Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Academentia Update: Harvard and Hillsdale

    We of the Coalition of the Sane and Reasonable are rejoicing at Trump's treatment of Harvard. Once a great institution at the very top of the academic world, it has become a sick woke joke and a haven for antisemites and destructive DEI nonsense.  VERITAS (truth) remains emblazoned upon its seal, but truth, which has never been a leftist value, is now moribund if not dead in Cambridge, Mass., as witness the appointment of Claudine Gay, plagiarist, as president. (She has since been removed.) Truth and Gay's 'my truth' are toto caelo different. That she could be even proposed as president, let alone appointed, is indicative of deep institutional rot.

    As a private institution, Harvard can do pretty much what it wants, including digging its own grave; but it is plainly wrong for it to receive taxpayer dollars to subsidize destructive leftist lunacy.  If you can't see that, you are morally obtuse.

    For the view from Hillsdale, see here.  Excerpt:

    Mr. Trump’s war on Harvard is largely about federal money, and Mr. Arnn’s Hillsdale “doesn’t take a single cent of it,” he says. “Nobody gives us any money unless they want to.” This means Hillsdale, founded by Free Will Baptists in 1844, isn’t bound by government mandates tied to funding, such as Title IX. Harvard, he says, was “exclusively funded by the private sector for—what is it?—it’s got to be 250 years.” (Harvard was founded in 1636.) “And now, in this progressive era, if my calculations are right, they get $90,000 per student a year from the federal government.” He recommends that Harvard, which receives about $9 billion a year from Washington, emulate Hillsdale and get off the government dole.

    “They should give it all up,” Mr. Arnn says. “They should make an honest living.”

    Related:

    Peter W. Wood, Harvard Against America

    Peter Berkowitz, Harvard Law Professors Politicize the Rule of Law

    Interesting development: "Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks has called for a mass uprising to oppose President Donald Trump, going so far as to quote The Communist Manifesto." 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Wicked Wit from Tony Flood

    Karma's a bitch. And so's Tish. And the irony's delish.

    Bill Vallicella

  • “My Kingdom is not of this World”

    Thus Jesus to Pilate at John 18:36. 

    What does 'this world' refer to?  In the "Our Father"  we pray: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Reading these two texts side-by-side one might conclude that God's kingdom is to be realized on earth and not in a purely spiritual realm, and that therefore  'this world' at John 18:36 refers to this age of the earthly realm and not to the earthly realm as such.

    Yes or no?

    Bill Vallicella

    10 responses to ““My Kingdom is not of this World””

  • John Bigelow’s Lucretian Defense of Presentism, Part I, Set-Up

    What follows in two parts is a critique of John Bigelow's Presentism and Properties. This installment is Part One.

    Bigelow begins by telling us that he is a presentist: "nothing exists which is not present." (35) He goes on to say that this was believed by everyone, including philosophers, until the 19th century. But this is plainly false inasmuch as Plato maintained that there are things, the eidē, that exist but are not present, and this for the simple reason that they are not in time at all. Moreover, many theologians long before the 19th century held that God is eternal, as opposed to omnitemporal, and therefore not temporally present. (To underscore the obvious, when presentists use 'present' they mean temporally present, not spatially present or present in any other sense.)

    But let's be charitable. What Bigelow means to tell us is that nothing exists in time that is not present.  His is a thesis in temporal ontology, not in general ontology. What is there in time? Only present items, which is to say: no wholly past or wholly future items. 

    Bigelow also assures us that presentism "is written into the grammar of every natural language . . ." (ibid.) But this can't be right, for then anyone who denied presentism would be guilty of solecism! Surely 'Something exists which is not present' is not ungrammatical.  The same holds for 'Something exists in time which is not present.' There is nothing ungrammatical in either sentence. If presentism "is written into the grammar of every natural language," then presentism reduces to a miserable tautology.

    Tautologies, however, though of logical interest, are of no metaphysical interest. Luckily, Bigelow contradicts himself on the very next page where we read, "Presentism is a metaphysical doctrine . . . ." That is exactly right. It therefore cannot be a logico-grammatical truth.  It is a substantive, non-tautological answer to a metaphysical/ontological question about what there is in time:  only present items, or past, present, and future items?

