannot be expressed salva veritate in speech but it can be expressed in stone.

I conclude that there are possibly true propositions which, while they are expressible, are not expressible in all media. The proposition expressed by our stone inscription above is true in some possible worlds but not expressible by stone inscriptions in any possible world.

Note also that there are actually true propositions that cannot be expressed in some media. In the actual world there is no ink that is compounded of the blood of Irishmen, 5W30 motor oil, and the urine of my cat, Max Black. So it is actually true that there is no such ink. This truth, however, cannot be expressed in writing that uses the ink in question.

A really interesting question is whether there are true propositions or possibly true propositions that are inexpressible salva veritate in every medium. I mean inexpressible in principle, not inexpressible due to our finite resources.

Buddhists typically say that all is empty and all is impermanent. Could it be true that all is empty despite the fact that this very thesis must be empty and therefore devoid of a determinate sense and a determinate truth value? Could it be true that all is impermanent despite the fact that this very thesis is impermanent?

A ‘Progressive’ Paradox

Leftists like to call themselves 'progressives.' We can't begrudge them their self-appellation any more than we can begrudge the Randians their calling themselves 'objectivists.' Every person and every movement has the right to portray himself or itself favorably and self-servingly. "We are objective in our approach, unlike you mystics."

But if you are progressive, why are you stuck in the past when it comes to race? Progress has been made in this area; why do you deny the progress that has been made? Why do you hanker after the old days?

It is a bit of a paradox: 'progressives' — to acquiesce for the nonce in the use of this self-serving moniker – routinely accuse conservatives of wanting to 'turn back the clock,' on a number of issues such as abortion. But they do precisely that themselves on the question of race relations. They apparently yearn for the bad old Jim Crow days of the 1950s and '60s when they had truth and right on their side and the conservatives of those days were either wrong or silent or simply uncaring. Those great civil rights battles were fought and they were won, in no small measure due to the help of whites including whites such as Charlton Heston whom the Left later vilified. (In this video clip Heston speaks out for civil rights.) Necessary reforms were made. But then things changed and the civil rights movement became a hustle to be exploited for fame and profit and power by the likes of the race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.

Read almost any race screed at The Nation and similar lefty sites and you wil find endless references to slavery and lynchings and Jim Crow as if these things are still with us. You will read how Trayvon Martin is a latter-day Emmett Till et cetera ad nauseam.

For a race-hustler like Jesse Jackson, It Is Always Selma Again. Brothers Jesse and Al and Co. are stuck inside of Selma with the Oxford blues again.

In case you missed the allusions, it is to Bob Dylan's 1962 Freewheelin' Bob Dylan track, "Oxford Town" and his 1966 Blonde on Blonde track, "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again."

Wake up you 'progressive' Rip van Winkles! It is not 1965 any more.

I now hand off to Rich Lowry who comments on the movie Selma.

Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75:

The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The whole being is stricken in the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is not more at least [at last?] than that of privation. This stage has to be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron is necessary.

'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There we have the real proof that Christianity is something divine. (p. 79)

More on the Putative Paradox of Forgiveness

This just over the transom:

Finally, a post on forgiveness. 🙂 But my spirit within me won't permit me to forgo responding to what you've written. You characterize the paradox this way: It is morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, show no remorse, make no amends, do not pay restitution, etc. But if forgiveness is made conditional upon the doing of these things, then what is to forgive? Conditional forgiveness is not forgiveness. That is the gist of the putative paradox, assuming I have understood it.

That is not quite right.

The problem is this. Forgiving unconditionally — forgiving someone without their apology, repentance, penance, etc. — seems to amount to little more than condoning what they've done; it's hardly forgiveness but more of an acceptance of the wrong. On the other hand, forgiving on the condition that the wrong has been atoned — the wrongdoer has apologized, repented, made reparations, performed penances, etc — seems to be superfluous, insofar as after atonement has been made, the wrongdoer is not guilty of anything any longer and thus there is nothing to forgive, nor would continued resentment be appropriate.

BV: That's exactly what I said, though in a lapidary manner. So I think we agree as to what the putative paradox is. I call it 'putative' because I don't see it as a genuine paradox.

You write that, The first limb strikes me as self-evident: it is indeed morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, etc. But this is contentious; not everyone sees this the way you do. For instance, Jesus seems to forgive wrongdoers unconditionally on two occasions, once in the pericope adulterae (at John 7.53-8.11) and again at Luke 23.34 when he is being crucified. A significant number of contemporary philosophers (e.g., David Garrard, Eve McNaughton, Leo Zaibert, Christopher McCowley, Cheshire Calhoun, Glen Pettigrove) defend the practice of unconditional forgiveness, as well. So it's unacceptable simply to accept the first horn of the paradox as is; there is the argumentation of all these philosophers to deal with!

