Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Soul Food

    People are generally aware of the importance of good nutrition, physical exercise and all things health-related. They understand that what they put into their bodies affects their physical health.  Underappreciated is a truth just as if not more important: that what one puts into one's mind affects one's mental and spiritual health. The soul has its foods and its poisons just as the body does. This   simple truth, known for centuries, goes unheeded while liberals fall all over each other climbing aboard the various environmental and health bandwagons. 

    Second-hand smoke the danger of which is negligible much exercises our leftist pals while the soul-destroying toxicity of the mass 'entertainment' media concerns them not at all.

    Why are those so concerned with physical toxins so tolerant of cultural toxins? This is another example of what I call misplaced moral enthusiasm. You worry about global warming and side stream smoke when you give no thought to the soul, its foods, and its poisons?

    ……………………….

    Dave Bagwill comments:

    I'm sure you're acquainted with Lewis' take:
     
    "C. S. Lewis sets the scene in Mere Christianity: The theater lights dim, the band begins to play softly and sensuously as a man enters from stage left carrying a silver tray which is covered by a white cloth. He walks to the middle of the stage and begins dancing lewdly before setting the tray with the white cloth on a table. He whirls his hands over his head and then moves slowly and deliberately as he slides the cover off the silver tray. In the middle of the tray is a pork chop. 

    “Would not you think that something has gone wrong in that culture about food?” He asked.

    Of course, his seventy-year-old vision has come true in America today. From the Food Channel to “Chopped,” we are strangely twisted and out of control with our love for food."

    https://www.crosswalk.com/church/pastors-or-leadership/ask-roger/7-reasons-we-struggle-with-gluttony.html

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: An Alternative Dylan Top Ten

    As promised last week. 

    Baby Let Me Follow You Down, 1962. From Bob's first album. Lord almighty it is good to hear this again. Dylan played better guitar and harmonic in the early days.  The surging, full-throated harp beats the sometimes-annoying tweets and toots of his later harmonic playing.  Dylan opens by telling us that he learned this song from Rick [Eric] von Schmidt when he met him one day in "the green pastures of Harvard University." Was he thinking of Woody Guthrie's Pastures of Plenty, 1944? Dylan's effort  apparently derives from von Schmidt's Baby Let Me Lay it on You. 

    Here is a real gem of a find: Bob Dylan Jamming with Eric von Schmidt, May, 1964.  Eric von Schmidt, Envy the Thief. Back to the Dylan top ten.

    Blowin' in the Wind. From the Freewheelin' album, Bob's second. His best civil rights anthem. Topical but allusive.

    A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. Also from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.  Said to have been written during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962. I remember it like it was yesterday.  Joan Baez's transcendently beautiful cover. Forgive me if I gush a bit. I'm enjoying a Saturday night cocktail: Tequila + Aperol. Straight up.

    Positively Fourth Street. The ultimate put-down song.

    With God on Our Side. From the third album.

    Spanish Harlem Incident. Fourth album, We'll make do with the Byrds' cover. Not that it isn't good.

    Its All Over Now, Baby Blue. Fifth album, probably my favorite.  This one goes out to Charaine H., and our bittersweet relationship.

    Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you
    Forget the dead you've left, they will not follow you
    The vagabond who's rapping at your door
    Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
    Strike another match, go start anew
    And it's all over now, baby blue.

    It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding. Going to a Dylan concert in those days was like going to church. Absolute silence except for the man on stage standing alone singing his own songs and accompanying himself on guitar and harp. We hung on every word.

    It Take a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry. From Dylan's 6th album, Highway 61 Revisited.

    I Want You. Blonde on Blonde, Dylan's 7th.

    All Along the Watchtower, John Wesley Harding.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Are the Dead Subject to Harm?

    Suppose the executrix of my will fails to disburse the funds I have earmarked for the local food bank after my death and instead heads for Las Vegas with the loot. Has she harmed me? Stolen my money? Violated my wishes?

    Substack latest.

    I can't eat a no-longer-existent sandwich or kick a no-longer-existent ball. How then can she harm a no-longer-existent man?  

    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “Are the Dead Subject to Harm?”

