Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Homo Americanus: The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy in America

    Ordered yesterday, arrived today. That's what I call service. Only in America, but then what's with the 'wokery' of Bezos and the boys?  Turn the USA into a Soviet-style shithole and then what motive would anyone have to innovate? A bit of a paradox. Did the US defeat the SU to become SU 2?

    By Zbigniew Janowski.  I found the reference in Political Ponerology.  Afterword by Ryszard Legutko, the author of The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, Encounter Books, 2016, 2018. It entered my library on 14 February 2021, a gift from Brian Bosse.  

    Should we of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable be supporting Amazon with our purchases? I started a post on that question a while ago.  It languishes in the queue. 

    Delivered!

    Addendum. Dave Bagwill recommends Alistair Elder, The Red Trojan Horse: A Concise Analysis of Cultural Marxism, 2017. Also available via Amazon.

    Bill Vallicella

  • What Is Critical Race Theory?

    An explanation by James Lindsay that goes to the heart of the matter in less than three and one half minutes.

    I add the following which is an excerpt from my Substack article, Critical Race Theory Attracts the Uncritical.

    A key word in the CRT arsenal is 'equity.'

    'Equity' sounds good and so people are thoughtlessly for it. It is like 'social justice' in this respect. They don't realize that leftists, semantic distortionists nonpareil,  have hijacked a legitimate word so as to make it  refer to equality of outcome. Being uncritical, people don't appreciate that there is an important  difference between equality in its formal senses — equality before the law, equality of opportunity, equality in respect of political/civil rights, etc. — and equality of outcome or result. Formal equality is an attainable good. Material equality is unattainable because of group differences.  To achieve material or non-formal equality, equality of outcome, the means employed would be worse than the supposed cure.

    Given undeniable group differences, 'equity' does not naturally arise; hence the only way to achieve 'equity' is by unjustly taking from the productive and giving to the unproductive.  The levelers would divest the makers of what is rightfully theirs to benefit the undeserving takers. 'Equity' is unjust!  It is unjust to deny a super-smart Asian or Jew a place in an MIT engineering program because of a racial/ethnic quota.  Judging candidates by merit and achievement, however, naturally leads to the disproportional representation of Asians and Jews in such programs. That is a consequence that must be accepted. Candidates must be judged as individuals and not as members of groups.  Indeed, the superior black must take precedence over the inferior Asian or white, but not because he is black, but because he is superior. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

    I post what I like, and I like what I post. It's a nostalgia trip, and a generational thing. There's no point in disputing taste or sensibility, or much of anything else. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, stop thinking, and FEEL!

    Traveling Wilburys, End of Line, Extended Version

    "The best you can do is forgive."

    Who, Won't Get Fooled Again. Lyrics! 

    Gary U. S. Bonds, From a Buick Six. Sorry, Bob, but not even you can touch this version.

    Bob Dylan, It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes  a Train to Cry.  Cutting Edge Bootleg version.

    Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman.  This Cutting Edge take may be the best version, even with the mistakes. I'll say no more, lest I gush.

    Bob Dylan, Cold Irons Bound. The Bard never loses his touch. May he die with his boots on.

    Bob Dylan, Corrina, Corrina. And you say he can't sing in a conventional way?

    Moody Blues, Wildest Dreams. Nostalgia City.

    Johnny Cash, I've Been Everywhere, Man

    Soggy Bottom Boys, Man of Constant Sorrow

    Bill Vallicella

  • Ex-Leftist Tells All

    I have mentioned Michael Rectenwald (yes, that is how he spells his name) here and here. Tom Woods today tells the story of Rectenwald's move from Marx to Mises. I thank Tony Flood for the link. 

    Michael Rectenwald, formerly a professor at New York University, spent his life as a leftist — a self-described Marxist, in fact.

    When on Twitter he began to turn against the tactics and behavior we see routinely on the left, particularly on college campuses with their win-by-intimidation tactics, you know what happened: his leftist colleagues took it as an opportunity to examine that behavior carefully and open a dialogue with people of different views.