BV: Yes, my assertion is debatable, but then so is almost everything in philosophy and plenty of what is outside of philosophy. I don't think bringing Jesus in advances your argument. Either Jesus is God or he is not. If he is not, then he lacks the authority to contravene the existing law and forgive the adulteress. If he is God, then two problems. First, your argument then rests on a highly contentious theological presupposition. (I will remind you that in conversation you said that you were not trying to work out the Christian concept of forgiveness, but the concept of forgiveness in general.) Second, granting that God has the authority to forgive and forgive unconditionally, that has no relevance to the human condition, to forgiveness as it plays out among mere mortals such as us. For one thing, God can afford to forgive unconditionally; nothing can touch him. But for us to adopt a policy of forgiving unconditionally would be disastrous.

At Luke 23:34, Jesus is reported to have said, "Father forgive them, for they know not what they do." Note that Jesus is not forgiving his tormenters; he is asking God the Father to forgive them. So this passage is not relevant to our discussion. Besides, there is nothing here about unconditional forgiveness. Jesus could have been requesting his Father to forgive the killers after punishing them appropriately.

Your mention of contemporary philosophers who support your position is just name-dropping. To drop a name is not to give an argument. I would have to see their arguments. Is it unacceptable for me to hold to my understanding of forgiveness according to which it is morally objectionable to forgive the unrepentant in advance of studying the arguments of those you mention? No more unacceptable than holding to the view that motion is possible in advance of studying the arguments of Zeno and his school, or holding to the reality of time despite my inability decisively to refute McTaggart. I might just stand my Moorean ground: "Look, I just ate lunch; therefore time is real!" Similarly with forgiveness: "Look, it is a wonderful thing to forgive, but only on condition that the offender own up to his wrongdoing, make amends, etc."

You also write, I admit that once the miscreant has paid his debt, he is morally in the clear. His guilt has been removed. But I can still forgive him because forgiveness does not take away guilt, it merely alters the attitude of the one violated to the one who violated him. You are forgetting another important aspect of forgiveness beyond the change in attitude, however, namely that it is a way of responding to wrongdoers as wrongdoers. Another way of putting this is that forgiveness is only possible when someone stands before us as guilty for some wrong done and is thus an appropriate candidate for resentment, anger, etc. If someone has atoned for their wrong and is no longer guilty, then there's no ground for resentment and thus there's nothing more to forgive! So the change in attitude after atonement has been made may resemble forgiveness, but it's hardly genuine forgiveness since there's no wrong to forgive any longer.

BV: This is an interesting and weighty point, but I disagree nonetheless. You may be conflating two separate claims. I would say that it is a conceptual truth that if X forgives Y, then X perceives Y as having done wrong, whether or not Y has in fact done wrong. This truth is analytic in that it merely unpacks our ordinary understanding of 'forgiveness.' But it doesn't follow from this conceptual truth that there is nothing left to forgive with respect to a person who has atoned for his misdeed. I say there is: the mere fact that he has done me wrong in the first place. Suppose he stole my money, but then apologized and made restitution. In that case the demands of justice have been met. But there is still something left to forgive, namely, his having stolen my money in the first place. The apology and restitution do not eliminate the whole of the guilt, for the offender remains guilty of the misdeed. After all, his apology and restitution do not retroactively make him innocent. He remains guilty as charged. The fact of his having committed the misdeed can in no way be altered. Though contingent at the time, it now has the modal status of necessitas per accidens.

There is obviously a difference between one who is guilty of an offence and one who is innocent of it. That distinction remains in place even after the guilty party pays for his crime. Your position seems to imply that punishment retroactively renders the criminal innocent — which is absurd.

Consider this. Forgiveness is commonly thought of as gracious; it is a generous way of responding to wrongdoers that goes beyond strictly what they deserve. How is it at all generous to change one's attitude towards a wrongdoer only once atonement has been made and she is effectively no longer a wrongdoer?

BV: I agree that forgiveness is gracious and not strictly a matter of desert. It is nevertheless generous to forgive even after atonement has been made. For one is forgiving the offender of having committed the misdeed in he first place. I deny that the offender is no longer a wrongdoer after the penalty has been paid. Again, your position seems to imply that punishment retroactively renders the criminal innocent.

