Category: Substack

A Hot Sauce Rant from 2013

A hot (sauce rant) or a (hot sauce) rant? Both. Parentheses  matter!  Scope matters. All scope distinctions matter. Mind your p's and q's. Discriminate operators and operands. (Am I sending a coded message?)

Substack latest.

Don't complain about 'old news.' What are you, a Twitterized 'woke' presentist?

There is presentism in the philosophy of time and there is what I will call, for want of a better term, historical presentism. This, roughly, is the conceit that the present alone matters  and that we have little or nothing to learn from the past.  It is not so much a view as an attitude, a 'bad 'tude' if you will, one shared by adolescents of all ages. There is the punk who, ignorant of great literature, installs Bukowski in the literary pantheon. Self-insulation from the past and its achievements is one of the ways wokesters self-enstupidate. 

And there are those who ought to know better, spineless university administrators in the grip of fashionable obsessions, who are thereby rendered incapable of just judgments of past times and individuals. Case in point: the Flannery O'Connor unnaming.

Do You Really Want to Teach at a University?

Substack latest. Do you want to feed the unhungry in a leftist seminary?

Comments and replies:

Tony: One of the best, and certainly the most concise, essays on the problem. The mild criticism when I was at NYU was that the universities were offering "higher skilling." Higher infantilization was right around the corner. 

Bill: Thanks, Tony. One could go on to mention what a lousy deal a college degree is these days: as the quality goes down, the price goes up.  And then the trifecta of corruption: overpaid do-nothing administrators pushing the destructive DEI agenda; federally insured loans without oversight; stupid students and their parents who go into deep debt for something of little or no value. One absurdity leads to another: bad financial decisions are then to be rewarded by student loan forgiveness! Let the waitresses and the truck drivers pick up the tab. The law, unmoored from morality, and positively promotive of immorality, becomes a mere power tool for the advancing of the interests of amoral if not immoral elites. Talk about moral hazard!

Tony: Which connects to the inherently fraudulent banking system and the Ponzi scheme called Social Security. A perfect storm of moral hazards.

Bill: I agree. But permit me a quibble. Ponzi schemes are set up with fraudulent intent.  The SS system was not so set up. Initially, at least, it was reasonable and well-intentioned: to keep workers from ending up in the gutter, subsisting on cat food. It was insurance against destitution, and like all insurance, the premiums were relatively small. Of course, it soon enough transmogrified into an ultimately unsustainable retirement program.  My main point at the moment, however, is the pedantic one that SS is not a Ponzi scheme strictly speaking.  But it may be more than pedantic inasmuch as lefties could take it as a smear against SS as opposed to a legitimate criticism. Or as I put it about a dozen years ago, though not in a reply to Tony Flood:

Language matters.  Precision matters.  And if not here, where?  If you say what you know to be false for rhetorical effect, then you undermine your credibility among those whom you need to persuade.  Conservatives don't need to persuade conservatives, and they will not be able to persuade leftists.  They must pitch their message to the undecided who, if rational, will be put off by sloppy rhetoric and exaggeration.

I note that W. James Antle, III, the author of the linked article, refers to the SS system as "the liberals' Ponzi scheme."  But of course it is not a Ponzi scheme.  A Ponzi scheme, by definition, is a scheme set up with the intention of defrauding people for the benefit of those running the scheme.  But there is nothing fraudulent about the SS system: the intentions behind it were good ones!  The SS system is no doubt in dire need of reform if not outright elimination.  But no good purpose is achieved by calling it a Ponzi scheme.  That's either a lie or an exaggeration.  Not good, either way.  The most you can say is that it is like a Ponzi scheme in being fiscally unsustainable as currently structured. Why not make the point accurately without a distracting rhetorical smear? Conservative exaggeration is politically foolish.  Is it not folly to give ammo to the enemy?  Is it not folly to choose a means (exaggeration and distortion) that is not conducive  to the end (garnering support among the presently uncommitted)?

