Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Man is a Project

    To believe in oneself is to believe beyond the evidence.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Honor thy Mother

    Our biological mothers bore us into the world of matter; the mother tongue into the realm of objective spirit. Both deserve respect and honor, the latter more so than the former inasmuch as the spirit is higher than the flesh.  What the mother tongue  receives from the matricidal Left is neglect and abuse and Orwellian subversion and distortion. Ingratitude and retromingency are marks of the leftist. To the Left's retromingency in point of pissing on the past I now add the retromingency of the Left's pollution of the headwaters of its expressivity.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Let it Go and Move on

    Let the past go and move on. Pack as much life as possible into the few years that remain. Squeeze in as much vital thinking and thoughtful vitality as you can. Move up and away from your vices. Consign your hebetude to history. Break useless contacts. Keep your nose to the grindstone. Mill the grist. Press the grapes of experience  for the wine of wisdom. A philosopher's harvest years come late. The clock is running. The format is sudden death. The time control is unknown. The Reaper waits, he is patient, his scythe aglisten in the dying rays of the setting sun. There is work to be done, and it can only be done here. Get on with it, noble soul!

    Bill Vallicella

  • Parallel Problems of God and Evil, Mind and Matter

    For Bradley Schneider.

    …………………………………..

    It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are collectively logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both (objectively) true, then they are collectively logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be collectively logically consistent. This is so whether or not anyone, any finite or ectypal intellect,  is in a position to explain how it is possible that they be logically consistent. It is presumably otherwise with the intellectus archetypus. 

    For if such-and-such is the case, then, by the time-honored principle ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it is possible that it be the case, and my inability, or any mortal's inability, to explain how it is possible that it be the case cannot count as a good reason for thinking that it is not the case. There is no valid move from ignorance as to how something is possible to its not being possible. Such an inferential move would be tantamount to the ad ignorantiam fallacy. So if it is the case that God exists and Evil exists are collectively logically consistent, then this is possibly the case, and a theist's inability to explain how God and evil can coexist is not a good reason for him to abandon his theism — or his belief in the existence of objective evil.

    The logical point I have just made is rock-solid.  I now apply it to two disparate subject-matters. The one is the well-known problem of evil faced by theists, the problem of reconciling the belief that God exists with the belief that evil exists.  The other is the equally well-known 'problem of mind' that materialists face, namely, the problem of reconciling the existence of the phenomena of mind with the belief that everything concrete is material.

    The theist is rationally entitled to stand pat in the face of the 'problem of evil' and point to his array of arguments for the existence of God whose cumulative force renders rational his belief that God exists. Of course, he should try to answer the atheist who urges the inconsistency of God exists and Evil exists; but his failure to provide a satisfactory answer is not a reason for him to abandon his theism. A defensible attitude would be: "This is something we theists need to work on."  Or he could simply repeat (something like) what I said above, namely, "True propositions are (collectively) logically consistent;  this is so whether or not  a mortal man can explain how they are jointly true; I have good grounds for believing  both that God exists and that evil exists; I am therefore under no doxastic obligation to surrender my theism."

    Bill Vallicella

  • Civility

    Civility is no virtue if a cover for cowardice.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Ancient Eyes and Old Souls

    The eyes of the elderly are rarely the windows of old souls; in most they bespeak vacancy. Either aging has dirtied the panes or else there was little or no soul behind them to begin with.

    Bill Vallicella

  • History

    History may have lessons to teach us, but we don't agree on what they are; so we learn nothing usefully applicable to the present.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Women and Girls

    Where would we be without them? Languishing in the sphere of the merely possible. On the other hand, "Pretty girls make graves." (Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums)

    Roy Orbison, Pretty Woman. Mercy! See how many of the sidemen you can identify. A great song that blends the the tender & romantic with the thrustingly Dionysian.

    Bob Dylan, Just Like a Woman. I won't say anything, lest I gush, my romanticism loosened by a delicious blend of tequila and Campari.  The polished Blonde on Blonde version. Van Morrison pays tribute here.

    Bob Dylan, Girl from the North Country

    Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl. This one goes out to Kathy H.

    Aretha Franklin, Natural Woman. Written by Carole King. Her version.

    Rolling Stone, Honky Tonk Woman

    Santana, Black Magic Woman

    Eric Clapton, Have You Ever Loved a Woman?

    Ray Charles, I Got a Woman, 1954

    Peter and Gordon, Woman 

    Elvis Presley, Santa Lucia

    Andrea Bocelli, Ave Maria (Franz Schubert)

    And many more . . . .

    Bill Vallicella

  • Was Kyle Rittenhouse a Vigilante?

    I have been known to refer to David French as a useful idiot in the sense usually attributed to V. I. Lenin, but I won't repeat that legitimate charge here. I'll just say that French is exasperating in the Trump-hating pseudo-conservative style of David Brooks, George F. Will, Bill Kristol, Mona Charen and the rest of the all-talk-and-no-action bow tie brigade.   Here is French in The Atlantic,  publication in which is a good tip-off as to one's political stance:

    When Kyle Rittenhouse walked the streets of Kenosha in the midst of urban unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake holding a rifle in the “patrol carry” or “low ready” position, similar to the positions used by soldiers walking in towns and villages in war zones, without any meaningful training, he was engaged in remarkably dangerous and provocative conduct. But that dangerous and provocative conduct did not eliminate his right of self-defense, and that self-defense claim is the key issue of his trial, not the wisdom of his vigilante presence.