Remember the Derrida quote I cited:

Imagine, then, that I forgive on the condition that the guilty one repents, mends his ways, asks forgiveness, and thus would be changed by a new obligation, and that from then on he would no longer be exactly the same as the one who was found to be culpable. In this case, can one still speak of forgiveness? This would be too simple on both sides: one forgives someone other than the guilty one. In order for there to be forgiveness, must one not on the contrary forgive both the fault and the guilty as such, where the one and the other remain as irreversible as the evil, as evil itself, and being capable of repeating itself, unforgivably, without transformation, without amelioration, without repentance or promise? Must one not maintain that an act of forgiveness worthy of its name, if there ever is such a thing, must forgive the unforgivable, and without condition? (On cosmopolitanism and forgiveness, pp. 38-9)

BV: John Searle once said of Derrida that he gives bullshit a bad name. So an appeal to the authority of Derrida will have as little effect on me as an appeal the supposed authority of Paul Krugman in an economic connection. The Derrida passage smacks of sophistry what with the rhetorical questions and the typically French amorphousness. He seems to be advancing the following sophism. If one forgives the one who has atoned, then "one forgives someone other than the guilty one." But that is to confuse numerical identity with qualitative identity.

Thus I have to hold, pace tua, that genuine forgiveness must be unconditional, and conditionalized forgiveness is less than true.

BV: And I continue to maintain, pace tua, that only conditional forgiveness is morally unobjectionable and that conditional forgiveness counts as genuine forgiveness.

The Putative Paradox of Forgiveness

I understand Aurel Kolnai has a paper on this topic. I haven't read it. But the paradox has been put to me as follows in conversation.

It is morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, show no remorse, make no amends, do not pay restitution, etc. But if forgiveness is made conditional upon the doing of these things, then what is to forgive? Conditional forgiveness is not forgiveness. That is the gist of the putative paradox, assuming I have understood it.

This is something I need to explore, but off the top of my head I fail to see a problem. The first limb strikes me as self-evident: it is indeed morally objectionable to forgive those who will not admit wrongdoing, etc. But I reject the second limb. I admit that once the miscreant has paid his debt, he is morally in the clear. His guilt has been removed. But I can still forgive him because forgiveness does not take away guilt, it merely alters the attitude of the one violated to the one who violated him.

Suppose you take money from my wallet without my permission. I catch you at it and express my moral objection. You give me back my money and apologize for having taken it. I forgive you. My forgiving you makes perfect sense even though you have made restitution and have apologized. For I might not have forgiven you: I might have told you go to hell and get out of my life for good.

By forgiving you, I freely abandon the justified negative attitude toward you that resulted from your bad behavior. This works a salutary change in me, but it also does you good, for now you are restored to my good graces and our mutual relations become once again amicable.

So I see no paradox. The first limb is self-evidently true while the second is false. Only conditional forgiveness is genuine forgiveness.

It is of course possible that I am not thinking deeply enough!

Fiscal Irresponsibility as Politically Rational: The Fiscal Prisoners’ Dilemma

Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane, Regaining America's Balance. Excerpt:

There are two paths toward reducing deficits and debts of the magnitude we face: raising taxes or cutting spending. A balanced compromise would involve some amount of both, but the two political parties face strong electoral incentives to do neither. If Republicans push for reduced spending, they are criticized for taking away the benefits people rely on. If Democrats push for raising taxes, they are decried for swiping workers' hard-earned dollars. Both solutions are seen as taking money away from voters, and are thus fraught with political peril.

Consider the matrix above, in which both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have two policy choices. Republicans always promise lower taxes, so their choice is whether to cut or maintain spending levels. Democrats, in contrast, want to keep spending high, so their choice is whether to raise taxes or keep them low.

A close look at the matrix shows that it is politically rational for the Republicans to maintain today's unsustainable levels of spending when faced with either behavior from Democrats. And, campaign rhetoric aside, that is what they tend to do. Republicans have learned that whenever they actually legislate spending cuts, they are attacked by their opponents and tend to lose elections. They are not keen to do the fiscally responsible thing when the price is giving up power.

Likewise, whether Republicans cut or maintain spending, Democrats are politically better off if they allow taxes to stay low. This explains why, despite President Obama's rhetoric about raising taxes, he and other Democrats have generally refrained from actually doing so, especially at the levels needed to pay for their spending. That the expiration of the Bush tax cuts was postponed until after the 2012 election was not a coincidence.

To be sure, politicians in both parties make noises about good economic choices (from their perspectives) that balance the budget, but their actual behavior is what matters. President George W. Bush oversaw the expansion of spending on entitlements, as well as on defense, education, and other discretionary programs. President Obama serially preserved Bush's tax cuts. Politicians know what is best for the country in the long term, but they have no easy way to change their behavior now during a period of polarization in which the institutions and incentives are set up for imbalance.

