Substack latest
Bill and Steven, I profited from what each of you has to say about Matt 5: 38-42, but I think…
-
The Witness of Maximilian Kolbe
-
Back to the Intentionality/Reference Discussion
Returning to the ongoing thread:
So to summarise the discussion so far. The doctrine of Reference and Identity is that empty names can refer. That is because the verb phrase ‘refers to’ is intentional. That is, “S refers to N” is consistent with “there is no such thing as N”. Contrast with “S touches N” which implies there is such a thing as N.
[. . .]
Do you see any problem with that position?
When you say, "empty names can refer," do you mean that some empty names refer and some empty names do not refer? Or do you mean that all empty names refer? (Compare: If I said that integers can be either odd or even, that would be equivalent to saying that some integers are odd and some are even.)
I will assume that you mean that all empty names refer. You say that this is because 'refers to' is intentional. It is intentional in the very same way that thinking-of is intentional. To think is to think of something. But 'A thinks of N' is logically consistent with 'there is no such thing as N.' If I am thinking of Asmodeus, it does not follow that I am thinking of something that exists. So far, so good. Now I take it that you hold that the following are all logically equivalent where the substituends for 'N' are proper names such as 'Moses' and 'Asmodeus.'
- There is no such thing as N
- There exists no such thing as N
- It is not the case that there exists an x such that x = N
- It is not the case that some existing thing is identical to N
- It is not the case that something is identical to N
- No existing thing is identical to N
- Nothing is identical to N
- N is not a member of the class K of existing things.
- N is not a member of class K of things.
You are making the following additional assumptions. Everything exists. (Quine contra 'Wyman.') 'Is' and 'exists' have the same sense. 'Existential quantifier' and 'particular quantifier' are two different names for one and the same quantifier. 'N does not exist' says just this: it is not the case that something is identical to N.
Your view implies a contradiction:
1) Empty names such as 'Asmodeus' refer. (R & I, 9-10)
2) To refer is to refer to something. (R & I, 9-10)
Therefore
3) 'Asmodeus' refers to something. (As you explicitly state, ibid.)
4) In the case of 'Asmodeus,' an empty name, 'Asmodeus' refers to something that does not exist.
5) Everything exists. (There are no nonexistent things. 'Something does not exist' is contradictory.)
Therefore
6) 'Asmodeus' refers to nothing. (3, 4, 5)
Therefore
7) (3) and (6) are contradictories.
Therefore
8) One of your assumptions is false.
-
Philosophers as Bad Drivers?
Reader Riccardo writes,
I remember reading on your blog some time ago an hilarious post with an anecdote on Richard Swinburne. It was about the importance for philosophers of developing practical skills in addition to intellectual ones. In the same post you recounted how you and Swinburne were driving together to a conference and he was driving really really slow.I tried many times and in many ways, but i can't find that post anymore. Have you deleted it? If you haven't, could you help me find it?That entry, filed under Automotive, was published on 19 November 2016. Here it is again in a larger font, with Comments enabled. But it wasn't me and Swinburne who were driving together; had we been travelling together I would have insisted on driving. I would have listened to him discourse on the body and the immortal soul while I did my damndest to keep them connected.
………………………………………..
Just over the transom:
C.J. F. Williams told me a [Richard] Swinburne story. Swinburne offered to give him a lift to some philosophy conference, but warned him ‘I only drive at 30 miles an hour’. Christopher thought he meant that he strictly abided by the urban 30 mph speed limit, and accepted the lift.
It turned out that Swinburne never ever drove more than 30 mph, even on the freeway, where in the UK the limit is 70 mph. It took a while to get to there.
Slow is not safe on freeways. Swinburne is lucky to have lived long enough to be insulted by the Society of Christian Philosophers.
I have heard rumors to the effect that David Lewis was 'automotively challenged.'
My old friend Quentin Smith didn't drive at all.
One of the reasons that philosophers from Thales on have been the laughingstock of Thracian maids and other members of hoi polloi is that many of them are incompetent in practical matters.
Quentin was just hopeless in mundane matters. The tales I could tell, the telling of which loyalty forbids.
Me? I'm an excellent driver, a good cook, a pretty good shot, competent in elementary plumbing, electrical, and automotive change-outs and repairs, and well-versed in personal finance.
A life well-lived is a balanced life. You should strive to develop all sides of your personality: intellectual, spiritual, artistic, emotional, and physical.
