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Bill Keezer writes,

I was reading your recent post on profiling and it moved me to share with you a point I've shared with others many times.  I worked a long time ago in insurance, and profiling in insurance is not only commonplace it is necessary and accepted by the public. Most adults know, for instance, that females receive better rates than males. It is no moral commentary on being a guy that males receive higher rates than women. It is simply a statistical fact that males cost more money to insure than females, and so insurance companies rate accordingly.

Further, insurance rates are based on credit score in part. It is not some moral judgment on companies' part. Insurance companies do not think that if you have bad credit you are inherently 'worse' than someone with good credit. It is simply a statistical fact that bad credit correlates  with higher accident ratios. And insurance companies set their rates accordingly.

Of course no one complains about men receiving higher rates than women. But I have little doubt that if women were the ones to receive the higher rates, it would be a big deal. It is the same reason race cannot be included in insurance calculations. Surely it is no more inherently 'sexist' to rate men differently than would be 'racist' to rate different races differently. It is simply facing statistical facts.

For me, it doesn't get any better than the late piano sonatas of Beethoven, especially Op. 109, 110, 111. This is music preeminent and unsurpassable, though some of Brahms comes close. Here is Claudio Arrau performing the First Movement of Sonata 32, Opus 111.

And here is Daniel Barenboim playing the 2nd movement.  If this doesn't move you to tears, then you need a major soul-adjustment.

I am an elitist, but not a snob. An elitist in that I maintain that such popular genres as blues, jazz, folk, rock, and so on are not music in the eminent sense: they do not speak to what is highest and best in us. But there is nothing wrong with that. The claims of the lower self have their limited validity. Not a snob, in that I enjoy and appreciate music of all kinds, with only a few exceptions, as witness my Saturday Night at the Oldies series.    

To say that the best of the blues is the equal of the best of Beethoven is a bit like saying that the best of Carnap is equal to the best of Plato. Either you see what is wrong with that or you don't. If you don't, I can't help you. Here we enter the realm of the unarguable.

Positivism is to philosophy as muzak is to music.  Put that on your Stove and cook it!

Addendum:  Ed Farrell suggests that it does get better, and mentions the late quartets.  He has a point as witness the third movement of opus 132, Heiliger Dankgesang.  Click on the Farrell link and enjoy his fine photography.

Opening paragraph:

We don't often defend the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but Attorney General Eric Holder can inspire strange alliances. Recently, the Justice Department asked the full circuit to overturn the unanimous and enlightened decision of a three-judge panel allowing bone marrow donors to be compensated for their donations.

Why not allow compensation?

. . . allowing compensation would "undermine the efforts to encourage voluntary donations" and that Congress has established that bone marrow transplants "should not be subject to market forces."

This is a perfect example of how contemptibly and willfully stupid leftists are.  Allowing compensation would not undermine but enhance voluntary donations.  That's obvious.  They don't see it because they are blinded by their own lust for power, desire for total control, and hatred of liberty and free markets.

Read the whole piece to fully savor the illogic of the boneheads over at Justice.

A young man who was brought up Mormon, retains much if not all of the salutary character formation, but is now an atheist, writes (emphasis added):

I've been thinking about some of our conversations about theology and epistemology. Particularly the stuff on Mormonism. I'm sitting in on [Professor X's] medieval philosophy class reading St. Anselm among others, and I'm constantly struck by how far removed Anselm's view of God is from the one I grew up with. And, it seems to me, how far removed from the God of the Bible. I mean, Anselm and Aquinas both are absolutely relentless in denying God any anthropogenic [anthropomorphic?] qualities whatever. We are left with something that is faceless, devoid of human emotion, and about as difficult to relate to as anything I can even imagine. I can appreciate the intellect of men like Anselm and Aquinas, but this picture of God seems repugnant.

Being an atheist, I don't have a dog in this fight, but it does seem to me that there is more to be said for the Mormon view of God than most theists, you included, seem to realize. I recently read a book called The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion by Sterling McMurrin. I highly recommend you check it out and read it, especially the supplementary chapter in later versions on the question of whether God is a person. I think if you do, you will find yourself forced to take Mormonism a bit more seriously as a religion.

I have spoken more than once of the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, and Athens and Benares.  I am now tempted to speak of the tension between Athens and Salt Lake City, though this third tension is but an exacerbated form of the first.   My understanding of Mormonism is limited,  so I won't address it directly. But my understanding is that Mormons maintain that God is a physical being who inhabits a physical planet.  This conception of God, whether or not it is exactly what Mormons accept, is  as repugnant to me as the Anselmian-Thomistic one is to my correspondent.  This post raises the question of anthropomorphism in religion.