This amounts to an institutional failure. For most of the nation's history, the rules of the budget game worked. Today, however, they no longer function. Politically rational behavior is now fiscally perverse. Addressing this institutional failure thus requires changing the rules of game. The only remedy to our political prisoners' dilemma, therefore, is to change those rules so that they in fact rule out structural fiscal imbalance — by imposing painful penalties on lawmakers for failing to budget responsibly.

The Paradox of the Preface and the Law of Non-Contradiction

Suppose an author exercises due diligence in the researching and writing of a nonfiction book. He has good reason to believe that all of the statements he makes in the book are true. But he is also well aware of human fallibility and that he is no exception to the rule. And so, aware of his fallibility, he has good reason to believe that it is not the case that all of the statements he makes in the book are true. He makes mention of this in the book's preface. Hence 'paradox of the preface.' Thus:

1. It is rational for the author to believe that each statement in his book is true. (Because he has exercised due diligence.)
2. It is rational for the author to believe that some statement in his book is not true. (Because to err is human.)
Therefore
3. It is rational for the author to believe that (each statement in his book is true & some statement in his book is not true.)
Therefore
4. There are cases in which it is rational for a person to believe statements of the form (p & ~p).

"What the paradox shows is that we need to give up the claim that it is always irrational to believe statements that are mutually inconsistent." (Michael Clark, Paradoxes From A to Z, Routledge 2002, p. 144)

Is that what the paradox shows? I doubt it. The paradox cannot arise unless the following schema is valid:

a. It is rational for S to believe that p.
b. It is rational for S to believe that ~p.
Ergo
c. It is rational for S to believe that (p & ~p).

It is not clear that the schema is valid. Rational believability, unlike truth, is a relative property. What it is rational to believe is relative to background knowledge among other things. Relative to the author's knowledge that he exercised due diligence in the researching and writing of his book, it is rational for him to believe that every statement in the book is true. But relative to considerations of human fallibility, it is rational for him to believe that it is not the case that every statement in his book is true. So what (a) and (b) above really amount to is the following where 'BK' abbreviates 'background knowledge':

a*. It is rational for S to believe relative to BK1 that p.
b*. It is rational for S to believe relative to BK2 that ~p.

From these two premises one cannot arrive at the desired conclusion. So my solution to the paradox is to reject the inference from (1) and (2) to (3).

"But doesn't the author's background knowledge (BK) include both the truth that he exercised due diligence and the truth that human beings are fallible?" Well suppose it does. Then how could it be rational for him to believe that every statement in the book is true? It is rational for him to believe that every statement is true only if he leaves out of consideration that people are fallible. Relative to his total background knowledge, it is not rational for him to believe that every statement in his book is true.

In this way I avoid Clark's draconian conclusion that it is sometimes rational to believe statements that are mutually inconsistent.

Neologisms, Paleologisms, and Grelling’s Paradox

'Neologism' is not a new word, but an old word. Hence, 'neologism' is not a neologism. 'Paleologism' is not a word at all; or at least it is not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. But it ought to be a word, so I hereby introduce it. Who is going to stop me? Having read it and understood it, you have willy-nilly validated its introduction and are complicit with me.

Now that we have 'paleologism' on the table, and an unvast conspiracy going, we are in a position to see that 'neologism' is a paleologism, while 'paleologism' is a neologism. Since the neologism/paleologism classification is both exclusive (every word is either one or the other )and exhaustive (no word is neither), it follows that 'neologism' is not a neologism, and 'paleologism' is not a paleologism.

Such words are called heterological: they are not instances of the properties they express. 'Useless' and 'monosyllabic' are other examples of heterological expressions in that 'useless' is not useless and 'monosyllabic' is not monosyllabic. A term that is not heterological is called autological. Examples include 'short' and 'polysyllabic.' 'Short' is short and 'polysyllabic' is polysyllabic. Autological terms are instances of the properties they express.

Now ask yourself this question: Is 'heterological' heterological? Given that the heterological/autological classification is exhaustive, 'heterological' must be either heterological or else autological. Now if the former, then 'heterological' is not an instance of the property it expresses, namely, the property of not being an instance of the property it expresses. But this implies that 'heterological' is autological. On the other hand, if 'heterological' is autological, then it is an instance of the property it expresses, namely the property of not being an instance of the property it expresses. But this implies that 'heterological' is heterological.

Therefore, 'heterological' is heterological if and only if it is not. This contradiction is known in the trade as Grelling's Paradox. It is named after Kurt Grelling, who presented it in 1908.