    French fails to note that the police shooting of Blake was justified inasmuch as the black criminal with an impressive rap sheet refused to obey police commands and pulled a knife on the officer. French is undoubtedly aware of the lethality of knives and indeed that their lethality is in some circumstances in excess  of that of a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. But let that pass.

    Note the phrase "vigilante presence." A vigilante is someone who takes the law into his own hands. But the authorities had abdicated and  Kenosha was at the time lawless. Someone who defends life, liberty, and property in a Hobbesian state of nature against armed barbarian arsonists, looters, and potential murderers is arguably not a vigilante. But of course it depends on how one defines 'vigilante.' 

    If a citizen shoots a home invader who threatens death or grave bodily harm to the home's occupants, no one calls that a vigilante action even though the citizen has taken crime prevention and law enforcement into his own hands.   The law makes an entirely reasonable exception in a case like this thereby suspending in such circumstances its monopoly on the use of force in law enforcement and crime prevention. This exception allows for others. When the authorities abdicate, they no longer can claim to have a monopoly on the use of force since they have refused to employ force in the upholding of the law. So it falls to the citizen.  When the authorities are in dereliction of duty, their authority evaporates.

    It is thus a cheap slander on the part of French to tar Rittenhouse with the pejorative 'vigilante.'   Later in the article,

    But there is also an immense difference between quiet concealed carry and vigilante open carry . . . .

    Two points. French is suggesting that open carry, as such, is a vigilante action. It is not, although it is inadvisable in most circumstances. If that is not what French wanted to imply, then he is a sloppy writer. Second, Rittenhouse was out to deter the thugs and concealing his weapon would not have had that effect! 

    Can you appreciate why someone would consider French to be a useful idiot? Instead of standing up for the rule of law and condemning both the politicians who want to defund the police, and the leftist prosecutors who refuse to prosecute criminals, he wastes his energy attacking an idealistic. good-hearted  17- year-old  boy who bravely if unwisely stood up against the barbarians. The net effect is to give aid and comfort to those French ought to be opposing. Like Rod Dreher and others, he doesn't understand that he has to take a side here and that it is impossible to float above the fray as if he were a transcendental spectator with no stake in the outcome.

    The question to put to French is: Which side are you on?

    Related: David French, Christianity, and Politics

    Bill Vallicella

  • Civil Liability for Gun Manufacturers?

    Of course not! Substack latest.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom

    Substack latest.

    I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds. In late antiquity, Aurelius Augustinus offered a critique of the Stoics in Book XIX, Chapter 4 of The City of God, a critique worthy of being called classical. We will have to examine that critique one of these days. But today I want to draw your attention to some passages from Chapter 10, Section 4 of Louis Lavelle's The Dilemma of Narcissus (Allen & Unwin, 1973, tr. Gairdner):

    Read the rest.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Climate Bluster

    A redacted version of a Facebook entry from about a year ago. 
     
    ………………………………..
     
    He who does not know is inclined to pretend. A world of ignorance is a world of bluster. One species thereof is climate bluster. "The science is settled!" It is not. What is settled, but only among leftists, is climate ideology. An ideology is a system of action-guiding beliefs. Beliefs needn't be true to guide and misguide action. 
     
    What drives climate ideology is hostility to individual liberty and its sine qua non, private property and free markets. Climate alarmism is part of the Left's socialist and totalitarian agenda. The ideological nature of the alarmism is betrayed in more than one way. One way is by the refusal of leftists to proffer an honest characterization of what they mean by 'climate change.' That there is climate change is a truism. But they are pushing either a falsehood or an extremely dubious thesis.  Objective truth and its subjective correlate, truthfulness, are not their concerns: leftists are out for power.  Their aims are practical, not theoretical: to change the world, not to understand it. (Marx) Ameliorative change presupposes understanding. The truth must take the lead. Leftists have it backwards: the truth is whatever empowers the agents of the agenda who aim to impose their will on reality (Nietzsche).
     
    Note the obfuscatory tactic: smuggle a substantive but extremely dubious claim under cover of the truism that climate changes.  Intellectual honesty is not a mark of ideologues.  It cannot be since 'truth' is whatever  is dictated by the needs of power. Another intellectually dishonest tactic employed by leftists is to accuse doubters of being deniers with such smears as 'climate denialism' when it is clear that to doubt a proposition is not to deny it. But the truth I just enunciated will be ignored by those for whom truth is not a binding norm. 
     