Imagine a spectrum of positions. 

1. At one end crude anthropomorphism:  God as a physical being, a superman, as is suggested by such phrases as 'the man upstairs'  and 'the big guy in the sky.'  This is the way many if not most atheists think of God and why they indulge in such mockeries as 'flying spaghetti monster,' and compare God with the Tooth Fairy (Dennett), Santa Claus, a celestial teapot (Russell), an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon (Ed Abbey), etc.  Many if not most atheists, being most of them materialists, can only think in material terms:  the only way God could be real would be for him to be a physical being.  (The tacit assumption being that to be real = to be a denizen of spacetime.)  So they think that if God is real, then he must be a physical being; and since the 'highest' physical being is man, then God is a Big Man  literally out there somewhere.  (Does he perhaps drink Celestial Seasonings (TM) tea from Russell's teapot?)  On his 1961 suborbital flight, about a month before astronaut Alan Shepard's, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was reported to have said  that he didn't see any God.  When I heard the news report I was 11 years old.  I exclaimed: "That dumb commie doesn't know that God is a purely spiritual being!"  Atheists, who typically can think only in material terms, then naturally deny the existence of God since it is surely absurd to think of God as a Big Man, mit Haut und Haar (Schopenhauer), etc.  So I sincerely hope that Mormons do not hold that God is literally a physical being with skin, hair, a GI tract . . . .  If that were the only option for theists, then we should all be atheists.

2.  At the other end of the spectrum, a conception of God so attenuated and diluted as to turn God into a mere concept, or a mere feeling ('God is the feeling one has when one is with those one loves') or one's ultimate concern (Tillich), or an unconscious anthropomorphic projection (Ludwig Feuerbach) or perhaps a causally inert abstract object, a denizen of the Platonic menagerie. 

3.  The positions at both ends of the spectrum are demonstrably untenable.  Briefly, God cannot be a physical being because no physical being is a necessary being, and God is a necessary being.  By definition, God is the ultimate ground of the existence of everything contingent.  (He is more, of course, but at least that.)  As such, he cannot himself be contingent, and so cannot be physical.  That is just one argument.  I am not assuming that God exists; I am merely unpacking the concept of God.  It is equally easy to show that God cannot be a concept, or an anthropomorphic projection, or an abstract entity.  I needn't waste words on whether God is a feeling or one's ultimate concern.

God cannot be a concept because concepts depend for their existence on minds, and God, by definition, is a se,  and so cannot depend for his existence on anything, not even himself. ('Causa sui' is to be taken privatively, not positively: God does not cause himself, which would require that he be logically or temporally prior to himself; it is rather the case that God is not caused by another.)  There are of course concepts of God, but God cannot be a concept.

For similar reasons, God cannot be an anthropomorphic projection.  The concept of God is the concept of a being that exists whether or not humans exist.  Obviously, such a being cannot be an anthropomorphic projection.  So if one says that God is an anthropomorphic projection, that is just a roundabout way of saying that God does not exist.  Nor can God be an abstract entity.  Abstracta, by definition, are causally inert, and God, by definition, is the first cause.

4.  The interesting positions are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.  God is not physical; God does not depend on any mind for his existence; God is not an abstract entity.  What is left but to say that God is a mind?  Now the only minds to which we have access in the first-person way, that way which alone reveals them in their true intrinsic nature, are our minds.  Since I know my own mind, and know it to be both causally efficacious and not physical, I conjecture that either God is a mind, or more like a mind than like anything else.  One's own mind provides a model whereby one can think about God. In fact, it is the only decent model we have.   So the most adequate, and only,  way to think about God is to think about God as an unembodied mind, or better as an unembodied person where a person is a "subsistent individual of a rational nature." (Aquinas, ST I, 29, 3.)  Thinking  of God as person might not be perfectly adequate, but the other ways I have mentioned are entirely  inadequate and utterly hopeless.  So God is a person but not  a man.  A person needn't be human.

5.  If we think of God as a bodiless person we avoid the Scylla of anthropomorphism.  God is not in the form of a man; it is the other way around; man is in the form of God.  God is not anthropomorphic; man is theomorphic.  This is how we ought to read Genesis 1, 26-27:

Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram . . . (Gen 1, 26) Let us make man in our image and likeness. . .

 Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. . . (Gen 1, 27) And God created man in his image. . .

 An oft-repeated mistake is to take these spiritual sayings in a materialistic way as if to imply that God has the form of a man.  It's as if one were to argue:

Man is made in God’s image.
Man is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.
Therefore
God is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.