Butchvarov Against Facts

In his essay, "Facts," (Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, Javier Cumpa, ed., Ontos Verlag, 2010, p. 83) Panayot Butchvarov generously cites me as a defender of realism and a proponent of facts. He credits me with doing something William P. Alston does not do in his theory of facts, namely, specifying their mode of reality:

However, William Vallicella, also a defender of realism, does. He argues that true propositions require "truth-making facts." And he astutely points out that facts could be truth-making only if they are "proposition-like," "structured in a proposition-like way" — only f a fact has a structure that can mirror the the structure of a proposition." (A Paradigm Theory of Existence, 13, 166-7,192-3) Vallicella's view is firmly in the spirit of Wittgenstein's account in the Tractatus of the notions of fact and correspondence to fact, but his formulation of it may invite deflationist attacks like Strawson's.

Butchvarov, however, is firmly against adding the category of facts to our ontological inventory. This post will consider one of his arguments. Butchvarov tells us (p. 86) that

The metaphysical notion of fact is grounded in our use of declarative sentences, and the supposition that there are facts in the world depends at least in part on the assumption that sentences must correspond to something in the world, that somehow they must be names. But this assumption seems absurd. Sentences are not even nouns, much less names. They cannot serve as grammatical subjects or objects of verbs, which is the mark of nouns. [. . .] Notoriously, "p is true," if taken literally, is gibberish. "Snow is white is true" is just ill-formed. "'Snow is white' is true" is not, but its subject-term is not a sentence — it is the name of a sentence.

Here is what I take to be Butchvarov's argument in the above passage and surrounding text:

1. If there are facts, then some declarative sentences are names.
2. Every name can serve as the grammatical subject of a verb.
3. No declarative sentence can serve as the grammatical subject of a verb.
Therefore
4. No declarative sentence is a name. (2, 3)
Therefore
5. There are no facts. (1, 4)

The friend of facts ought to concede (1). If there are truth-making facts, then some declarative sentences refer to them, or have them as worldly correspondents. The realist holds that if a contingent sentence such as 'Al is fat' is true, then that is not just a matter of language, but a matter of how the extralinguistic world is arranged. The sentence is true because of Al's being fat. Note that Al by himself cannot be the truth-maker of the sentence, nor can fatness by itself, nor can the set, sum, or ordered pair of the two do the job. If {Al, fatness} is the truth-maker of 'Al is fat,' then it is also the truth-maker of 'Al is not fat' — which is absurd.

As for (2), it is unproblematic. So if the argument is to be neutralized — I prefer to speak of 'neutralizing' rather than 'refuting' arguments — we must give reasons for not accepting (3). So consider this argument for the negation of (3).

6. 'Snow is white' is true.
7. No name is true or false.
Therefore
8. 'Snow is white' is not a name.
9. Anything either true or false is a declarative sentence.
Therefore
10. 'Snow is white' is a declarative sentence.
Therefore
11. 'Snow is white' serves as the grammatical subject of the verb 'is a declarative sentence.'
Therefore
12. Some declarative sentences can serve as the grammatical subjects of a verb.
Therefore
~3. It is not the case that no declarative sentence can serve as the grammatical subject of a verb.

The argument just given seems to neutralize Butchvarov's argument.

The Paradox of the Horse and 'the Paradox of Snow'

Butchvarov's view is deeply paradoxical. He holds that 'Snow is white ' in (6) is not a sentence but the name of a sentence. The paradox is similar to the paradox of the horse in Frege. Frege notoriously held that the concept horse is not a concept. Butchvarov is maintaining that the sentence 'Snow is white' is not a sentence.

What is Frege's reasoning? He operates with an absolute distinction between names and predicates (concept words). Corresponding to this linguistic distinction there is the equally absolute ontological distinction between objects and concepts. Objects are nameable while concepts are not. So if you try to name a concept you willy-nilly transform it into an object. Since 'the concept horse' is a name, its referent is an object. Hence the concept horse is not a concept but an object.

Similarly with Butchvarov. To refer to a sentence, I must use a name for it. To form the name of a sentence, I enclose it in quotation marks. Thus the sentence 'snow is white' is not a sentence, but a name for a sentence.

Butchvarov finds it "absurd" that a sentence should name a fact. His reason is that a sentence is not a name. But it strikes me as even more absurd to say that the sentence 'Snow is white' is not a sentence, but a name.

My tentative conclusion is that while realism about facts is dubious, so is anti-realism about them. But there is also what Butchvarov calls "semi-realism" which I ought to discuss in a separate post.

Eric Hoffer, Contentment, and the Paradox of Plenty

Eric Hoffer as quoted in James D. Koerner, Hoffer's America (Open Court, 1973), p. 25:

I need little to be contented. Two meals a day, tobacco, books that hold my interest, and a little writing each day. This to me is a full life.