    Just kidding.

    You know that’s not what happened. That’s never what happens.

    Instead, they completely isolated him on campus. Out of one hundred colleagues, perhaps two would say hello to him. People would not even get in the elevator with him.

    They exiled him to the Russian department — where, he told me, people were told he was a bad person who was not to be spoken to.

    But would he necessarily abandon leftism, just because of bad treatment by leftists? After all, even under the Soviet Union there were plenty of cases of communists condemned to death by the Party who nevertheless continued to believe. “The Party is always right,” they said.

    Rectenwald is different.

    He spent his career writing in left-wing journals about left-wing ideas. He knows everything there is to know about postmodernism, deconstruction, and all the rest of it. He knows these folks and their ideas inside and out.

    And what happened to him at NYU caused him to reexamine all of it.

    He’s since been reading Ludwig von Mises and describes himself as a libertarian.

    “Three years ago I was writing critiques about the terminal decadence of capitalism,” he told me in one of his appearances on the Tom Woods Show, “and now I’m talking about the terminal decadence of Marxism from a libertarian perspective.”

    In response to the Marxist slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” Recentwald observes: “We know what that means: if you need a bullet in the head, you’ll get that.”

    Bill Vallicella

  • Reason

    Reason calls itself into question but often won't allow a challenge from anything other than reason. But if reason, despite its weakness, has the power to limit its reach and curb its pretensions, then it is strange indeed that it should not allow this power to other sources of insight such as faith, mystical intuition, and conscience.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Lecturer on Personal Identity Denied Honorarium

    Substack latest.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Spencer Case Reviews Dissident Philosophers

    At Quillette. The fair and thorough review concludes:

    Together, the essays collected in Dissident Philosophers offer a fascinating and valuable glimpse into the lives and minds of marginalized thinkers. The contributors explore some of the social pressures that enforce official and unofficial orthodoxies, and give some indication of the interesting research proposals that aren’t being pursued as a result. This timely volume should give thoughtful readers of all political persuasions a lot to chew on, even if they can’t swallow everything.

    A pdf of my contribution to the volume is available here.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Be Positive!

    Substack latest

    Bill Vallicella

  • Biden as Fitting Symbol of our Nation’s Decline

    Some of Joe Biden's personal attributes have national analogues in our general moral malaise, our infrastructural breakdown, our lunatic embrace of race-delusional 'critical' race theories and their noxious, anti-civilizational outgrowths such as 'ethno-mathematics,' our economic dependence on geopolitical adversaries for essentials . . . .

    Biden is corrupt morally, a brazen liar, a serial plagiarist, a grifter, and a political opportunist rooted in no discernible principle except that of self-promotion. Physically decrepit, he is also quite obviously  non compos mentis, not of sound mind. Even his supporters now admit his cognitive decline. Manipulated by others, he is a puppet on a string, many strings, pulled by unseen deep state operatives. Told what to say, he is more one dictated to than a dictator. But from time to time the puppet comes alive, goes off script, and blurts out something both stupid and dangerous, as when he recently spoke what is left of his mind: "Putin cannot remain in power!"

    This senile outburst has exacerbated the grave danger we and the whole world are now in. I shake my head as did Sean Hannity and Dan Bongino last night when Geraldo Rivera came to the fool's defense.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Portland Leftist Deplaned

    Here

    Bill Vallicella

  • Ernst Mach and the Shabby Pedagogue: On Belief De Se

    1. In The Analysis of Sensations (Dover, 1959, p. 4, n. 1) Ernst Mach (1838-1916) offers the following anecdote:

         Not long ago, after a trying railway journey by night, when I was
         very tired, I got into an omnibus, just as another man appeared at
         the other end. 'What a shabby pedagogue that is, that has just
         entered,' thought I. It was myself; opposite me hung a large
         mirror. The physiognomy of my class, accordingly, was better known
         to me than my own.