But that would be  like arguing:

This statue is made in Lincoln’s image.
This statue is composed of marble.
Therefore
Lincoln is composed of marble.

The point of Gen 1, 26-27  is not that God must be physical because man is, but that man is a spiritual being just like God, potentially if not actually. The idea is not that God is a big man, the proverbial ‘man upstairs,’ but that man is a little god, a proto-god, a temporally and temporarily debased god who has open to him the possibility of a higher life with God, a possibility whose actualization requires both creaturely effort and divine grace.

6.   The upshot is that God is a person, a pure spirit or unembodied mind, or at least more like a person than like anything else with which we are familiar.  The Scylla of anthropomorphism and 'spiritual materialism' is avoided by thinking of God as a bodiless person.  The Charybdis of abstractionism/conceptualism is avoided by thinking of God as a person, and thus as a concrete individual who knows, loves,  and freely acts.

If we stop right here we have a position in the middle of our spectrum, one that is represented by many contemporary theists, Plantinga being one of them.  But we can't stop here, as it seems to me.

For God  is also the absolute reality.  If God is absolute, then God is ontologically simple: he is Being itself in its prime instance, and wholly partless and incomposite, hence free of act/potency composition.  I can't repeat the arguments here.  The simple God of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas is a second position in the middle of the spectrum, one even farther from anthropomorphism than the first according towhich God is a bodiless person, but not simple. 

I can easily understand how my correspondent above would find the simple God to be, as he says, "repugnant."  We are left with something that is faceless, devoid of human emotion, and about as difficult to relate to as anything I can even imagine. In response I will say two things.

First, the simple God of Anselm, et al., despite  its difficulties — which intellectual honesty forbids me from 'papering over' –  is vastly superior to the crude anthropomorphism which Mormons apparently accept.  (If I have misrepresented the Mormon position, then I should like to hear exactly what their position is on the topic under discussion.)  

Second, religion is about transcendence and transcending, about reaching beyond the human-all-too-human, and beyond all the images  of  the picture-loving imagination.  Religion is not about the positing of a hinterworld that duplicates this world with the negative removed.  It is not about crude, materialistic, wish-fulfillment.  This is why we find the Islamic 72 virgins conception of paradise so paltry and ridiculous:  it is a blatant pandering to the basest elements in our nature, a pandering at once both superstitious and idolatrous.  Religion aims at a spiritualizationof the human being which cannot  be imagined and is just barely conceivable.  It is about theosis (deification) as is maintained in Orthodox Christianity.  And because the ultimate goal for humans is not imaginable and barely conceivable, it is repeatedly pictured in crude and absurd materialistic  ways — which only fuels the fires of atheism.  Actually, one ought to be an atheist in respect of the anthropomorphic God-conceptions.

This is a difficult topic to write about and of course no materialistically-minded worldling could possibly be persuaded by it.  No matter how much light one sheds on an object, a blind man won't see it — he lacks the requisite organ.   But perhaps an analogy may be of some use.  Imagine a fetus in the womb who finds his environment quite acceptable, and indeed the ultimate in what is real and worthwhile.  You try to persuade the fetus that staying  in the womb indefinitely is decidely suboptimal, a mistake in that he  is capable of a marvellous development after an event called  'birth.'  He of course doesn't know what you are talking about and is in no position to imagine what it is like to be born and develop.  And he will find it almost impossible to conceive. For him birth is death: the end of his cozy and secure womb-life.   His natural tendency is to say that you are 'bullshitting' him: 

"Look man, this is reality, this is what I know, this is what I have evidence for; you are pushing some fantasy projection, some opiate so that we we fetuses won't work to improve conditions here in the womb but will waste our time dreaming about some nonexistent goodies on the other side of what you call 'birth' but we know to be death and annihilation.  Sure,  it would be nice if there were something more, but there ain't.  Your talk of infants, and children, and adolescents, and adults, is just a lie to make people denigrate the only reality there is, the reality here and now, in what you call 'womb' but we anti-birthers  call 'reality.'"

Both passed on this last week Otis at 90, James at 73.  Johnny Otis' signature number is of course "Willy and the Hand Jive."  In this curious clip, we are first treated to a late '50 car commercial which should stir up memories in Los Angelenos of a certain age and then to a performance  by Otis and his band with the hand jive itself illustrated by a trio of meaty mamas.  I always thought that Otis was a very light-skinned black man.  But in real life he rejoiced under the name Veliotes and was pure Greek.

