For the Left, the Issue is Never the Issue

'Never' is too strong, but close enough:

Speech control

Let me explain. As per the graphic, for the Left, the real issues are not protection of children and anti-terrorism. They are but distractions from the real issues. The real issues are suppression of dissent, erosion and ultimate elimination of constitutionally-protected  civil liberties such as those guaranteed by the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, expansion of centralized (federal) government control with concomitant violation of states' rights as guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment, not to mention institution of an omni-invasive Sino-styled surveillance apparatus and 'social credit' register to further limit dissent, stifle liberties, and 'cancel' livelihoods.

But why do the leftists who now dominate and control the Democrat Party want these things? To insure their gaining and maintaining of power in perpetuity, to be sure. But that is only half the answer.  Why do they want power? They want it not just because they exult in its exercise and increase, but because they want it to forward their agenda, which is the destruction of the American republic as she was founded to be. Obama announced the goal brazenly: to fundamentally transform America, not to make needed reforms and improvements, but to transform her fundamentally.  But conservatives, who in the end conserve nothing, and are content to talk and write and conduct seminars on cruise ships, are slow on the uptake, and, hobbled by their civility and other virtues,  cannot bring themselves to believe that their political opponents are political enemies who mean what they say and out for their political liquidation.

So when Tucker Carlson, et al., say that the leftists are out for power, that is not a good answer. After all, we of the Coalition of the Reasonable want power too. Bear in mind that power is good.  (If it weren't, omnipotence would not be counted among the divine omni-attributes.)  Without power one cannot implement the good. The difference is that we want power to implement constructive ends whereas the Coalition of the Treasonable who bow and scrape before the heads of evil regimes, who open the border during a pandemic, who empower criminals, who undermine the rule of law, want power so as to achieve destructive ends. 

Am I alleging that everyone on the Left knowingly promotes evil? No. Some leftists are fools, others are ignorant, still others are useful idiots, others still are suborned by their greed and power-hunger. TDS continues to drive many insane . It's a mixed bag.  But there is no moral equivalence here between Left and Right any more than there was between the S.U. and the U.S.

Thomas Sowell on the Root of What Divides Us

Thomas Sowell interviewed on the conflict of visions, the conflict between the constrained vision of conservatives and the unconstrained vision of leftists. 

The constrained vision "sees the evils of the world as deriving from the limited and unhappy choices available, given the inherent moral and intellectual limitations of human beings."

"When Rousseau said that 'man is born free' but 'is everywhere in chains,' he expressed the essence of the unconstrained vision, in which the fundamental problem is not man or nature, but institutions."

Less than ten minutes, and WELL worth your time.

To paraphrase Sowell, for the leftist, when good things happen, they happen naturally; when bad things happen, however, it is due to institutions and civilization itself. 

When this is understood, a lot falls into place. One begins to understand why leftists are out to erase the historical record  by toppling  statues, destroying monuments, burning books and otherwise suppressing open inquiry and the free flow of ideas. One begins to understand why the Left is at war with the family and religious traditions. One begins to understand the leftist hatred and denial of reality itself below the level of social construction, and what drives their blather about 'systemic racism' and 'gender,' not to mention their celebration of freaks and losers and criminals and 'the other.'

Requite Evil with Good?

From The Notebooks of Paul Brunton:

When Confucius was asked his opinion of the injunction to return good for evil, he answered, "With what then will you return good? Return good for good, but justice for evil." Is this not wiser counsel? Does not the other push goodness to an extremist position, rendering it almost ridiculous by condoning bad conduct? (Volume Seven, The Negatives, p. 156, entry 113)

But what is justice? Contemporary liberals, leftists in plain English, have no notion of it. They confuse it with what they call 'equity.' The word is an obfuscatory coinage of the sort one can expect from Orwellian language-abusers. The typical leftist is a stealth ideologue. His near-congenital mendacity disallows an outright call for  equality of outcome or result, and merit be damned; he weasels his 'thought' into sleepy heads with 'equity' in violation of one of the traditional meanings of the word, namely, "justice according to natural law or right." (Merriam-Webster) "Equity' as used by a leftist language-hijacker has a meaning opposite to the traditional one. Hence my accusation of Orwellianism. 