    Mach ErnstWhen Mach got on the bus he saw himself, but not as himself. His first thought was one expressible by 'The man who just boarded is a shabby pedagogue.' 'The man who just boarded' referred to Mach. Only later did Mach realize that he was referring to himself, a thought that he might have expressed by saying, 'I am a shabby pedagogue.'

    Clearly, the thought expressed by 'The man who just boarded is shabby' is distinct from the thought expressed by 'I am shabby.' After all, Mach had the first thought but not the second.  So they can't be the same thought.  And this despite the fact that the very same property is ascribed to the very same person by both sentences. The second thought is the content of a belief de se.  Such a belief is a belief about oneself as oneself.

    One can have a belief about oneself without having a belief about oneself as oneself.

    The difference emerges even more clearly if we alter the example slightly. Suppose Mach sees that the man who has just got on the bus has his fly open. He thinks to himself: The man who has just boarded has his fly open, a thought that leads to no action on Mach's part. But from the thought, I have my fly open, behavioral consequences ensue: Mach buttons his fly. Since the two thoughts have different behavioral consequences, they cannot be the same thought, despite the fact that they attribute the very same property to the very same person.

    But if they attribute the same property to the same person, what exactly is the difference between the two thoughts?

    Linguistically, the difference is that between a definite description ('the man who just boarded') and the first-person singular pronoun 'I.'   Since the referent (Frege's Bedeutung) is the same in both cases, namely Mach, one will be tempted to say that the difference is a difference in sense (Frege's Sinn) or mode of presentation (Frege's Darstellungsweise). Mach refers to himself in two different ways, a third-person objective way via a definite description, and a first-person subjective way via the first-person singular pronoun.

    If this is right, then although there are two different thoughts or propositions, one indexical and the other non-indexical, it might seem  that there need only be one fact in the world to serve as truth-maker for both, the fact of Mach's being shabby.  This is a non-indexical fact.  It might seem that reality is exhausted by non-indexical facts, and that there are no such indexical or perspectival facts as those expressed by 'I am shabby' or 'I am BV' or 'I am the man who just got on the bus.' Accordingly, indexicality is merely a subjective addition, a projection: it belongs to the world as it appears to us, not to the world as it is in itself, in reality.  On this approach, when BV says or thinks 'I,' he refers to BV  in the first-person way with the result that BV appears to BV under the guise of 'I'; but in reality there is no fact corresponding to 'I am BV.'

    2. But is this right? There are billions of people in the world and one of them is me. Which one?  BV! But if the view sketched above is correct, then it is not an objective fact that one of these people is me. That BV exists is an objective fact, but not that BV is me.  BV has two ways of referring to himself but there is only one underlying objective fact.  Geoffrey Maddell strenuously disagrees:

         If I am to see the world in a certain way, then the fact that the
         world seen in this way is apprehended as such by me cannot be part
         of the content of that apprehension. If I impose a subjective grid
         on the world, then it is objectively the case that I do so. To put
         it bluntly, it is an objective fact about the world that one of the
         billions of people in it is me. Mind and Materialism, 1988, p.
         119.)

    Maddell's point is that the first-person point of view is irreducibly real: it itself cannot be a subjective addition supplied from the first-person point of view. It makes sense to say that secondary qualities are projections, but it makes no sense to say that the first-person point of view is a projection. That which first makes possible subjective additions cannot itself be a subjective addition. That which is at the root of the very distinction between the for-us and the in-itself cannot be merely for-us. (Maddell might not approve of this last sentence of mine. It sounds a little 'Continental.')