  • Validity and Anaphora

    The following argument appears valid:

    Some deity is called 'Zeus.'
    Zeus is wise.
    Therefore, some deity called 'Zeus' is wise. (D. E. Buckner, Reference and Identity, 118)

    Now if an argument is valid, it is valid in virtue of its logical form.  What is the logical form of the above argument? The following argument-form, Buckner correctly states, is invalid:

    Ex Fx
    Ga
    Ex (Fx & Gx)

    So if the form just depicted is the only available form of the original argument, then the validity of the argument cannot be simply a matter of logical form. And this is what Buckner concludes: "It is clearly the anaphoric connection between the premisses that makes the argument valid, but no such connection exists in the formalized version of the argument. "(119)

    Buckner seems to be arguing as follows:

    a) The original argument is valid. 

    b) The only form it could possibly have is the one depicted above.

    c) The argument-form depicted is plainly invalid.

    Therefore

    d) The validity of the original argument cannot be due to its logical form, but must be due to the anaphoric connection between its premises.

    I do not find this argument rationally compelling. (b) is rejectable.  I suggest that the original argument is an enthymeme the logical form of which is the following:

    1) For some x, x is called 'a.'
    2) For any x, if x is called 'a,' then x =a.
    3) a is G.
    Therefore
    4) For some x, (x is called 'a' and x is G).

    Bill Vallicella

    14 responses to “Validity and Anaphora”

  • Would Naturalism Make Life Easier?

    Substack latest, for popular consumption, sans technical minutiae.

    Do I imagine that what I serve up at Substack will improve the world? I am none too sanguine about that, but if it brings a bit of light into a few heads, then it is worth doing. Perhaps it will distract you from your silly distractions and ignite a few questions. It is never too late to get serious. But it is later than you think, and the Reaper Man is sharpening his scythe as we speak. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Who is Caius?

    Robert Paul Wolff here replies with wit and lefty snark to a charming request by one Pamela N., a personal assistant, who wants to know who Immanuel Kant is referring to when he writes, "Caius is a man; man is mortal; therefore, Caius is mortal."  Pamela confesses,

    I will admit, I have not read Kant's works. I have, however, spent the last couple of hours combing through post after post after post about this particular quote from the book and cannot find a single soul who would say who they think Caius is.

    In reading these many posts, I have come to the conclusion that Kant is probably referring to Pope Caius as he has been venerated by the Catholic Church as a Saint. Given that title, and the fact that Saint's [sic] are given to [sic] a quasi-immortal status [sic], I have ascertained that this is who Kant is most likely referring to. My question for you is, do you think that my assumption is correct? or do you have a deeper insight into who he is referring to?

    Bill Vallicella

  • Clarity and Agreement

    Agreement on matters of moment, religious, political, and philosophical, seems out of reach. But we may be able to reach clarity about our respective positions on the issues that divide us.  That's what I used to think.  I used to think that clarity is attainable even if agreement is not.  But now I think that things are worse than I thought.

    For the attaining of clarity requires agreement on what the issues are: we have to agree on the identity of the issues  and how they are to be formulated. Do we agree on the issues and questions? Do we agree about what we are asking when we ask whether God exists? Or whether there are rights? Or whether the USA is systemically racist? Or whether there is climate change? The depth of disagreement may be such that we cannot attain clarity.  It may be that neither agreement nor clarity  are attainable goals. Philosophers often disagree about what they are disagreeing about. I need to adduce  further examples.

    Agreed then both wrong

    Bill Vallicella

  • Almost Mugged in the Big Easy

    I came close to being mugged in New Orleans' French Quarter in '90 or '91. I was there to read  a paper at an American Philosophical Association meeting.  Early one morning I left the hotel to sample the local color and grab some breakfast. Striding along Bourbon street, I noticed a couple of black dudes on the other side of the street.  I was wearing a beret, which may have suggested to the loiterers that I was a foreigner and an easy mark. One dude approached and commented on my shoes in an obvious attempt to distract me and throw me off my guard. My situational awareness saved me. That, together with my stern mien, height, leather jacket and purposeful stride.  I gave the punk a hard look, increased my pace, and blew him off.

    Profiling is part of situational awareness. Profiling is just common sense, which is why 'progressive' fools oppose it. A couple of black youths loitering in a touristy area are probably up to no good. It is a well-known fact that blacks as a group and more criminally prone than whites as a group. There is nothing racist about pointing that out because a fact about race is not a racist fact.  It cannot be racist to speak the truth in situations where it is important that the truth be spoken. But if common sense and truth-telling make me a racist, then we should all be racists, including decent black folk. 