And this after a full day at the San Francisco waterfront unloading ships. And we're talking cheap tobacco smoked after a meal of Lipton soup and Vienna sausage in a humble apartment in a marginal part of town. Hoffer, who had it tough indeed, had the wisdom to be satisfied with what he had.

Call it the paradox of plenty: those who had to struggle in the face of adversity developed character and worth, while those with opportunities galore and an easy path became slackers and malcontents and 'revolutionaries.' Adding to the paradox is that those who battled adversity learned gratitude while those who had it handed to them became ingrates.

Josiah Royce and the Religious Paradox

There are tough questions about the possibility and the actuality of divine revelation. An examination of some ideas of the neglected philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916) from the Golden Age of American philosophy will help us clarify some of the issues and problems. One such problem is this: How can one know in a given case that a putative piece of divine revelation is genuine? Before advancing to this question we need a few sections of stage-setting. (That's Royce on the right, by the way, and William James on the left. Surely it was degeneration when American philosophy came to be dominated by the likes of Quine and Rorty.)

1. Concern for Salvation as Essential to Religion. It is very difficult to define religion, in the sense of setting forth necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct application of the term, but I agree with Royce's view that an essential characteristic of anything worth calling religion is a concern for the salvation of man. (The Sources of Religious Insight, Charles Scribner and Sons, 1912, p. 8) Religious objects are those that help show the way to salvation. The central postulate of religion is that "man needs to be saved." (8-9) Saved from what? ". . . from some vast and universal burden, of imperfection, of unreasonableness, of evil, of misery, of fate, of unworthiness, or of sin." (8) In an earlier post on Simone Weil I spoke of generic wretchedness. It is that which we need salvation from.

2. The Need for Salvation. "Man is an infinitely needy creature." (11) But the need for salvation, for those who feel it, is paramount. The need depends on two simpler ideas:

a) There is a paramount end or aim of human life relative to which other aims are vain. (12)

b) Man as he now is, or naturally is, is in danger of missing his highest aim, his highest good. (12)

To hold that man needs salvation is to hold both of (a) and (b). I would put it like this. The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. If this doesn't strike a chord in you, then I suggest you do not have a religious disposition. Some people don't, and it cannot be helped. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to the them.

3. Religious Insight. Royce defines religious insight as ". . . insight into the need and into the way of salvation." (17) No one can take religion seriously who has not felt the need for salvation. But we need religious insight to show that we really need it, and to show the way to it.

4. Royce's Question. He asks: What are the sources of religious insight? Of insight into the need and into the way of salvation? Many will point to divine revelation through a scripture or through a church as the principal source of religious insight. But at this juncture Royce discerns a paradox that he calls the religious paradox, or the paradox of revelation.

5. The Paradox of Revelation. Suppose someone claims to have received a divine communication regarding the divine will, the divine plan, the need for salvation, the way to salvation, or any related matter. This person can be asked, "By what marks do you personally distinguish a divine revelation from any other sort of report?" (22-23) How is a putative revelation authenticated? By what marks or criteria do we recognize it as genuine? The identifying marks must be in the believer's mind prior to his acceptance of the revelation as valid. For it is by testing the putative revelation against these marks that the believer determines that it is genuine. One needs "a prior acquaintance with the nature and marks and, so to speak, signature of the divine will." (p. 25) But how can a creature who needs saving lay claim to this prior acquaintance with the marks of genuine revelation?

The paradox in a nutshell is that it seems that only revelation could provide one with what one needs to be able to authenticate a report as revelation:

Faith, and the passive and mysterious intuitions of the devout, seem to depend on first admitting that we are naturally blind and helpless and ignorant, and worthless to know, of ourselves, any saving truth; and upon nevertheless insisting that we are quite capable of one very lofty type of knowledge — that we are capable, namely, of knowing God's voice when we hear it, of distinguishing a divine revelation from all other reports, of being sure, despite all our worthless ignorance, that the divine higher life which seems to speak to us in our moments of intuition is what it declares itself to be. If, then, there is a pride of intellect, does there not seem to be an equal pride of faith, an equal pretentiousness involved in undertaking to judge that certain of our least articulate intuitions are infallible?

Surely here is a genuine problem, and it is a problem for the reason. (103)

Is it a genuine problem or not? Can the church's teaching authority be invoked to solve the problem? Suppose a point of doctrine regarding salvation and the means thereto is being articulated at a church council. The fathers in attendance debate among themselves, arrive at a result, and claim that it is inspired and certified by the Holy Spirit. By what marks do they authenticate a putative deliverance of the Holy Spirit as a genuine deliverance? How do they know that the Holy Spirit is inspiring them and not something else such as their own subconscious desire for a certain result? But this is exactly Royce's problem.