Tony:  I take your point about imputing ill-intent, but the passive voice of the "SS system was not so set up" (as a Ponzi scheme) obscures agency and its motives (which you were not writing an essay about). Before the Social Security Act of 1935 there was the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which was not hatched overnight. The conspiracy to nationalize US banks was at least a decade in the making. The propaganda seeding the mass media (as today, post-SVB collapse) was that there's nothing worse than a bank run or "panic" (or is it a "threat to public health"?). That line served those who wanted to bring banking under governmental control (with the bankers overseeing the government). The easy money of the '20s led to the crash that engendered the destitution you referenced. Intelligent people engineered the FRA, and equally intelligent, educated, sober, well-meaning people came up with the SSA (and other agencies) to address the former's unforeseen consequences. Their ideological heirs now prevent the inevitable insolvency of SS with easy money: the central bank writes a check to itself with "our" money (denominated in federal reserve notes), postponing the day of reckoning. My issue is moral hazard, and one seems to engender another. As Tucker reminded us last night, the bankers effed up, but none went to prison. The government moved heaven and earth to shore up the same morally hazardous system because, as all the right people know, "there's no alternative." As I wrote in Christ, Capital & Liberty:

Just as advances in technology decreased the fear of “getting caught” consuming pornography, so did the central bank in the financial markets decreased the fear of suffering losses for making bad loans. As Peter Schiff put it regarding the 2008-2009 Meltdown:

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy. [Peter Schiff, “Don’t Blame Capitalism,” The Washington Post, October 16, 2008.www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/15/AR2008101503166.html

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation. Policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Admini­stration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were always government entities in disguise), and others created advantages for home-buying and -selling and removed disincentives for lending and borrowing. The result was a credit and real estate bubble that could only grow—until it could grow no more. [CCL 126-127]

I'll stop here before I write an essay!

Bill: And I'll leave you with the last word. You make substantive points of more importance than my linguistic one, although I retain my conviction that language matters: any toleration of linguistic slovenliness spills over into a toleration of sloppy thinking. 
 

Bad Stuff: Badiou

Top o' the Stack.

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On 03/03/2023 17:29, William F. Vallicella from Philosophy in Progress wrote:

And I say this as someone who has read practically all of Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Gadamer, a crapload of Derrida (who, according to John Searle, gives bullshit a bad name) and plenty of others besides. I know Continental philosophy from the inside.

Dear Bill,

thanks for giving me a laugh-out-loud moment on a Friday evening! Maybe Searle is too concretist and therefore dismissive of everything that even smells wrong, but he's the world's great reality check . . . .

Reading through that list again, it seems that the chronological order of those philosophers (I think they are in order either of birthdate or of major works) corresponds to the declining coherence of their thinking and its connection to reality?

Thomas Beale
Health IT blog | Culture blog | The Objective Stance | ORC-ID
 
Thank you, Thomas.  May all be well with you. I made use of your note, with attribution. If you don't want me to mention you by name, just say so, and I won't.

 
It's Saturday. Tonight I shall have me a shot of Jaegermeister. Ever try this stuff?
 
Yes, the philosophers are listed in order of birth and of major works. And yes, the later Continentals can't hold a candle to the earlier ones. As for Searle, he is a brilliant critic of other philosophers' views, but his own views — I am thinking primarily of his philosophy of mind — are rather less impressive.
 
There is plenty of interesting material about the man and his thought in my Searle category. His outsized ego and unrestrained concupiscence landed him in some hot water.
All fine by me.
 
I had forgotten about the fall of JS … possibly I skimmed it on your blog back when you noted it, but not all the details. It is interesting how even some of the greatest minds lack what others would consider the most basic self-awareness. Still, I like much of his writing since he cuts through crap in a similar way to Scruton (Searle has a wrecking ball, Scruton arguably a flamethrower, which can be aimed with more precision, also funnier), and so saves one some time. I doubt very much if every single thing he designates as crap really is crap (and that's before we get to atheism – e.g. phenomenology), but then that's why we have you!
 
Jaegermeister is a bit too sweet for my liking so only very occasionally. I am more of wine-drinker + occasional whiskey and even sometimes Grappa, a drink that makes no sense, except when it does.
If you know what Grappa is, then you probably know what Aperol is. Try mixing the latter with tequila, say, 2/3 tequila + 1/3 Aperol. The combo is delicious in my humble opinion and an excellent synaptic lubricant.

I will try it. I have some tequila lurking in the den of iniquity (= top of wine fridge).

BTW was just scanning your various entries on Husserl, who does interest me a lot (and more to the point, pro philosophers in my field, medical informatics). I've read some original (well, in English) matierial, pretty readable, even despite the 'continental' flavour. Anyway, your various dissections are very nice. I need to spend more time on them. I may be back with some discussion points . . . .

Fire away, when you are ready!

God as Human Projection?

Substack latest

Del Noce deciphered; Feuerbach refused.

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Update (3/3): Substack informs me: "After 24 hours, your public post has had

2,234 views." (Note that if a reader accesses my post n times (n > 1), that counts as one view.)