    Consider the phenomenal redness of a stop sign. It makes sense to say that this secondary quality does not belong to the sign itself in reality, but is instead a property the sign has only in relation to a   perceiver. In this sense, secondary qualities are subjective. But to say that subjectivity itself, first-person perspectivity itself, is a subjective projection is unintelligible. It cannot belong to mere   appearance, but must exist in reality. As Madell puts it, "Indexical  thought cannot be analysed as a certain 'mode of presentation', for the fact that reality is presented to me in some particular way cannot be part of the way in which it is presented." (p. 120)

    3. Trouble for materialism. According to materialism, reality is exhausted by non-indexical physical facts. But we have just seen that  indexical thoughts are underpinned by indexical facts such as the fact of BV's being me. These facts are irreducibly real, but not physically real. Therefore, materialism is false: reality is not exhausted by  non-indexical physical facts.

    Romantic Postscript

    That most mysterious of all pronouns, the first-person singular, is the key, or one of them, to  the riddle of the universe. 

    Bill Vallicella

    4 responses to “Ernst Mach and the Shabby Pedagogue: On Belief De Se”

  • More on Pronouns: Reply to Claude Boisson

    Claude Boisson writes, and I respond in blue:

    From a strictly linguistic point of view, this:

    1) In the flow of discourse “pronouns” may indeed have anaphoric use, and sometimes cataphoric use (the “antecedent” being then what we should call a postcedent).

    Thus they are rightly called *pro*-nouns, or rather *pro*-noun phrases, given that they usually point to a NP in the left context, sometimes in the right context (After he had conquered Gaul, Julius Caesar marched on Rome).
     
    This use is internal to speech. 
    I have made these points myself though in different terms.  If we think of antecedency referentially as opposed to temporally/spatially, then the antecedent of 'he' in your example is 'Julius Caesar' despite the pronoun's appearing before/to the left  of 'Julius Caesar.'  Perhaps we could define the antecedent of a pronoun that has one, whenever/wherever it appears in a stretch of discourse, as the word or phrase that bears the burden of objective reference that the pronoun merely borrows. 
     
    For example, 'When he arrived at the bar, Tom Lush ordered a double Manhattan.' The antecedent (as I use the term) of the pronoun 'he' is the proper name 'Tom Lush.' While both the name and the pronoun refer objectively, i.e., extra-linguistically, the pronoun also 'refers back' or rather in this case 'refers forward' — horizontally if you will — to the name. But both words refer 'vertically' to the extra-linguistic domain (the 'world' in one sense of this polyvalent word); it is just that the objective reference of the pronoun is parasitic upon the objective reference of the name. By itself, the pronoun achieves no objective reference. It is the antecedent that gives the pronoun a reference and a particular, singular, extra-linguistic referent  That is how I see it. 
     
    My long-time sparring partner, Edward Buckner, sees things differently. For him all reference is intra-linguistic. That makes him a linguistic idealist by my lights. See this post of mine in which I discuss a bit of Buckner's theory. 
     
    I agree that the reference of the pronoun in your example, Claude, is intra-linguistic or "internal to speech" and writing too. But only in part. It also exhibits extra-linguistic reference. I would say that the extra-linguistic reference of a pronoun in cases like the one you cite is parasitic upon the reference of its antecedent: it borrows the extra-linguistic reference of the antecedent, whereas the reference of the antecedent — 'Julius Caesar' in your example — is unborrowed.
     
    Is there purely intra-linguistic reference? I should think so. Consider the following sentence from a piece of pure fiction:  'Tom's wife left him.'  The antecedent of  the pronoun 'him' is Tom.'  This back reference is purely intra-linguistic.  It is plausible to maintain  that the only reference exhibited by 'him' is back reference, and that 'him' does not pick up the extra-linguistic reference of 'Tom,' there being no such reference to pick up.  Then we would have case of purely intra-linguistic reference.
     
    There is also the point I made in my earlier post, namely, that in 'He who hesitates is lost,' 'he' has no antecedent/postcedent and is therefore not functioning as a pronoun, assuming that a pronoun is 'pro' a noun or name. I dubbed this use 'quantificational.' The pronoun 'he' can be removed. paraphrased away, without any loss of meaning. Thus: for any x, if hesitates, then x is lost. The variable 'x' bound by the universal quantifier does not refer to anything or anyone.  (Or should we say, with W. V. Quine, that the bound variable refers with "studied ambiguity"?)
     