Etta James' signature number is of course At Last.  Her version of "The Very Thought of You" compares favorably with Billie Holliday's.

One of the elements in my personal liturgy is a reading of the following passage every January 1st. I must have begun the practice in the mid-70s. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book Four, #276, tr. Kaufmann:

For the new year. — I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought: hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year — what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn to see more and more as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all and all and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

Nietzsche found it very difficult to let looking away be his only negation. And so shall I.

'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.

Impersonality in the minimalist style may take the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better still is the nowadays common family picture with handwritten name but no message.

The maximalist style is far worse. Now we are in for a lengthy litany of the manifold accomplishments of the sender and his family which litany may run to a page or two of single-spaced text.

One size fits all. No attempt to address any one person as a person.

"It's humbug, I tell you, humbug!"

Having just mentioned naturalism and scientism  in my plug for Plantinga's new book, you may be wondering what naturalism is and how it is related to scientism.   J. P. Moreland gives a full answer in his book The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009).  What follows is my summary of Moreland's explanation with a critical comment near the end.  My summary is excerpted from my post, J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism.

……………….

Moreland views contemporary naturalism as consisting of an epistemology, an etiology, and a general ontology.

A. The epistemology of naturalism is (weak or strong) scientism with its concomitant rejection of first philosophy. Strong scientism is the view that "unqualified cognitive value resides in science and nothing else." (6) Weak scientism allows nonscientific subjects some cognitive value, but holds that "they are vastly inferior to science in their epistemic standing . . . ." (6) On either weak or strong scientism, there is no room for first philosophy, according to which philosophy is an autonomous discipline, independent of natural science, and authoritative in respect to it. So on scientism, natural science sets the standard in matters epistemic, and philosophy’s role is at best ancillary. The method of explanation allied to this scientistic epistemology is combinatorial and third-personal. It is combinatorial in that every complex entity is to be understood as a combination of simpler entities. Whether this enormously fruitful approach, which resolves wholes into parts and complexes into simples, can work for types of unity such as consciousness is one of the key issues in the debate. The scientistic method of explanation is third-personal in that first-personal "ways of knowing" are eschewed in favor of third-personal ways. (8)

B. The etiology or "Grand Story" of naturalism is an event-causal account of how everything came to be, spelled out in the natural-scientific terms of physics, chemistry, and evolutionary biology. There are three main features of the Grand Story. The first is that the event-causal account must proceed bottom-up, as is done in the atomic theory of matter and in evolutionary biology, not top-down. A second feature is "scientistic philosophical monism" according to which everything falls under the aegis of the methods of natural science. As monistic in this sense, naturalism is most consistently understood to entail strong physicalism, the view that everything is "fundamentally matter, most likely, elementary ‘particles’ (whether taken as points of potentiality, centers of mass/energy, units of spatially extended stuff/waves, or . . . ) organized in various ways according to the laws of nature." (9) If a naturalist fights shy of this strong physicalism, in the direction of admitting supervenient or emergent entities, he will nonetheless have to maintain, if he is to remain a naturalist, that all additions to his ontology in excess of what strong physicalism allows must be rooted in and dependent upon the physical items of the Grand Story. The third feature of naturalism’s Grand Story is that its account of things, because it is event-causal, must reject both agent-causal and irreducibly teleological explanations. Fundamentally, the only allowable explanations are "mechanical and efficient-causal." (9) A corollary is that the Grand Story is both diachronically and synchronically deterministic. Diachronically, in that the state of the universe at a given time together with the laws of nature determines or fixs the chances for the state of the universe at later times. Synchronically, in that the properties and changes of macro-wholes are determined by and dependent upon micro-events.

C. The general ontology of naturalism countenances only those entities that figure in a completed physics or are "dependent on and determined by the entities of physics. . . ." (6) There are three main features of naturalism’s general ontology. The first is that the only admissible entities are those "knowable by third-person scientific means." (10) The second feature is that it must be possible, with respect to any entity admitted into the general ontology, to show how it had to arise by chains of event causation in which micro-entities combine to form increasingly complex aggregates. The third feature of naturalism’s general ontology concerns supervenience/emergence. The idea is that anything admitted in excess of the entities of physics, chemistry, and biology must be shown to be determined by and depend upon (whether with metaphysical or nomological necessity) natural scientific entities.