Brunton PaulBrunton's Notebooks are a treasure trove of wisdom. Your humble correspondent owns and has read all seventeen volumes several times over. The man is old-school, writes well, talks sense, speaks the broad truth, makes enough mistakes to keep things interesting, and will introduce you to authors of yesteryear you've never heard of. He is of my grandfather's generation, and of your great, great grandfather's generation.

You absolutely must read old books to be in a position to assess justly the dreck and drivel pumped out by today's politically-correct quill drivers and so-called 'journalists' who wouldn't know a gerund from a participle if their colons depended on it.

Sounds Incoherent to Me

Here:

“I don’t want to have sex with anybody and I probably won’t ever have sex,” says Benoit over Zoom, although she does explain that the key point here is sexual relations with others: she does masturbate.

If she masturbates, then she has sex with herself in which case she does want to have sex with somebody. But then again perhaps 'masturbate' in her idiolect means 'wash one's private parts.'  

Untangling Plato’s Beard

I was asked by a commenter what motivates the thin theory of existence.  One motivation is 

. . . the old Platonic riddle of nonbeing. Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor. (Willard Van Orman Quine, "On What There Is" in From a Logical Point of View, Harper Torchbook ed., 1963, pp. 1-2)

As I see it, here is how the paradox arises.

1) 'Pegasus does not exist' is true. Therefore:

2) The sentence in question has meaning. (Only meaningful sentences have a truth value.) 

3) If a sentence has meaning, then so do its (sentential and sub-sentential) parts. (Compositionality of meaning.) Therefore:

4) 'Pegasus' has meaning. Therefore:

5) Something is such that 'Pegasus' refers to it. ('Pegasus' is a proper name, and the meaning of a proper name is its referent, that to which it refers.) Therefore:

6) 'Pegasus' refers to something that exists. (Everything exists; there are no nonexistent objects; one cannot refer to what does not exist for it is not there to be referred to.) Therefore:

7) Pegasus must exist for it to be true that Pegasus does not exist.  Paradox!

None of the first four propositions is plausibly denied. To avoid the conclusion, we must deny either (5) or (6) and the assumptions that generate them. Now Quine is no Meinongian/Wymanian. Quine advocates a Russellian solution which amounts to rejecting (5) by rejecting the assumption that the meaning of a proper name is exhausted by its reference.  For Russell, ordinary proper names are definite descriptions in disguise. This allows them to have meaning or sense without reference.   Thus 'Pegasus' is elliptical for 'the winged horse of Greek mythology.'  This allows the following contextual paraphrase of 'Pegasus does not exist':

It is not the case that there exists an x such x is the winged horse of Greek mythology

which is free of paradox. What the paraphrase says is that the definite description which gives the sense of 'Pegasus' is not satisfied. Equivalently, it says that the concept winged horse of Greek mythology is not instantiated.   Thus the original sentence, which appeared to be about something that does not exist but which, if it existed, would be an animal, is really about about a description or concept which does exist and which is assuredly not an animal.

It is a brilliant solution, prima vista. It works for negative general existentials as well. 'Unicorns do not exist,' despite its surface grammar, cannot be about unicorns — after all, there aren't any — it is about the concept unicorn and predicates of it the property of not being instantiated.  Extending the analysis to affirmative general existentials, we can say that 'Horses exist,' for example, is not about horses — after all, which horses would it be about? — it is about the concept horse and predicates of it the property of being instantiated.  

What about singular affirmative existentials such as 'Harry exists'?  Quine maintains that, in a pinch, one can turn a name into a verb and say, with truth, 'Nothing pegasizes' thereby avoiding both Plato's Beard and Meinong's Jungle so as to enjoy, clean-shaven, the desert landscape bathed in lambent light.  So what's to stop us from saying 'Something Harry-sizes'?  (Quite a bit, actually, but I won't go into that in this post, having beaten it to death in numerous other entries. Briefly, there are no haecceity-concepts: there is no such concept Harry-ness that (i) can exist uninstantiated; (ii) if instantiated is instantiated by Harry and Harry alone in the actual world; (iii) is not instantiated by anything distinct from Harry in any possible world.)