    Elizabeth Anscombe in her important paper, "The First Person," (in Mind and Language, ed. Guttenplan, Oxford UP, 1975, p. 53) makes a closely related point when she tells us that "a singular pronoun may even be a variable (as in 'If anyone says that, he is a fool') — and hence not any kind of singular designation of an object."  Surely she is right. This is especially clear from the fact that there might be no person who says the foolish thing. A pronoun that functions as a quantifier in a given context is not functioning pronominally.
     
    2) But so-called “pronouns” also have a quite different use, a deictic use. They then point to entities in the environment, and outside discourse, speech.
     
    When you say “I”, you don’t need to take the trouble of referring to yourself as “William F. Vallicella” or “the person who is now talking”. This is a pro-Vallicella. When I say “I”, “I” is a pro-Boisson. It is a pro-X, with X ranging over human beings, gods, and even animals, plants or things in fairy tales, fables, “myths”…
     
    I basically agree. I would put the point by saying that, in addition to strictly pronominal and quantificational uses, grammatical pronouns also have indexical uses. Suppose I point to Peter and say

    He smokes cigarettes.

    This is an indexical use of 'he.'  Part of what makes it an indexical use is that its reference depends on the context of utterance: I utter a token of 'he' while pointing at Peter, or nodding in his direction.  Another part of what makes it an indexical is that it refers directly, not just in the sense that the reference is not routed through a description or sense associated with the use of the pronoun, but also in that there is no need for an antecedent to secure the reference.  Now suppose I say

    I smoke cigars.

    This use of 'I' is clearly indexical, although it is a purely indexical (D. Kaplan) inasmuch as there is no need for a demonstration:  I don't need to point to myself when I say 'I smoke cigars.'  And like the immediately preceding example, there is no need for an antecedent to nail down the reference of 'I.'  Not every pronoun needs an antecedent to do a referential job.

    In fact, it seems that no indexical expression, used indexically, has or could have an antecedent.  Hector-Neri Castaneda puts it like this:

    Whether in oratio recta or in oratio obliqua, (genuine) indicators have no antecedents. ("Indicators and Quasi-Indicators" reprinted in The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, p. 67)

     
    3) As far as I am aware, and notably, the same entities economically serve both ends in (all?) languages. But I may very well be mistaken. It would be interesting if there were a language with two sets of words, one for personal ana/cata-phora, and one for personal deixis. Surely some linguists must have asked that question before. What can a philosopher make of this?
     
    It is not clear to me what you are now suggesting, Claude.  The semantics of the first-person singular pronoun, used indexically, is extremely tricky.  This entry is already too long, and so I will end with a question. Suppose that WFV assertively utters a token of 'I smoke cigars.'  One might naturally think that the I-sentence can be replaced, not only salva veritate, but also salva significatione, with 'WFV smokes cigars.'  Now it is clear that both sentences have the same truth-conditions. But do they have the same sense?  To take a simpler example, the following two sentences have the same truth-conditions:
    I am WFV (asserted by WFV)
    and
    WFV is (identical to) WFV.
    But do they have the same sense?  Hint: if anyone other than WFV makes the first assertion, he lies.  But everyone who makes the second assertion tells the truth.
    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “More on Pronouns: Reply to Claude Boisson”

  • Word of the Day: Prodromal

    From 'prodrome,' a premonitory symptom of disease.

    Etymology: French, literally, precursor, from Greek prodromos, from pro- before + dromos act of running, racecourse — more at PRO-, DROMEDARY

    Example of use found at Diogenes' Middle Finger:

    Now we are engaged in a prodromal civil war, and American constitutional democracy is the contest’s prize. The universities and the media, always diseased, have progressed from mischief into depravity. Various states are attempting to mandate that their schools teach critical race theory — that is racism — and elected leaders on the coasts have resigned their cities to thuggery and ruin. – David Mamet – Playwright and Screenwriter

    'Constitutional democracy' is right, not 'democracy'! Tucker Carlson take note.