Addenda
Here is an obituary of C. J. F. Williams by Richard Swinburne.
It came as news to me that Williams spent most of his life in a wheelchair. It testifies to the possibilities of the human spirit that great adversity for some is no impediment to achievement. I think also of Stephen Hawking, Charles Krauthammer, and FDR.
So stop whining and be grateful for what you have. You could be in a bloody wheelchair!
Related: C. J. F. Williams' Analysis of 'I Might Not Have Existed'
UPDATE (11/21/2016).
J. H. writes,
Your blog post "Philosophers as Bad Drivers?" brought back to memory a philosophy professor that I had as an undergrad and a story he told us about himself.
Dr. Ken Ferguson told us a story one day about his time in one of the branches of the military. While serving, an officer instructed him to move a jeep. Ferguson says he objected and explained to the officer that he simply could not drive. The officer wasn't sympathetic to his excuse and doubled down on his request. Ferguson said that he attempted to follow the orders and ended up wrecking the jeep and some other equipment. He was not asked to drive again.
Ferguson said that he simply does not drive. Multiple times I remember seeing him walking down one of the main streets leading to campus in what I suspect was a distance of at least over two miles in the morning, and while always wearing a full suit at that!
Thanks for the story! Ferguson is a counterexample to the famous Stirling Moss quotation: “There are two things no man will admit he cannot do well: drive and make love.”
One of the reasons philosophy and philosophers get such bad press among the general public is because of the high number of oddballs and incompetents in philosophy. Your former professor might have had a number of good reasons for never learning how to drive. But I would argue that there are certain things every man ought to know how to do and they include knowing how to drive cars and trucks of various sizes and operate a stick shift. Like it or not, we are material beings in a material world and knowing how to negotiate this world is important for us and those with whom we come into contact.
We should develop ourselves as fully and many-sidedly as possible so as to be worthy acolytes of our noble mistress, fair Philosophia. We represent her to the public.
2 responses to “Philosophers as Bad Drivers?”
-
Transcendence
The Transcendence we aim at is so faint and uncertain, so easy to suspect of being a mirage, while the earthly lures are so loudly attractive, so seemingly real. This is reality, the sense world shouts at us. All else is illusion!
-
Braggadocio, Self-Deprecation, Contempt
Brag and your peers will hate you. A little self-deprecation may win their hearts. Too much will earn their contempt. We learn these things by living.
-
On Death: Objective and Subjective Views
Death viewed objectively seems normal, natural, and 'acceptable.' And not evil. Is it evil that the leaves of deciduous trees fall off and die in the autumn? There are more where they came from. It is nature's way. Everything in nature goes the way of the leaves of autumn. If this is not evil, why is it evil when we fall from the Arbor Vitae? Are we not just bits of nature's fauna? Very special bits, no doubt, but wholly natural nonetheless.
Viewed subjectively, however, the matter looks decidedly different. Gaze at someone you love at a moment when your 'reasons' for loving the person are most in evidence. Then give unblinkered thought to the proposition that the dearly beloved child or spouse will die and become nothing, that the marvellous depth of interiority that has revealed itself as unique to your love will be annihilated, utterly blotted out forever, and soon.
Now turn your thought back on yourself and try to confront in all honesty and without evasion your upcoming annihilation as a subject of experience and not as just another object among objects. Focus on yourself as a subject for whom there is a world, and not as an object in the world. Entertain with existential clarity the thought that you will not play the transcendental spectator at your demise and cremation.
The horror of nonexistence from which Epicurus wanted to free us comes into view only when we view death subjectively: I as subject, not me as object, or as 'one.' No doubt one dies. But it is not possible that one die unless it is is possible that I die or you die, where 'you' is singular. Viewing myself objectively, I am at a distance from myself and thus in evasion of the fact I as subject will become nothing.
That the self as subject should be annihilated ought to strike one as the exact opposite of normal, natural, and acceptable. It should strike one as a calamity beyond compare. For there are no more where the dearly beloved came from. The dearly beloved, whether self or other, is unique, and not just in the 0ne-of-kind sense. For there is no kind whose instantiation is the dearly beloved.
Which view is true? Can either be dismissed? Can they be 'mediated' by some dialectical hocus-pocus? These are further questions.
But now it is time for a hard ride as Sol peeps his ancient head over the Superstition ridge line.
-
Ingredients of Happiness
What makes for happiness?