    Leftists mean by 'climate change' the conjunction of the following distinct claims. The Earth's climate is changing. The change is irreversibly in the direction of higher and higher temperatures of the Earth's oceans and land masses. The change is catastrophic for life on Earth. It is so catastrophic that extreme measures must be taken immediately, for example, the measures outlined in "The Green New Deal." The catastrophic change is imminent or near-imminent: such as to occur in 10-15 years. The etiology of this catastrophic change is well-understood. It is largely man-made: the anthropogenic causal factors are not minor, but major: they dwarf non-anthropogenic factors such as solar activity. The specific cause of anthropogenic climate change is also well-understood: carbon emissions.
     
    Now ask yourself: Are each of these claims individually plausible? No. Only the first is. And how plausible is this conjunction of claims? It is bound to be less plausible than the least plausible of them.  I humbly suggest that the Left's climate bluster is a lot of hot air.
     
    Should we reduce carbon emissions? Yes. And explore alternative sources of energy? Absolutely.
     
    What you have to understand is that for the Left, the (apparent) issue is never or hardly ever  the (real) issue. Leftists will make a crisis out of anything if it can be used to attack individual liberty and the private property and free markets that are its foundation. The real issue and goal is a "fundamental transformation" (Obama) of the USA into a socialist state. 
    Bill Vallicella

  • Questions about a Lukasiewicz Passage

    E. B. sent this:

    http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Logical_form_(Lukasiewicz)

    “When, for instance, asserting the implication 'If all philosophers are men, then all philosophers are mortal' you would also assert as second premiss the sentence 'Every philosopher is a man', you could not get from these premisses the conclusion 'All philosophers are mortal', because you would have no guarantee that the sentence 'Every philosopher is a man' represents the same thought as the sentence 'All philosophers are men'. It would be necessary to confirm by means of a definition that 'Every A is B' means the same as 'All A's are B's'; on the ground of this definition replace the sentence 'Every philosopher is a man' by the sentence 'All philosophers are men', and only then will it be possible to get the conclusion. By this example you can easily comprehend the meaning of formalism. Formalism requires that exactly the same thought should always be expressed by means of exactly the same series of words ordered in exactly the same manner.”

    My emphasis.

    Suppose we compare the following two argument displays:

    If all philosophers are men, then all philosophers are mortal
    All philosophers are men
    —-
    All philosophers are mortal.

    If every philosopher is a man, then all philosophers are mortal
    All philosophers are men
    —-
    All philosophers are mortal.

    Are they both valid, or is only the first valid? Lukasiewicz is telling us in effect that only the first is valid. No doubt the first is valid: it instantiates the valid argument form, modus ponendo ponens.  But then, by my lights, so does the second. So both arguments are valid.

    But it all depends on what we take an argument to be.  I hold that  an argument is not the same as an argument display. A necessary but not sufficient condition of anything's being an argument is that it be a sequence of propositions. A proposition is not the same as a sentence in the indicative mood. Die Sonne scheint and 'The sun shines' are two different indicative sentence tokens in two different  languages. And yet they 'say the same thing' or rather can be used by the same or different speakers to  say the same thing. We accommodate this fact by introducing a species of abstract object we call propositions or thoughts, the latter word used by L. above.  The sentences cited express one and the same proposition or thought.  Similarly with 'All philosophers are men' and 'Every man is a philosopher.' They express the same proposition.

    So above what we have are two different ways of displaying one and the same argument.  Since that argument instantiates a valid argument form, the argument is valid.

    Consider now these two argument displays:

    Omnis homo mortalis est
    Sokrates homo est
    ——-
    Sockrates mortalis est.

    Every man is mortal
    Socrates is a man
    —–
    Socrates is mortal.

    How many arguments? One or two? One. One and the same argument is expressed in two different languages.  I conclude that an argument is not the same a collection of sentences. Sentences are physical (marks on paper, pixels on a screen, acoustic disturbances); propositions are not. They are not seen with the eyes or heard with the ears or felt (as in Braille) with the fingers; they are understood by the mind. 

    Finally, L. speaks of  exactly the same series of words ordered in exactly the same manner.  Same words in the same order? But how do we know that the words are the same? Is it because they have the same letters in the same order?  By that criterion, 'war' in the following two sentences is the same word:

    Ich war ein Soldat.
    I went to war.

    But the two series of letters in the same order are not the same word. 

    Now consider this array:

    All philosophers are men.
    Philosophers are, all of them, men.
    Every philosopher is a man.

    These sentences 'say the same thing,' i.e., they express the same proposition or thought. I know that because I understand English.  To understand English is to understand the meanings of English words and sentences.  Meanings are understood by the mind not perceived by the sense organs.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Robert Lewis Dabney on Conservatism

    Dabney Robert LewisIt may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent: Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. . . . Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always when about to enter a protest very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its “bark is worse than its bite,” and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance: The only practical purpose which it now serves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it “in wind,” and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy, from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women’s suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been won, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position.

    1897

    Source: https://mildcolonialboy.wordpress.com/category/robert-lewis-dabney/

    Bill Vallicella

  • On Acquiring a Large Vocabulary

    But how useful in a society of semi-literates?

    Substack latest.

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

  1. Bill and Steven, I profited from what each of you has to say about Matt 5: 38-42, but I think…

  3. 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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