Moreland grants that a naturalist can stray ‘upwards’ from strong physicalism by admitting emergent properties, but in only two senses of ‘emergence.’ A feature is emergent₀ if it can be deduced from its base. Moreland gives the example of fractals. For a simpler example, my own, consider the weight of a stone wall. Its weight can be computed (and thus deduced) from the weights of its constituent stones. Suppose the wall has a weight that is utterly novel: nothing in the history of the universe before this wall came into existence had its exact weight. The property of weighing 1000.6998236 lbs, say, despite its utter novelty, is innocuously emergent and surely no threat to naturalism’s epistemology or Grand Story or ontology. Ordinary structural properties are emergent₁. The property of being water, for example, is structural in that it is "identical to a configurational pattern among the subvenient entities," (10) in this case atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. Structural emergent properties are also easily countenanced by naturalists. But there are five other types of emergent entities that according to Moreland are beyond the naturalist pale: sui generis epiphenomenal properties; sui generis properties which induce causal liabilities in the things that have them; sui generis properties that induce active causal powers in the things that have them; emergent egos which are consciously active and rational; emergent egos which are conscious, active, and rational and are rights-possessors.

With the exception of the first two types of emergence, emergent entities, whether properties or substances, "defy naturalist explanation and they provide confirmation for biblical theism construed as a rival to naturalism." (11-12) Human persons in particular "are recalcitrant facts for naturalism and provide evidence for Judeo-Christian monotheism." (14)

At this point I need to register a misgiving I have over Moreland’s use of ‘emergence.’ On his way of thinking, human persons are emergent entities, albeit ones that cannot be accommodated by naturalism. But I should think that, because Moreland’s purpose is to "provide confirmation for biblical theism," human persons and "suitably unified mental egos" (11) are precisely the opposite of emergent. If persons are created by God in his image, then they do not emerge since what emerges emerges ‘from below,’ from suitably organized material configurations. But it all depends on how we will use ‘emergence.’ There is an innocuous sense of the term according to which an entity emerges just in case it manifests itself or comes into being. Apparently this is the way Moreland uses the word. But in its philosophically pregnant sense, ‘emergence’ is a theoretical term, a terminus technicus, that always implies that that which emerges has an origin ‘from below,’ from matter, and never ‘from above,’ from spirit or mind. (See the opening paragraph of Timothy O'Connor's SEP article, Emergent Properties.) I suggest we use it as a technical term, but Moreland is of course free to disagree.

Here.

Consider the sentences 'Caissa is a cat' and 'Every cat is an animal.'  Edward the Nominalist made two  claims in an earlier comment thread that stuck in my Fregean craw:

1. The relation between 'Caissa' and 'cat' is the same as the relation between 'cat' and 'animal'.

2. The relation between *Caissa* and *cat* is the same as the relation between *cat* and *animal.*

Single quotes are being used in the usual way to draw attention to the expression enclosed within them.  Asterisks are being used to draw attention to the concept expressed by the linguistic item enclosed within them.  I take it we agree that concepts are mental in nature in the sense that, were there no minds, there would be no concepts. 

Affirming (2), Edward commits himself to individual or singular concepts.  I deny that there are individual concepts and so I reject (2).  Rejecting (2), I take the side of the Fregeans against the traditional formal logicians who think that singular propositions can be analyzed as general.  Thus 'Caissa is a cat' gets analyzed by the TFL-ers  as 'Every Caissa is a cat.'

To discuss this profitably we need to agree on the following definition of 'individual concept':

D1. C is an individual concept of x =_df x is an instance of C, and it is not possible that there be a y distinct from x such that y is an instance of C.

So if there is an individual concept of my cat Caissa, then Caissa instantiates this concept and nothing distinct from Caissa does or could instantiate it. We can therefore say that individual concepts, if there are any, 'capture' or  'grasp' or 'make present to the mind' the very haecceity (thisness) of the individuals of which they are the individual concepts.

We can also speak of individual concepts as singular concepts and contrast them with general concepts.  *Cat* is a general concept.  What makes it general is not that it has many instances, but that it can have many (two or more) instances.  General concepts are thus multiply instantiable. 

The concept C1 expressed by 'the fattest cat that ever lived and ever will live' is also general.  For, supposing that Oscar instantiates this concept, it is possible that some other feline instantiate it.  Thus C1 does not capture the haecceity of Oscar or of any cat.   C1 is general, not singular.  C1 is multiply instantiable in the sense that it can have two or more instances, though not in the same possible world.

And so from the fact that a concept applies to exactly one thing if it applies to anything, one cannot validly infer that it is an individual or singular concept.  Such a concept must capture the very identity or thisness of the thing of which it is a concept.  This is an important point.  To push further I introduce a definition and a lemma.

D2. C is a pure concept =_df C involves no specific individual and can be grasped without reference to any specific individual.