Let us now pause to appreciate what the Russellian (or rather 'Fressellian') approach accomplishes in the eyes of its advocates. It untangles Plato's Beard. It avoids Meinong's jungle. It preserves the existence-nonexistence contrast by situating it at the second level, that of descriptions, concepts, propositional functions, properties, as the contrast between satisfaction-nonsatisfaction (for descriptions), instantiation-noninstantiation (for concepts and properties), and having a value-not having a value for propositional functions, or as Russell puts it, being sometimes true or the opposite.

What's more, it diagnoses the failure of certain versions of the ontological argument. Descartes' Meditation Five version has it that God exists because God has all perfections and existence is a perfection. But if Frege and Russell are right, existence is not even a property of God let alone a perfection of him inasmuch as '. . .exist(s)' has no legitimate use as a first-level predicate and can be be properly deployed only as a second-level predicate. (God is an individual.)

Last, but not least, the Fressellian analysis consigns entire libraries of school metaphysics to he flames, the books in which drone on endlessly about Being and Existence and the distinctio realis, and the analogia entis, and ipsum esse subsistens, ad nauseam.  Swept aside are all the hoary and endlessly protracted debates about the relation of essence and existence in individuals: is it a real distinction, and what could that mean? Is it a formal distinction, and what could that mean? Etc. On the Frege-Russell approach there simply is no existence of individuals.

And now you know why the thin theory is called 'thin.' It could also be called 'shallow' in that it eliminates existence as a deep and mysterious topic.  The thin theory disposes of existence as a metaphysical topic, reducing it to a merely logical topic.  As Quine famously says in an essay other than the one cited above, "Existence is what existential quantification expresses."  Thus 'Cats exist' says no more and no less than 'For some x, x is a cat.'  You will note that the analysans makes no mention of existence. It features only the word 'cat' and some logical machinery. Existence drops out as a metaphysical topic.

Of course, I don't accept the thin theory; but as you can see, I appreciate what motivates it in the minds of its adherents.

There is no Wisdom on the Left

The Left is at war with wisdom, as Dennis Prager here argues. 

And so one can only laugh at Hillary's latest money-grubbing venture in assuagement of her bottomless avarice, a book in which she casts  pearls of her 'essential' wisdom before the deplorable swine. 

Here is one of her immortal pearls. Now hear Mr. Prager:

 

Continue reading “There is no Wisdom on the Left”

An Anti-Gun Argument No Longer Heard

Time was, when 'liberals' would argue that citizen ownership of firearms was unnecessary for protection  against the criminal element because the police would provide the needed protection. It was a weak argument then, but a nonexistent one now, what with the defunding of the police, the elimination of cash bail, and all the other 'reforms.' The law-abiding citizen is now on his own, and he knows it, as is evidenced by a demand for weapons and ammunition far in excess of supply.

One has to question the intelligence of those 'liberals'  who count as well-intentioned.  (There are some!) These 'liberals' want fewer guns in civilian hands. But their policies impede that outcome. When government at federal, state, and local levels fails to do the jobs that justify its existence, such as protecting  life, liberty, and property, then the citizens have to do the job for themselves. Trouble is, too may of these folks go off 'half-cocked.' They fail to get the requisite training; they fail to practice with their weapons; they fail to exercise due diligence in the storage of their weapons; they fail to develop the proper mindset for effective armed self-defense. 

Of course many if not most 'liberals' are not well-intentioned.  But that is a topic for another time. As some wit once observed, "Brevity is the soul of blog."

A Reader Asks about Existence and Instantiation

My responses are in blue.

Hello, Dr. Vallicella. I am a reader of your blog. I just read your article "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics (eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge, 2014, pp. 45-75 , and I thought it was fantastic. I will have to read it again at some point. There were some parts in it that I found very interesting, and I was hoping I could ask you about. I want to focus on what you said in section 6.6, page 57. You write: 

 
"It is clear that “Unicorns do not exist” cannot be about unicorns: There are none. So it is reasonably analysed in terms of “ The concept unicorn is not instantiated”. But then the concept must exist, and its existence cannot be its being instantiated." 
 