It is not merely an academic problem. To see why see the earlier post on Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Van Inwagen on the Ship of Theseus

Peter van Inwagen's Material Beings (Cornell UP, 1990) is a very strange book, but he is a brilliant man, so one can expect to learn something from it. A central claim is that artifacts such as tables and chairs and ships do not exist. One can appreciate that if there are no ships then the ancient puzzle about identity known as the Ship of Theseus has a very quick (dis)solution.

The Ship of Theseus is a puzzle about diachronic artifact identity. Here is one version. You have a ship, or a rowboat, or any object, composed entirely of wooden planks. You remove one of the planks and replace it with an aluminum plank of the same size. The wooden plank is placed in a warehouse. After this minor replacement, you have a ship and indeed numerically the same ship as the one you started with. It is not a numerically different ship. Now replace a second wooden plank with an aluminum plank, and place the second wooden plank in the warehouse. Again, the numerical identity of the original ship has been preserved. Continue the replacement process until all of the wooden planks have been replaced with aluminum planks. You now have a wholly aluminum ship that is presumably numerically identical to the original wholly wooden ship despite the fact that none of the original matter is to be found in the aluminum ship. After all, the aluminum ship 'grew out of' the original wooden ship by minor changes each of which is identity-preserving.

Now take the wooden planks from the warehouse and assemble them in the form of a ship and in such a way that the planks bear the same relations to one another as the planks in the original wooden ship bore to one another. You now have two ships, a wooden one and an aluminum one. The question is: which of these ships is identical to the original wooden one?

Suppose the two ships collide on the high seas, and suppose the captain of the original ship had taken a solemn vow to go down with his ship. Where does his duty lie? With the wooden ship or with the aluminum one? Is the original ship identical to the resultant aluminum ship? One will be tempted to say 'yes' since the aluminum ship 'grew out' of the original wooden ship by minor transformations each of which was identity-preserving. Or is the original ship identical to the wooden ship that resulted from the re-assembly of the wooden planks? After all, it consists of the original matter arranged in the original way. Since the resultant wooden and aluminum ships are numerically distinct, they cannot both be identical to the original ship.

Van Inwagen makes short work of the puzzle: "There are no ships, and hence there are no puzzles about the identities of ships." (128) One way van Inwagen supports this bizarre solution is by re-telling the story in language that does not make even apparent reference to ships. Here is his retelling:

Once upon a time, there were certain planks that were arranged shipwise. Call then the First Planks. . . . One of the First Planks was removed from the others and placed in a field. Then it was replaced by a new plank; that is, a carpenter caused the new plank and the remaining First Planks to be arranged shipwise, and in just such a way that the new plank was in contact with the same planks that the removed planks had been in contact with, and at exactly the same points. Call the planks that were then arranged shipwise the Second Planks. A plank that was both one of the First Planks and one of the Second Planks was removed from the others and placed in the field and replaced (according to the procedure laid down above), with the consequence that certain planks, the Third Planks, were arranged shipwise. Then a plank that was one of the First Planks and one of the Second Planks and one of the Third Planks . . . . This process was repeated till all the First Planks were in the field. Then the First Planks were caused to be arranged shipwise, and in just such a way that each of them was in contact with the same planks it had been in contact with when the First Planks had last been arranged shipwise, and was in contact with them at just the same points. (128-129)

If I understand what van Inwagen is claiming here, it is that there is nothing in the standard telling of the story, a version of which I presented above, that is not captured in his re-telling. But since there is no mention of any ships in the re-telling, no puzzle about ship-identity can arise. Perhaps van Inwagen's point could be put by saying that the puzzle about identity is an 'artifact' of a certain way of talking that can be paraphased away. Instead of talking about ships, we can talk about shipwise arrangements of planks. The planks do not then compose a ship, he thinks, and so there is no whole of which they are proper parts, and consequently no question about how this whole maintains its diachronic identity under replacement of its parts.

What are we to say about van Inwagen's dissolution of the puzzle? What I find dubious is van Inwagen's claim that ". . . at no time do two or more of these planks compose anything, and no plank is a proper part of anything." (129) This strikes me as plainly false. If the First Planks are arranged shipwise, then there is a distinction beween the First Planks and their shipwise arrangement. The latter is the whole ship and the former are its proper parts. So how can van Inwagen claim that the planks do not compose a ship? Van Inwagen seems to think that if the planks were parts of a whole, and there were n planks, then the whole would be an n + 1 th entity. Rejecting this extreme, he goes to the other extreme: there is no whole of parts. If there were ships, they would be wholes of parts, but there are no artifactual wholes of parts, so there are no ships. The idea seems to be that when we build an artifact like a ship we are not causing something new to come into existence; we are merely re-arranging what already exists. If so, then although a ship's planks exist, the ship does not exist. Consider what van Inwagen says on p. 35:

If I bring two cubes into contact so that the face of one is conterminous with the face of the other, have I thereby brought into existence a solid that is twice as long as it is wide? Or have I merely rearranged the furniture of the earth without adding to it?