    What has to be understood is that, when a presentist claims that nothing exists that is not present, his use of 'exists' is not present-tensed, but tense-neutral.  His claim is that only what exists (present-tense) exists  simpliciter.   For present purposes (pun intended), an item or category of item exists simpliciter if it must be mentioned in a complete inventory of what there is.  I will use 'exists*' to refer to existence simpliciter and 'exists' in the usual present-tensed way.

    Can presentism thus understood be refuted? 

    The argument from relations

    1) All relations are existence-entailing. In the dyadic case, what this means is that if x stands to y in the relation R, then both x and y exist*, and necessarily so.  In the n-adic case, it means that all of the relata of a relation must exist if the relation is to hold or obtain. 

    2) Some relations are such that they hold between a non-present item and a present item.  For example, my non-present birth is earlier than my present blogging.  The two events are related by the earlier-than relation.

    Therefore

    3) Both events, my birth and my blogging, exist*.

    Therefore

    4) It is not the case that only present items exist*: presentism is false.

    This is a powerful argument, valid in point of logical form, but not absolutely conclusive, or as I like to say, rationally coercive, inasmuch as (1) is open to two counterexamples:

    a) If there is a relation that connects an existent item to a nonexistent item, then (1) is false. Some hold that intentionality is such a relation.  Suppose Tom, who exists, is thinking of Pegasus, who does not exist.  For details, see The Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann Solution to the Problem of Intentionality.

    b) Premise (1) is also false if there are relations that connect one nonexistent item to another nonexistent item. It is true that Othello loves Desdemona.  The truth-maker here is a state of affairs  involving two nonexistent individuals. So a Meinongian might argue that not all relations are existence-entailing, and that (1) can be reasonably rejected, and with it the argument's conclusion. (See pp. 37-39)

    To sidestep the second counterexample, Bigelow proposes a weaker premise according to which relations are not existence-entailing but existence-symmetric.  A relation is existence-symmetric iff either all its relata exist or all do not exist.

    The argument from causation

    Causation is existence-symmetric: if an event exists and it is a cause of some other event, then that other event exists; and if an event exists and is caused by some other event, then that other event exists. Some present events are caused by events that are not present. And some present events are the causes of other events which are not present. Therefore things exist which are not present. (p. 40)

    How can presentism be upheld in the face of these two powerful arguments? That is the topic of Part II.

    Bill Vallicella

    11 responses to “John Bigelow’s Lucretian Defense of Presentism, Part I, Set-Up”

  • The Editor as Besserwisser

    We need editors, but too many an editor is a Besserwisser. The editorial know-it-all knows better than the author what he wants to say and how it ought to be said. At this point I hurl choice epithets.  

    I offer a more measured response in The Paltry Mentality of the Copy Editor.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Journalists and the Spread of Illiteracy

    CNN reported at the time that the footwear rule came into play after the local mountain rescue crews became exacerbated by having to rescue so many people tripping over their own feet. "These are difficult paths, in some cases, similar to mountain paths,” Patrizio Scarpellini, director of the Cinque Terre National Park, told CNN Travel. “Essential to have proper shoes!”

     

    Bill Vallicella

    11 responses to “Journalists and the Spread of Illiteracy”

  • Bad Economic Reasoning about the National Debt

    Written in December, 2012.

    ……………………….

    When I study the writings of professional economists I often have to shake my shaggy philosopher's head.  Try this passage on for size:

    $16 trillion is the amount of Treasury debt outstanding at the moment. [It is around 36 trillion now.] The more relevant figure is the amount of debt the federal government owes to people and institutions other than itself. If, for some reason, I lent money to my wife and she promised to pay it back to me, we wouldn’t count that as part of the debt owed by our household. The debt owed to the public is about $10 trillion these days.

    What a brainless analogy!  Suppose I loan wifey 100 semolians.  She issues me a 'debt instrument,' an IOU.  Has the family debt increased by $100?  Of course not.  It is no different in principle than if I took $100 out of my left pocket, deposited an IOU there, and placed the cash in my right pocket.  If I started with exactly $100 cash on my person I would end the game with exactly the same amount. 