Acceptance is a good part of it: acceptance of self, of one's ineluctable limitations, of others and their limitations, of one's lot in life, of one's place in the natural hierarchy of prowess and intellect and spiritual capacity, acceptance of the inevitable in the world at large.
Gratitude is another ingredient in happiness: one cultivates gratitude for and appreciation of what one has here and now without comparisons to an idealized past, a feared future, or to the lots of others. No regret, resentment, worry, or comparison. Comparison breeds envy, one of the seven deadly sins. Be your incomparable self. If you are not yet incomparable, take up self-individuation as a life project. Realize yourself. Your life is more a task than a given, a task of transmuting givens into accomplishments. It is the task of becoming actually the unique person you are potentially. But no hankering for what is out of reach. No false ideals. No consorting with the utopian. No Lennon-esque imagining of the impossible. No dreaming impossible dreams.
You were born somewhere in the natural hierarchy of physical endowment, moral and affective and aesthetic sensitivity, mental power, spiritual capacity, and strength of will. But your place in the hierarchy allows for development. Know your place but press against its upper limits.
But of course happiness is not just a matter of attitude and exertion but also rests on contingency and luck. We need, but cannot command, the world's cooperation. Happenstance holds happiness hostage. You were dealt a bad hand? Suck it up and play it the best you can for as long as you can.
Conservatives emphasize attitude and exertion, leftists happenstance. Both have a point. "The harder I work, the luckier I become" is a conservative exaggeration, but a life-enhancing one. It is however the foolish conservative who thinks he is self-made and not the beneficiary of a myriad of forces and factors far beyond his control. There is truth in Phil Ochs' lament, "There but for fortune go you or I," but not such truth as to trump the conservative's exaggeration. Weathering "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I) he will slog on, per aspera ad astra.
-
Can an Atheist be an Idolater?
Substack latest.
-
Is the US Becoming the SU?
I've been warning of this for years. Ed West, America has become its own worst enemy. Excerpt:
Communists saw their political beliefs as so all-encompassing that even science was political: if science contradicted the goals of communism, it wasn’t science. In today’s United States the slow death of liberalism has resulted in the blatant politicisation of science, to the extent that as in Russia, scientists teach things which are obviously untrue because it supports the prevailing ideology. Then there is the media, much of which parrots the party line with almost embarrassing, “Comrade Stalin has driven pig iron to record production” levels of conformity. Once again, if you want to hear the truth, go to the BBC (until the young people who run the website take over).
America, once the most trusting of societies, is heading in the direction of Russia, one of the least trusting. Most disturbing of all is that, formerly the most demographically vibrant of western countries, today the United States has suffered a spectacular collapse in fertility. This is mostly down to stagnant wages among the middle class, who can no longer afford a family with one breadwinner, and a rapid decline of religious faith. But maybe people have also lost belief in themselves, and the ideals of their country.The Soviet Union broke into 15 different pieces, and the transition was, as CNN might put it, mostly peaceful — although Gorbachev’s old dacha is now in Russia once again after some local unpleasantness.
Today it is the United States where people talk of secession, escaping a crumbling superpower ruled by geriatrics. This seems very unlikely to happen, more clickbait than reality, because why would you leave what has been for more than two centuries the richest, most impressive state on earth? But then a generation ago few would have foreseen the Soviet Union crumbling in a haze of alcoholic despair.
Commentary by Rod Dreher here.
8 responses to “Is the US Becoming the SU?”
-
The Characteristic Attitude of the Pyrrhonists
Benson Mates, The Skeptic Way, Oxford UP, 1996, p. 5: ". . . the characteristic attitude of the Pyrrhonists is one of aporia, of being at a a loss, puzzled, stumped, stymied." Aporia is not doubt. Doubt implies understanding, but aporia is a lack of understanding. The modern skeptic may doubt, but not the ancient skeptic.
Connected with this is a distinction between epoché as the withholding of assent to the meaningfulness of a claim and suspension of judgment as to the truth or falsity of a claim. (Meaningfulness is a necessary condition of a claims's being either true or false.) One can withhold assent from an assertion without granting that it makes sense; but if one suspends judgment then one has a clear propositional sense before one's mind which one neither affirms nor denies. See Mates, p. 32. A good distinction! Add it to the list.