Van Inwagen seems to be saying that when it comes to artifacts, there is only rearrangement, no 'addition to existence.' As a general thesis, this strikes me as false. A ship is more than its planks, and van Inwagen seems to concede as much with his talk of a shipwise arrangement of planks; but this shipwise arrangement brings something new into being, namely, a thing that has causal powers that its constituents do not have. For example, a boat made of metal planks properly arranged will float, while the planks themselves will not float.

Paradoxes of Illegal Immigration

Philosophers hate a contradiction, but love a paradox. There are paradoxes everywhere, in the precincts of the most abstruse as well as in the precincts of the prosaic. Here are eight paradoxes of illegal immigration suggested to me by Victor Davis Hanson. The titles and formulations are my own. For good measure, I add a ninth, of my own invention.

The Paradox of Profiling. Racial profiling is supposed to be verboten. And yet it is employed by American border guards when they nab and deport thousands of illegal border crossers. Otherwise, how could they pick out illegals from citizens who are merely in the vicinity of the border? How can what is permissible near the border be impermissible far from it in, say, Phoenix? At what distance does permissibility transmogrify into impermissibility? If a border patrolman may profile why may not a highway patrolman? Is legal permissibility within a state indexed to spatiotemporal position and variable with variations in the latter?

The Paradox of Encroachment. The Federal government sues the state of Arizona for upholding Federal immigration law on the ground that it is an encroachment upon Federal jurisdiction. But sanctuary cities flout Federal law by not allowing the enforcement of Federal immigration statutes. Clearly, impeding the enforcement of Federal laws is far worse than duplicating and perhaps interfering with Federal law enforcement efforts. And yet the Feds go after Arizona while ignoring sanctuary cities. Paradoxical, eh?

The Paradox of Blaming the Benefactor. Millions flee Mexico for the U.S. because of the desirability of living and working here and the undesirability of living in a crime-ridden, corrupt, and impoverished country. So what does Mexican president Felipe Calderon do? Why, he criticizes the U.S. even though the U.S. provides to his citizens what he and his government cannot! And what do many Mexicans do? They wave the Mexican flag in a country whose laws they violate and from whose toleration they benefit.

The Paradox of Differential Sovereignty and Variable Border Violability. Apparently, some states are more sovereign than others. The U.S., for some reason, is less sovereign than Mexico, which is highly intolerant of invaders from Central America. Paradoxically, the violability of a border is a function of the countries between which the border falls.

The Paradox of Los Locos Gringos. The gringos are crazy, and racist xenophobes to boot, inasmuch as 70% of them demand border security and support AZ SB 1070. Why then do so many Mexicans want to live among the crazy gringos?

The Paradox of Supporting While Stiffing the Working Stiff. Liberals have traditionally been for the working man. But by being soft on illegal immigration they help drive down the hourly wages of the working poor north of the Rio Grande. (As I have said in other posts, there are liberal arguments against illegal immigration, and here are the makings of one.)

The Paradox of Penalizing the Legal while Tolerating the Illegal. Legal immigrants face hurdles and long waits while illegals are tolerated. But liberals are supposed to be big on fairness. How fair is this?

The Paradox of Subsidizing a Country Whose Citizens Violate our Laws. "America extends housing, food and education subsidies to illegal aliens in need. But Mexico receives more than $20 billion in American remittances a year — its second-highest source of foreign exchange, and almost all of it from its own nationals living in the United States." So the U.S. takes care of illegal aliens from a failed state while subsidizing that state, making it more dependent, and less likely to clean up its act.

The Paradox of the Reconquista. Some Hispanics claim that the Southwest and California were 'stolen' from Mexico by the gringos. Well, suppose that this vast chunk of real estate had not been 'stolen' and now belonged to Mexico. Then it would be as screwed up as the rest of Mexico: as economically indigent, as politically corrupt, as crime-ridden, as drug-infested. Illegal immigrants from southern Mexico would then, in that counterfactual scenario, have farther to travel to get to the U.S., and there would be less of the U.S. for their use and enjoyment. The U.S. would be able to take in fewer of them. They would be worse off. So if Mexico were to re-conquer the lands 'stolen' from it, then it would make itself worse off than it is now. Gaining territory it would lose ground — if I may put paradoxically the Paradox of the Reconquista.

Exercise for the reader: Find more paradoxes!