Thus 'green,' 'green door,' 'bigger than a barn,' 'self-identical,'  and 'married to someone' all express pure concepts.  'Taller than the Washington Monument,' 'married to Heidegger,' and 'identical to Heidegger' express impure concepts. 

Lemma 1: No individual concept is a pure concept.

Proof.  By (D1), if C is an individual concept of x, then it is not possible that there be a y distinct from x such that y instantiates C.  But every pure concept, no matter how specific, is possibly such as to have two or more instances.  Therefore, no individual concept is a pure concept.

Consider the famous Max Black example of two iron spheres alike in all monadic and relational respects.  A pure concept of either, no matter how specific, would also be a pure concept of the other.  And so the haecceity of neither would be captured by that pure concept.

Lemma 2.  No individual concept is an impure concept.

Proof.  An individual  concept is either pure or impure.  If C is impure, then by (D2) it must involve an individual.  And if C is an individual concept it must involve the very individual of which it is the individual concept. But individuum ineffabile est: no individual can be grasped as an individual.  But that is precisely what one would have to be able to do to have an impure concept of an individual.  Therefore, no individual concept is an impure concept.

Putting the lemmata together, it follows that an individual concept cannot be either pure or impure.  But it must be one or the other.  So there are no individual concepts. Q. E. D.!

 

We have been discussing the topic of nonqualitative thisness here, here,  and here.  The following post gets at the problem from another angle, the love angle.

Here is a remarkable passage from Pascal's remarkable Pensees:

A man goes to the window to see the passers by. If I happen to pass by, can I say that he has gone there to see me? No; for he is not thinking of me in particular. But does he who loves someone for her   beauty, really love her? No; for small-pox, destroying the beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to love. And if I am loved for my judgment, for my memory, am I loved? No; for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where then is this 'I,' if it resides neither in the body, nor the soul? And how  love the body or the soul save for these qualities which do not  make the 'me,' since they are doomed to perish? For can one love the soul of a person in the abstract, irrespective of its qualities? Impossible and wrong! So we never love anyone, but only  qualities. (p. 337, tr. H. F. Stewart)

 

This passage raises the following question. When I love a person, is it the person in her particularity and uniqueness that I love, or merely the being-instantiated of certain lovable properties? Do I love  Mary as Mary, or merely as an instance of helpfulness, friendliness, faithfulness, etc.?

These are clearly different. If it is merely the being-instantiated of lovable properties that I love, then it would not matter if the love object were replaced by another with the same ensemble of properties. It would not matter if Mary were replaced by her indiscernible twin Sherry. Mary, Sherry, what's the difference? Either way you get the very same package of delectable attributes.

But if it is the person in her uniqueness that I love, then it would matter if someone else with exactly the same ensemble of properties were substituted for the love object. It would matter to me, and it would matter even more to the one I love. Mary would complain bitterly if Sherry were to replace her in my  affections. "I want to be loved for being ME, not for what I have in common with HER!"

The point is perhaps more clearly made using the example of self-love.  Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin.  Now it is a fact that I love myself.  But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally.  For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do.  But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil.  Suppose that God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go.  I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' 

This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties.  For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other.  This would make no sense if the being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties.  In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also a unique existent individual that cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual.  And the same goes for Phill: he loves himself as a unique individual.

Now it is a point of phenomenology that love intends to reach the very haecceity and ipseity of the beloved: in loving someone we mean to  make contact with his or her unique thisness and selfhood. It is not a mere instance of lovable properties that love intends, but the very  being of the beloved. And what some of us of a personalist bent want to maintain is that this intending or meaning is in some cases fulfilled: we actually do sometimes make conscious contact with the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved. We arrive at the very being of the beloved, not merely at the co-instantiation of a set of multiply instantiable lovable properties. But how is this possible given Pascal's argument?

The question underlying all of this is quite fundamental: Are there any genuine individuals? X is a genuine individual if and only if X is essentially unique. The Bill and Phil example suggests that selves are genuine individuals and not mere bundles of multiply instantiable properties.  For each of the twins is acutely aware that he is not the other despite complete agreement in respect of  pure properties.  Here are some of my theses to be expounded and clarified as the discussion proceeds:

1. There exist genuine individuals.
2. Genuine individuals cannot be reduced to bundles of properties.
3. The Identity of Indiscernibles is false.
4. Numerical difference is numerical-existential difference: the existence of an individual is implicated in its very haecceity. 
5.  There are no nonexistent individuals. 
6. There are no not-yet existent individuals.