Consider, for example, this statement of the doctrine of the Trinity: "There is one God in three divine persons." The epochist, to give him a name, takes no stand on the question whether the doctrinal formulation makes sense. He neither affirms nor denies that there is a proposition that the formula expresses. Propositions are the vehicles of the truth-values; so by practicing epoché our epochist takes no stand on the question whether the doctrinal sentence expresses anything that is either true or false. The suspender of judgment, by contrast, grants that the sentence expresses a proposition but takes no stand on its truth or falsity.
So, strictly speaking, aporia is not doubt and epoché is not suspension of judgment. Close but not the same. One in the psychological state of aporia may or may not go on to practice epoché. Suppose I am stumped by what you say. I might just leave it at that and not take the further step of performing epoché.
The aporia Mates describes is an attitude. But there is another sense of the term, a non-attitudinal sense, and I use it in this other propositional sense: an aporia is a propositional polyad, a set of two or more propositions that are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent.
I also distinguish broad and narrow sub-senses of aporia in the second, the propositional, sense. What I just described is a propositional aporia in the broad sense. In the narrow, balls-to-the-wall sense, an aporia is an absolutely insoluble problem set forth as a set of collectively inconsistent propositions each of which makes such a strong claim on our acceptance that it cannot be given up.
Alles klar? No way!
-
The Old Soul
The old soul sees, while his body is yet young, that this world has nothing to offer us that is finally satisfactory.
-
Are You an Old Soul?
Don't be put off by the New Age-y vibe of this article. There are real insights here, and the internal links are worth following out.
-
The Third Way of the Ostrich
In a comment, the Ostrich writes,
Some early analytic types, including Russell, tried to analyse proper names as disguised descriptions, but Kripke put a lid on that. Thus, on what Devitt calls the Semantic Presupposition, namely that there are no other possible candidates for a name’s meaning other than a descriptive meaning, or the bearer of the name itself, the mainstream analytic position is that the meaning of a proper name is the bearer of the name. The target of Reference and Identity is the Semantic Presupposition.
So far, so good. I agree that with respect to proper names, demonstratives, and indexicals, both description theories and direct reference theories fail. So it makes sense to investigate whether the Semantic Presupposition is a false alternative. But the Third Way of the Ostrich raises questions of its own and they incline me to think that it too leads to an impasse and is in the end No Way, a-poria.
Consider the proper name, 'Moses.' It does not refer to the expression 'the man who led the Israelites out of Egypt.' It refers to a man, not an expression. (9) Thus "'Moses' refers to a man" is true. But what makes it true? One might think that it is true in virtue of a relation that connects the name to a particular man, and thus to something extra-linguistic. But the Ostrich denies that there is an "external reference relation" that relates the name to something extra-linguistic. (9) What makes true the reference statement — "'Moses' refers to a man" — is "an internal relation between the reference statement and some textual or uttered antecedent." (9) It is not clear what this means since it is not clear how the reference statement can have an antecedent. I know what the antecedent of a pronoun is, but what is the antecedent of a sentence or statement? I also know that a statement can be the antecedent of a term. For example, "Snow is white. This everyone agrees to." In this example, the demonstrative 'this' has a statement as an antecedent. What I don't understand is how a statement can have an antecedent. But let that pass.
It is clear what the Ostrich wants to say: there is reference but all reference is intra-linguistic. That contrasts with what I am inclined to say, namely, that while some reference is intra-linguistic, not all reference is. The reference of 'he' is parasitic on the reference of 'Tom' in 'Tom enjoyed the massage he received' and so there is a sense in which the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic; but 'Tom,' if it refers at all, refers extra-linguistically. In which precise sense is the reference of 'he' in our sample sentence intra-linguistic? Surely the pronoun 'he' does not refer to the name 'Tom'; the pronoun refers to the same item to which 'Tom' refers. So to say that the reference of 'he' is intra-linguistic is just to say that it picks up the reference of its antecedent and would not refer otherwise. Pronoun and noun are co-referential which is to say that they refer to the same item if they refer to anything. But the burden of objective reference is shouldered by the noun, not the pronoun. Or so say I.
The Ostrich's idea here is that "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)* Interpreting, one could say that reference is constituted by co-reference which is always an intra-linguistic matter. This would seem to issue in an objectionable linguistic idealism.
'Asmodeus,' we are told, refers to Asmodeus, so the name refers to something. It refers to a demon, not an expression, similarly as 'Moses' refers to a man, not an expression. But from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that something exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.' (10) That is surely true. But it is also true that from the fact that 'Asmodeus' refers to something it does not follow that nothing exists which is the referent of 'Asmodeus.' So the referent of 'Asmodeus' may or may not exist.