    Bourbon Street Nawlins

    Bill Vallicella

  • Self-Admonitions

    Arm yourself with your maxims as you quit your cell. They are as important as your EDC. The vexatious and worse are out and about. Avoid the near occasion of idle talk. Most of what anyone has to say is bushwa. Smile and greet, but pass on. Restrain the social need — if it is a need. Keep the past at mental arm's length.  Live in the present, relaxed, but situationally aware. Guard the mind. Protect the inner citadel from pointless and harmful invasions.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Good Relations and Deep Relations

    Given the limitations of our postlapsarian predicament, good relations with others must needs be limited relations. Familiarity breeds contempt. Propinquity militates against politeness. Conservatives understand that a certain formality in our relations with others, both within and without the family, helps maintain respect. Formality helps keep in check the incivility bred of familiarity.  Reserve has a preservative effect.   Saying less more often accrues to our benefit than saying more. How often have you brought trouble upon your head by simply keeping your mouth shut? 

    So much for good relations. Deep relations are another story. In them we court danger. We go deep, we probe, we 'let it all hang out' after midnight of the work-a-day round. You should run the risk from time to time.  Risk rejection and worse. Otherwise, when it comes time to die, you won't be able to say that you really squeezed the fruit of the lemon tree. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • A Groundless Stereotype about Stereotypes

    Not all stereotypes are negative; some are positive. And not all stereotypes lack a fundamentum in re; some are based in reality. I just made two distinctions. 

    It is a stereotype both negative and without a foundation in reality that all stereotypes lack a foundation in reality.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Principles of Jewish Buddhism

    Here

    Bill Vallicella

  • Logical Form, Equivocation, and Propositions

    A re-post with minor edits and additions from 4 September 2017.

    ………………………………..

    Ed Buckner wants to re-fight old battles. I'm game. The following post of his, reproduced verbatim, just appeared at Dale Tuggy's site:

    The concept of logical form is essential to any discussion of identity, and hence to any discussion of the Trinity. Here is a puzzle I have been discussing with the famous Bill Vallicella for many years.

    (Argument 1) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’

    (Argument 2) ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’

    My puzzle [is] that the first argument is clearly not valid if the first ‘Cicero’ means the Roman, the second the American town, yet the argument seems to instantiate a valid form. Bill objects that if there is equivocation, then the argument really has the form ‘a is F, therefore b is F’, which fails to instantiate a valid form.

    I then ask what is the form of. Clearly not of the sentences, since the sentences do not include the meaning or the proposition. Is it the form of the proposition expressed by the sentences? But then we have the problem of the second argument, where both ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid. But I think no one would agree that the second argument is valid.

    So logical form does not belong to the sentences, nor to the propositions expressed by them. So what is it the form of?

    Tully'sMy answer is that the logical form of the argument is the form of the Fregean propositions expressed by the sentences that make up the argument. Let me explain.

    I agree with Ed that logical form is not the form of an array of sentence-tokens. It is rather the form of an array of propositions expressed by the sentences. (To be painfully precise: it is the form of an array of propositions expressed by the assertive utterance, and thus the tokening, of a series of sentence-types by a speaker or thinker on a given occasion. A sentence-token buried in a book does not express anything by itself!)

    To solve Ed's puzzle we need to distinguish three views of propositions: the Aristotelian, the Fregean, and the Russellian. This would be a good topic for an extended post. Here I will be brief.  Brevity is the soul of blog.

    An Aristotelian proposition is an assertively uttered meaningful sentence in the indicative mood that expresses a complete thought.  What makes such a proposition 'Aristotelian' as opposed to 'Platonic' is that the meaning of the sentence is not something that can subsist on its own apart from the assertive tokening of the sentence.  The meaning of the sentence depends on its being expressed, whether in overt speech or in thought, by someone. And this expression must be thoughtfully done and not mindlessly like a parrot or a voice synthesizer. If there were no minds there would be no Aristotelian propositions. And if there were no languages there would be no Aristotelian propositions. In this sense, Aristotelian propositions are linguistic entities.

    In brief: An Aristotelian proposition is just a declarative sentence in use together with its dependent sense or meaning. Suppose I write a declarative sentence on a piece of paper. The Aristotelian proposition is not the string of physical marks on the paper, nor it is the producing of the marks; it is the marks as produced by a minded organism on a particular occasion together with the meaning those marks embody where meaning is first in the mind and only then embodied in the marks.