 

Commenting on an earlier post of mine, Peter Lupu brought up some themes from David Kaplan which were not quite relevant but interesting nonetheless.   In my response I pointed out that Kaplan is committed to Russellian (R) as opposed to Fregean (F) propositions whereas the problem I had posed presupposes that propositions are Fregean.  In this post I will do three things.  I will first explain the difference between R- and F-propositions and give an argument against R-propositions.  Then I will explain the 'he himself' locution which Hector-Neri Castaneda brought to our attention back in the '60s.  Finally, I will explain how the 'he himself' locution is further evidence that propositions cannot be Russellian.  And since propositions cannot be Russellian, they cannot be introduced in solution of the problem I raised in the earlier post.

Russellian Versus Fregean Propositions

1. One issue in the philosophy of language is whether singular terms (including pure indexicals, demonstratives, proper names) refer directly or whether they refer via some descriptive meaning that they encapsulate.  The issue is not whether a word like 'I' — the first-person singular pronoun used indexically, not the Roman numeral or the first-person pronoun used nonindexically — has a meaning apart from its reference.  Of course it does.  The meaning of 'I' — its character in Kaplan's jargon — is given by the rule that uttered tokens of 'I' refer to the speaker.  The issue is whether the reference of a singular term is routed through its descriptive meaning.  For example, when Tom says 'I' he refers to Tom.  But is Tom's self-reference routed through any descriptive meaning of 'I'? It should be obvious that Tom's use of 'I' does not target Tom specifically in virtue of the Kaplanian content of 'I.'  For that is quite general.  So if there is a sense of 'I' that mediates Tom's self-reference, it will have to be a special 'I'-sense, a special mode of presentation (Frege:  Darstellungsweise). 

Now if there are terms that refer directly, without the mediation of a Fregean sense (Sinn), then the sentences in which such terms occur express Russellian propositions.  R-propositions involve individuals directly rather than indirectly by way of an abstract representative as in F-propositions.  So if 'Tom is tall' expresses an R-proposition, then Tom himself, all 200 lbs of him, is a constituent of the proposition, along with the property that the sentence predicates of him.  Such a proposition could be represented as an ordered pair the first member of which is Tom and the second the property of being tall.  But if the sentence  expresses an F-proposition, then Tom himself is not a constituent of it. Instead, the sense of 'Tom' goes proxy for Tom in the F-proposition.

Suppose t is a directly referential term in a sentence S.  T may or may not have a meaning apart from its reference.  If S expresses a Russellian-Kaplanian proposition, then the meaning of t — if there is one — is not a constituent of the propositional content of S:  the constituent of the propositional content of S, corresponding to t, is simply the referent  of t.

2.  That there are propositions I take for granted.  We may introduce them  by saying that they are the bearers of the truth-values.  But this leaves open whether they are Russellian or Fregean.  I think there is a good metaphysical reason for not countenancing R-propositions.

3. The metaphysical reason has to do with false R-propositions.  Given that 'Tom is tall' is true, it doesn't strike me as problematic to say that the world contains, in addition to Tom and the property of being tall, Tom's being tall.  But then  'Tom is short ' is false.  If 'Tom is tall' expresses an R-proposition, then so does 'Tom is short.'  But then the world contains, in addition to Tom and the property of being short, a further entity Tom's being short which has Tom himself as a constituent.  And that does strike me as very problematic.  (And it struck Russell that way too, which is why Russell abandoned Russellian propositions!) For if Tom does not exemplify shortness, then there simply is no such entity as Tom's being short. In other words I have no problem accepting facts such as Tom's being tall assuming that all facts obtain.  But nonobtaining facts such as Tom's being short are a metaphysical monstrosity. 

The 'He Himself' Locution 

4. Castaneda pointed out that one cannot validly move from

1. X judges x to be F
to
2. X judges himself to be F.

(2) entails (1), but (1) does not entail (2).  Unbeknownst to me, a certain document I am inspecting was written by me long ago.  It is possible that I conclude that the author of the document was confused without concluding that I was confused.  (Example adapted from Chisholm.)  In this situation I am an x such that x judges x to be confused, but I am not an x such that x judges himself to be confused.

Given that I am x, there is no distinction between the Russellian proposition which is x's being confused and the one which is my being confused.  For the two R-propositions have the all the same constituents. If propositions are Russellian, then we have to say that 'x judges x to be confused' and 'x judges himself to be confused' express the same proposition.  But obviously they don't.  So propositions aren't Russellian.  Or is that too quick?

Kerouac reads the 239th, 240th and 241st choruses of Mexico City Blues against the backdrop of Steve Allen's piano.  "Charley Parker, lay the bane, off  me, and every body."