I now put the question to the Ostrich: what is it for the referent to exist? We are assuming that there is no such demon as Asmodeus. And yet 'Asmodeus' refers to something. There is a difference between referring to something that does not exist and not referring to anything. Now the Ostrich told us that 'Asmodeus' refers to something. But then something is such that it does not exist, and we are in Meinongian precincts — which is precisely where an ostrich will not stray if he can help it.
So the Ostrich cannot mean that 'Asmodeus' refers to something that does not exist; he must mean that 'Asmodeus' is an empty/vacuous name, i.e., one that does not refer at all, one without a referent. Again, there is a plain difference between a term's having a non-existing referent and a term's having no referent at all.
The trouble with saying that 'Asmodeus' is an empty name, however, is that it conflicts with his theory according to which "the semantic value of a proper name consists SOLELY in its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." (8, my emphasis)* There is a conflict with the theory because 'Asmodeus' is a member of a chain of co-referring terms, which implies that 'Asmodeus' has a semantic value, an object, an object which exists simply in virtue of being an object. So Asmodeus exists after all.
The demon cannot both exist and not exist. One might say that that the demon does not exist in reality (outside language) but that it does exist in a language-immanent, 'internal' way as an object constituted by "its anaphoric co-reference with its antecedents in a chain of co-referring terms . . . ." But if the demon does not exist in reality, then Moses does, in which case the reference statement — "'Moses' refers to a man" — must have an external reference relation as part of its truth maker.
If that is denied and reference is intra-linguistic only, then how account for the difference between the existent Moses and the nonexistent Asmodeus? After all, both names belong to chains of co-referring terms. Each name belongs to a narrative.
Is our Ostrich a POMO bird in the end?
__________________________
*I suspect that the Ostrich is using 'semantic value' in the way Gareth Evans uses it, namely, as equivalent to Frege's Bedeutung. Accordingly, the semantic value of a proper name is an object, that of a concept-word (Begriffswort) is a function, and that of a sentence (Satz) is a truth value (Wahrheitswert).
22 responses to “The Third Way of the Ostrich”
-
Every Generation Faces a Barbarian Threat in its Own Children
David Horowitz, Radical Son:
Irving Kristol, who had second thoughts before me, has observed that every generation faces a barbarian threat in its own children, who need to be civilized. This is the challenge perennially before us: to re-teach the young the conditions of being human, of managing life's tasks in a world that is and must remain forever imperfect. The refusal to come to terms with this reality is the heart of the radical impulse and accounts for its destructiveness, and thus for much of the bloody history of our age. (Emphasis added)
The world is imperfect, and it cannot be perfected by us either individually or collectively. This is a defining truth of conservatism. The conservative stands on the terra firma of a reality antecedent to his hopes, dreams, and desires, a reality from which he must learn what is possible and what is not. The conservative is not opposed to such piecemeal ameliorations as are possible, but he does not conflate the possible with what he can dream up or imagine. He is rightly unmoved by the utopian imaginings of a leftist like John Lennon in his song Imagine, imaginings that presuppose human perfectibility and the possibility of a quasi-religious immanentization of the eschaton. But of course Lennon's leftist imaginings are not mere imaginings but veiled prescriptions for such destructive actions as the suppression and ultimate eradication of religion together with the eradication of the belief that we as individuals have a spiritual origin and destiny; the spread of a smiley-faced half-way nihilism, that of Nietzsche's Last Man ("noting to kill or die for") which, while denying genuine transcendence does not reject this life but degrades it to a life of self-indulgence; the levelling of all differences and the ultimately futile assault on natural hierarchies which of course reassert themselves in the end. In short:
- Humans are imperfect. They are structurally flawed and in such a way as to disallow any possibility of perfection.
- Being imperfectible, they cannot be improved in any fundamental ways by human effort whether individual or collective.
- The failure of leftists to understand these truths and their consequent misguided attempts at perfecting the imperfectible have led to an over-all worsening of the human condition. And that is to put it mildly: in the 20th century alone communist governments murdered over 100 million. That is a lot of eggs to break for an impossible omelet.
- Leftists are reality-deniers who refuse the tutelage of experience.
7 responses to “Back to the Intentionality/Reference Discussion”