    Never use 'democracy' sans phrase! 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Political Ponerology

    Ponerology is the theological study of evil. Political ponerology is thus the political-scientific study of evil. A tip of the hat to Tony Flood for referring me to this Mises Wire review by Michael Rectenwald of Andrew M. Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology.  I just now ordered a copy from Amazon.

    A new edition of Political Ponerology, by Andrew M. Łobaczewski, edited by Harrison Koehli, is now available on Amazon.1 This strange and provocative book argues that totalitarianism is the result of the extension of psychopathology from a group of psychopaths to the entire body politic, including its political and economic systems. Political Ponerology is essential reading for concerned thinkers and all sufferers of past and present totalitarianism. It is especially crucial today, when totalitarianism has once again emerged, this time in the West, where it is affecting nearly every aspect of life, including especially the life of the mind.

    [. . .]

    Speaking of ideology, Political Ponerology explains a phenomenon that had vexed me. How did Communist ideologues manage to convince the masses that they undertook their crimes for “the workers,” “the people,” or egalitarianism? But even more perplexing, how did the ideologues convince themselves that their crimes were for the good of the common man? Łobaczewski explains that totalitarian ideology operates on two levels; the terms of the original ideology are taken at face value by true believers, while the party insiders substitute secondary meanings for the same terms, and normal people are subjected to gaslighting. Only the cognoscenti, the psychopaths, know and understand the secondary meanings. They recognize that actions purportedly undertaken on behalf of “the workers” translate into the domination of the party and the state on behalf of the psychopaths themselves. The truth is the opposite of what the party insiders claim to be the case, and they know it. Political Ponerology thus explains the origin of “doublespeak,” which George Orwell portrays so well. Coincidentally, Łobaczewski finished Political Ponerology in 1984.

    [. . .]

    Łobaczewski argues that an adequate study of totalitarianism had hitherto been impossible because it had been undertaken in the wrong registers. It had been treated strictly in terms of economics, literature, ideology studies, history, religion, political science, and international politics, among other approaches. One is reminded of the literary accounts and studies of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and Nazi Germany—of the classic works by Hannah Arendt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Václav Benda, Václav Havel, and many others. These made indispensable contributions but had, owing to no fault of their own, necessarily failed to grasp the root of the problem—namely, the psychopathological dimension of the inception and development of “pathocracy,” or rule by psychopaths.

    The responses of normal human beings to the gross injustices and disfigurement of reality perpetrated by the ruling bodies had hitherto only been understood by members of the social body in terms of conventional worldviews. Emotionality and moral judgments blinded victims to what beset them. The deficiencies in the approaches of scholars, as well as the moralism of laypersons, had left pathocracy essentially misapprehended and likewise left humanity without any effective defenses against it. Łobaczewski redresses these deficiencies and provides these defenses. In this sense—that is, in using a scientific methodology to treat socialism—Łobaczewski’s work is analogous to Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, first published one hundred years ago.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Politics and Ridicule in a Post-Consensus Age

    Substack latest.

     

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

  2. Hi Bill Addis’ Nietzsche’s Ontology is readily available on Amazon, Ebay and Abebooks for about US$50-60 https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=addis&ch_sort=t&cm_sp=sort-_-SRP-_-Results&ds=30&dym=on&rollup=on&sortby=17&tn=Nietzsche%27s%20Ontology

  3. It’s unbelievable that people who work with the law are among the ranks of the most sophists, demagogues, and irrational…

  4. https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

  6. Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!

  7. Vini, Good comments. Your command of the English language is impressive. In my penultimate paragraph I wrote, “Hence their hatred…

  8. Just a little correction, since I wrote somewhat hastily. I meant to say enemies of the truth (not from the…

  9. You touched on very, very important points, Bill. First, I agree that people nowadays simply want to believe whatever the…

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