Curious, in that I have at present only 1,200 subscribers. And why should this calmly argued post on a non-political topic be so bloody interesting when others of a more polemical nature are not? 

Running as Equalizer?

Top o' the Stack.

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Malcolm Pollack comments:

I liked your brief post on running-as-equalizer, and how stubbornly our natural inequalities will always dash our hope of sweeping them under the rug. ("Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.")
 
There's even another natural inequality you didn't touch on, namely the difference between those who have the fiber to get off their asses to go running in the first place, and those who won't – between those who do, and don't, have the will and wisdom to suffer consciously to improve their future selves. 
That, in my (insufficiently) humble opinion, is likely the most important inequality of all.
 
A stimulating comment. Now for some commentary on the comment.
 
A. Life is hierarchical by any measure in all dimensions including physical, mental, moral, and spiritual.  We are not equal as individuals. And the same goes for groups. The 'woke' attempt to enforce 'equity' is bound to fail.  There will never be equality of outcome.  Merit will inevitably find a way of asserting itself.  In the short term, the institutionalized assault on merit will be disastrous for the vast majority while profiting the oligarchic enforcers of 'equity.' In the long term, the enforcers too will suffer. For as Malcolm, points out, "reality doesn't go away." 
 
Not only is the attempt to enforce 'equity' bound to fail, it cannot count as a value in any sound value hierarchy. For 'equity' is unjust.
 
Note also that the enforcement of 'equity' is selective: Is there 'equity' in professional sports? For that matter, are professional sports the home of  'diversity' and 'inclusion'? The questions answer themselves.  In the NBA and the NFL qualifications matter.  Real qualifications, not 'woke qualifications.'  No DEI there! Examples of  'woke qualifications' include being black, being female, and being lesbian as in the case of the current presidential press secretary. The point is not that being black, being female, and being lesbian, whether taken singly or  'intersectionally,'  should disqualify anyone from a government job;  the point is that they cannot count — to a sane and reasonable person — as qualifications sans phrase. 
 
Equity' is (or was) a perfectly good word that leftists have hijacked and re-defined to mean equality of outcome/result. Linguistic hijacking has proven to be an effective  leftist tactic. Leftists are subversive of right reason and natural order and the mother of all subversion is the subversion of language. Hence the wokester predilection for Orwellianisms, e.g., "Abortion is health care." 
 
B.  In Malcolm's concluding sentence he alludes to humility and the questions it raises in the present context. He suggests that he himself is insufficiently humble. Is humility then something good? I was put in mind of a couple of lines from a poem by Goethe:
 
Zitat-nur-die-lumpen-sind-bescheiden-brave-freuen-sich-der-tat-johann-wolfgang-von-goethe-111215

This is not easy to translate, but the thought is that only the worthless are modest; the good celebrate the deed.  The good are not humble, but accomplished; they are made happy by and celebrate their accomplishments. The couplet has a Nietzschean, and thus anti-Christian flavor. Here political theology enters the picture.
 
Suppose the Christian God exists. Then we all are equal, and not just in the eyes of the law, or by abstraction from our positions in the various hierarchies mentioned above, or via some such conceit as John Rawls' Original Position behind the Veil of Ignorance.   We are equal not just de jure but de facto. We are equal in fact as sons and daughters of one and the same eternal Father. The fact is not empirical but metaphysical. The equality is a function of the infinite distance between the all-perfect God and mortal man with his manifold imperfections.  The natural hierarchies that so impress us here below are nothing to God: all the empirical differences of physical prowess, IQ, etc. shrink to nothing from the divine point of view.
 
One unavoidable question is whether the political equality of persons can be maintained without a theological foundation. Suppose there is no Judeo-Christian God. What could possibly support the manifestly anti-empirical belief in equality? After all, it is a plain fact that we are not equal in the ways mentioned above.   If reality is exhausted by the natural (space-time and its material contents) and is thus in principle empirically accessible 'all the way down and up,'  then what possible basis could belief in equality of person have?  What would make this belief non-illusory?
 
I would say that if you are not an anti-wokester, if you do not reject the DEI agenda and all the depredatory absurdities that follow in its train, such as the assault on merit, then you are not sane and reasonable.  Does it follow that the anti-wokester who is an atheist and a naturalist must also be a rejector of equality in all its senses? To specify and sharpen the question: Is there any rational justification, on the assumption of atheism and naturalism,  for holding, as I in fact do, that slavery is a grave moral evil?
 
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