    A Fregean proposition is a nonlinguistic entity that subsists independently of minds and language. It is the sense (Sinn) of a declarative sentence (Satz) from which indexical elements have been extruded. For example, 'I am blogging'  does not express a Fregean proposition because of the indexical 'I' and because of the present tense of the verb phrase.  But 'BV blogs at 10:50 AM PST on 4 September 2017' expresses a Fregean proposition.

    Fregean senses are extralinguistic and extramental 'abstract' or 'Platonic' items. They are not in time or space even when the objects they are about are in time and space. This is what makes Fregean propositions 'Platonic' rather than 'Aristotelian.' Fregean propositions are the primary truth-bearers; the sentences that express them are derivatively true or false.  Likewise with the judgments whose content they are.

    A Russellian proposition is a blurry, hybrid entity that combines some of the features of a Fregean truth-bearer and some of the features of a truth-maker. A Russellian proposition does not reside at the level of sense (Sinn) but at the level of reference (Bedeutung).  It is out there in the (natural) world. It is what some of us call a fact or 'concrete fact' (as in my existence book) and others, e.g. D. M. Armstrong,  a state of affairs.  

    Now consider a singular sentence such as 'Ed is happy.'  For present purposes, the crucial difference between a Fregean proposition and a Russellian proposition is that, on the Fregean view, the subject constituent of Ed is happy is not Ed himself with skin and hair, but an abstract surrogate that represents him in the Fregean proposition, whereas in the Russellian proposition Ed himself is a constituent of the proposition!  

    We needn't consider why so many distinguished philosophers have opted for this (monstrous) view.  But this is the view that seems to have Ed in its grip and that powers his puzzle above.

    If we take the relatively saner (but nonetheless problematic) view that propositions are Fregean in nature, then the puzzle is easily solved.

    Ed asks: What is the logical form the form of?  He maintains, rightly, that it cannot be the form of an array of sentences. So it must be the form of an array of propositions. Right again. But then he falls into puzzlement: 

    . . . ‘Cicero’ and ‘Tully’ mean the same man. Then the man is contained in both propositions, and if the form is of the proposition, the argument has the true form ‘a is F, so a is F’, which is valid.

    The puzzlement disappears if we reject the Russsellian theory of propositions. A man cannot be contained in a proposition, and so it cannot be the same man in both propositions.

    ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. Its form is: Rc, ergo Rt, which is an invalid form. If we adopt  either an Aristotelian or a Fregean view of propositions we will not be tempted to think otherwise.

    ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Cicero is a Roman’ is plainly valid. ‘Cicero is a Roman, therefore Tully is a Roman’ is plainly invalid. The logical forms are different! If, on a Russellian theory of propositions, the forms are the same, then so much the worse for a Russellian theory of propositions!

    Bill Vallicella

    4 responses to “Logical Form, Equivocation, and Propositions”

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: My Bob Dylan Top Ten

    Hector C. asked me to name my top ten favorite Dylan songs. With pleasure.

    Don't Think Twice.  I first heard this in the Peter, Paul, and Mary version circa 1962 or '63. Deeply moved by it, I bought the 45 rpm single and noted that the song was written by one B. Dylan. I pronounced the name to myself as 'Dial in' and had a sense that this songwriter was about to speak to me and my life.  And here he is still speaking to my 'lived experience' 60 years later.

    She Belongs to Me

    Chimes of Freedom.  With Joan Osborne, NOT Joan Baez!  Byrds' version.  No Dylan, no folk rock.

    My Back Pages

    It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

    Farewell Angelina. Joanie's version. No Baez, no Dylan. She took the scruffy kid under her wing and introduced him to her well-established audience.  

    Visions of Johanna

    Just Like a Woman.  Better than the Blonde on Blonde version.  

    Tambourine Man

    Few songs capture the 'magic' of the '60s like this one. But you had to have been there, of a certain impressionable age, with the right disposition, with an open mind, and an open heart, idealistic, a seeker, and at least a little alienated from the larger society and the quiet desperation and dead usages of parents and relatives . . . .

    YouTuber comment:  "This Bob Dylan song brings me to tears and I don't know why. I'm 76 years old and remember when it was new. It still is." Comment on the comment:  "This is a nostalgic feeling for the passing of the time. A saudade of a time whose dreams seem  real. I know about it. I'm 71."

    Not Dark Yet. YouTuber comment: "All my life, Dylan has been able to touch my soul. This is undoubtedly one of his best."

    An alternative Dylan top ten next week.

    Bill Vallicella

  • John Anderson: “We are all bothered by different things.”

    One of the nasty roots of political disagreement. Over at Substack

    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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