1. A contingent being is one the nonexistence of which is possible, whereas a necessary being is one the nonexistence of which is impossible. (At play in these definitions is broadly logical possibility which is between narrowly logical and nomological possibility.)

2. Framing a definition is one thing, showing that something answers to it is another. Are there any necessary beings? Since a necessary being could be either abstract or concrete, I can show that there are necessary beings by showing that there is at least one abstract necessary being. To convey the senses of 'concrete' and 'abstract' by example one could say that God and Socrates are concrete while the proposition 7 is prime and Socrates' singleton — {Socrates} — are abstract. All and only concreta are causally active/passive whereas abstracta are not. Please avoid the mistake of thinking that x is concrete iff x is physical.

3. Some truths are necessary, others are contingent. 'I am now blogging' is contingently true: it is true, but it might not have been true. I might have been doing something inconsistent with blogging now, sleeping for instance. By contrast, 'If I am blogging, then I am writing' is necessarily true. To see this, negate the sentence in question. The result is a sentence expressing a broadly logical impossibility: 'I am blogging and it is not the case that I am writing.' Consider also, 'If I am blogging, then it is not the case that I am not blogging.' This too is necessarily true, except that the negation expresses a narrowly logical impossibility: 'I am blogging and I am not blogging.'

I don't see how any reasonable person can deny that there are necessary truths. Another example: '7 is a prime number' expresses a necessary truth. This doesn't just happen to be true in the way that it just happens to be true that there are seven cans of Dr. Pepper left in the reefer. It is necessarily true: true in all (BL)-possible worlds.

4. A truth is a true truth-bearer. Now I don't understand how ink on paper, or chalk on a blackboard, or any physical modification of any physical medium, no matter how complex the modification and how complex the medium, could be true or false. I don't understand how anything physical could, qua physical, be a truth-bearer or truth-vehicle, i.e., an item capable of being either true or false. Marks on paper cannot be either true or false. They just exist. But suppose you think they — or complex modifications of the stuff between your ears — can be either true or false. Still, the marked-up paper exists contingently. Consequently, the sentence-token '7 is prime' scratched onto the paper exists contingently. Similarly for anything inscribed in your brain. Your brain and its 'inscriptions' are contingent.

5. But then how could any truth be necessarily true? How could any truth be necessarily true if no truth-bearer is necessarily existent?  There is no possible world in which 7 is not prime, but there are worlds in which there are no material things.  Material things are contingent.  How could the proposition in question be true in those worlds if there is nothing in those worlds to serve as truth-bearer? Let's spell this out.

If an item has a property, then, pace Meinong, the item exists: existence is a necessary condition of property-possession.   So if an item such as a truth-bearer has the property of being necessarily true, then that truth-bearer necessarily exists. For if the truth-bearer is true in every world, then it exists in every world.  Therefore, if there are necessary truths, then there are necessary beings. Now there are necessary truths. Therefore, there are necessary beings. Given that everything physical is contingent, these necessary beings are nonphysical. So they are either mental (accusatives of mental acts) or abstract. For present purposes, it doesn't matter which of these they are. The present point is that there is good reason to believe in (i.e., believe that there are) necessary beings.

6. But I hear an objection coming: An item can have a property essentially without having it necessarily. Thus Socrates is essentially human, but not necessarily human. He is human in every world in which he exists, but he does not exist in every world. So he is essentially but not necessarily human. Why can't the proposition expressed by '7 is prime' be like that? Why can't it be essentially (as opposed to accidentally) true, true in every world in which it exists, but neither true nor false in the worlds in which it does not exist? If this is the way it is, then your argument from necessary truths to necessary beings collapses.

The objector is suggesting that truth-bearers are contingent beings. But this is problematic as Alvin Plantinga argues (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford UP, 1993, p. 119.) Suppose that truth-bearers are brain inscriptions, and consider the proposition

1. There are brain inscriptions.

(1) is such that it could not have been false. For in a possible world in which there are no brain inscriptions, there are no truth-bearers, which implies that (1) in those words is neither true nor false, hence not false. And in every world in which there are brain inscriptions, (1) is of course true. So (1) is true in every world in which it exists, and not false in every world in which it does not exist. So (1) could not have been false. But this bizarre. Surely there might have been no brains and no brain-inscriptions. It is not necessarily true that there are brains. If it is not necessarily true that there are brains, then it is possibly true that there are no brains. Now what is this possibility of there being no brains? It is plausibly identified with the possibly being true of the proposition, There are no brains. But then this proposition must exist in those possible worlds in which it is not true.