    But I do not stand to the government in the same relation that I stand to myself or to my family.  Suppose I buy $100 K worth of Treasury notes, thereby loaning the government that sum.  Has the Federal debt increased by $100 K?  Of course it has.  I am not part of the government.  Whether the government owes money to U. S. citizens or to the Chi-Coms makes no difference at all with respect to the amount of the debt.  The citizens plus the government do not form a "household" in the way my wife and I form a household.  Citizens and government are not all one big happy family.

    The analogy is pathetic. Didn't Barack Hussein Obama say that the government is us? That is bullshit pure and simple out of the mouth of a master bullshitter.  

    The author would have you think that "the more relevant figure" is $16 trillion minus $10 trillion = $6 trillion.  False, because based on a false analogy. 

    This shows how ideologically infected the 'science' of economics is.  Only a leftist ideologue could make the collectivist assumption that I have just exposed.  The Marxian "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a viable principle at the level of the family, but it is pernicious nonsense on stilts when applied to the state in its relation to the citizenry. 

    But then I am no economist. Show me I'm wrong, and lunch is on me when next our paths cross.

    Bill Vallicella

    6 responses to “Bad Economic Reasoning about the National Debt”

  • April 15th: “Render unto Caesar . . . .”

    Did you settle accounts with the Infernal Revenue 'Service'?  If yes, then celebrate with The Beatles, Harrison and Clapton, and Tom Petty.

    No, I am not opposed to paying taxes.  I am not anti-tax any more than I am anti-government. We need government, and we need to fund it somehow.  It does not follow, however, that there must be an income tax.  There are alternatives.

    We paid 14% of our 2024 income in federal and state income taxes. What did you pay?

    Did we get value for our money? We got Biden-Harris. That suffices for an answer. No need to get scatological about it.  We are very lucky, however, that our geopolitical adversaries did not take the opportunity to pounce on us in our Biden-induced weakness. They wouldn't dare do that now.

    Say what you want about tariffs, but one thing is blindingly evident: it is utter folly to be dependent on one's enemies for such essentials as pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, to mention just two classes of goods we cannot do without. And say what you want about Trump, but he alone has the cojones to end this insane dependency. The Dems are for it, and the Republicans would only talk about it. Too bad the moniker 'Big Balls' is already taken . . . . 

    Bill Vallicella

    4 responses to “April 15th: “Render unto Caesar . . . .””

  • The Psychology of the Pollyanna . . .

    . . . and the political ponerology of Leftism.

    A Substack article from exactly one year ago.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?

    Wherein I shovel some (un?)seriously scientistic caca into the sewer of nada.

    Bill Vallicella

    4 responses to “Why Do Some Physicists Talk Nonsense about Nothing?”

  • Five Current U. S. Protestant Political Outlooks

    "There are currently five major streams of Protestant political outlook and activism."

    1) The old Religious Left

    2) The old Religious Right

    3) The neo-Anabaptist Left

    4) MAGA Christianity

    5) TheoBro Right

    Finally, there is the TheoBro right, which wants a Christian confessional state that legally privileges Christianity as the only remedy for defeating the Left. Some of its leaders openly denounce voting rights for women as a liberal, modern corruption that undermines the family. Its denizens are not very numerous but have a high profile through social media. And its influence exceeds its numbers because it is aligned with much of MAGA Christianity. Its chief literature is Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. Many of its followers descend from Calvinist entrepreneur Doug Wilson of Moscow, Idaho. The American Reformer is its chief online exponent.

    Bill Vallicella

  • List and Precision Obsession

    You are list-obsessive if you write down an already completed task just so you can cross it off your list. You are precision-obsessive if you point out that a task, completed or not, is not the sort of thing that can be crossed off a list.

    An admirable concern for precision can veer off into pedantry, punctiliousness, preciosity.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Sorry Gottlob, Sorry Bertrand

    Attributes are at the things to which they are attributed. Existence, then, is in a broad sense  an attribute of existing items despite adding nothing to the quiddity of the thing to which it is attributed apart from its capacity to have a quiddity.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Trial of the Century?

    Certainly not the O. J. Simpson trial!

    Top o' the Stack.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Why are Israelis so Happy?

    Here

    Bill Vallicella

    12 responses to “Why are Israelis so Happy?”

Philosophy Weblogs

Other Websites