The question I wanted to ask you was specifically about the final part, "But then the concept must exist, and its existence cannot be its being instantiated". I will try to keep the questions as brief as possible, 
 
The thin theorist might not identify the existence of the concept of a unicorn with its being instantiated, but with the concept of the concept of the unicorn being instantiated, and so on . . .
 
1) If it were possible that there be an infinite number of concepts, would there be any problem with this view?
 
BV:  An infinite regress would arise.
 
2) Clearly, we have a regress here, but is it vicious?
 
BV: Yes, because there would be no explanation of  the existence of the first concept in the infinite series. You might reply by saying that the series is actually, as opposed to potentially, infinite.  If so, then every concept in the series would have an explanation of its existence.  To which my response would be:   what explains the existence of the entire actually infinite series of concepts?
 
(An analogous situation. Suppose the universe is a beginningless actual infinity of continuum-many states with each state caused by earlier ones. If so, every state would have a causal explanation. But if every state of the universe has a causal explanation, then one might plausibly suppose that the universe has a causal explanation, one that is internal to it. Some people have maintained this with an eye toward ruling out the need for a transcendent explainer such as God. "There is no need for God because a universe with an actually infinite past has the resources to explain itself."  My objection would be that this account leaves us with no explanation of why the entire series of states exists in the first place.  Given that the entire series is modally contingent, and thus possibly such as not to exist at all, then any explanation of it, assuming that there is an explanation of it, could only be external or transcendent. Now back to the main thread.)
 
One might also question whether the concept regress could even get started. You want to say that the concept unicorn exists in virtue of its being an instance of the concept concept unicorn. But these two concepts have exactly the same content. How then do they differ? The concept unicorn is an instance of the concept concept, but I fail to see any difference between the concept unicorn and the concept concept unicorn.
 
3) The overall worry is that if we define x's existence in terms of instantiation, and then ask 'what are "x's"', we say things in existence, and, this is circular, but, since we are simply dealing with the analysis of terms, aren't we only dealing with semantic circularity? I am not sure that there is any problem with this sort of circularity (if there is a problem, it would be with the informativeness with the analysis rather than the accuracy).
 
BV: But we are not merely dealing with the analysis of terms; we are seeking to understand what it is for an individual to exist, given that the existence of a thing is extra-linguistic.   Let's keep in mind what the question is.  The question is whether an adequate theory of existence could treat '. . . exist(s)' as a second-level or second-order predicate only, that is, a predicate of concepts, properties, propositional functions,  descriptions (definite or indefinite), or cognate items. That is the Frege-Russell theory that I have in my sights in the portion of text to which my reader refers.
 
Granted, it is  true that Fs exist iff the concept F is instantiated.  For example, it is  true that cats exist iff the concept cat is instantiated. (This assumes that there is the concept cat, which is certainly true in our world if not in all possible worlds: it depends on what we take concepts to be.) But the right-hand-side (RHS) of the biconditional merely specifies a truth-condition on the semantic plane: it does not take us beyond or beneath that plane to the plane of extra-linguistic reality.  The truth of the LHS requires an ontological ground, a truth-maker, not a truth-condition. For consider: if the concept cat is instantiated, then, since it is a first-order concept, and relational as opposed to monadic, it is instantiated by one or more individuals. Individuals by definition are impredicable and uninstantiable. My cat Max Black, for example, is categorially unfit to have any instances, and you can't predicate him of anything. The little rascal is unrepeatable and impredicable.
 
Now either the instantiating individuals exist or they do not. If they do not, then the truth of the biconditional above is not preserved. But if they do exist, then the sense in which the instances exist is toto caelo different from the sense specified by 'is instantiated.' To repeat, by definition, individuals cannot be instantiated; therefore, the existence of an individual –call it singular existence –  cannot be explicated in terms of instantiation.
 
The instantiation account of existence either changes the subject from singular existence to general existence (instantiation) or else it moves in a circle of embarrassingly short diameter.  We want to know what it is for individuals to exist, and we are told that for individuals to exist is for first-level concepts to be instantiated; but for these concepts to be instantiated, their instances must exist singularly and thus in a sense that cannot be explicated in terms of instantiation. To put it another way: the account presupposes what it is trying to get rid of. It wants to reduce singular existence to general existence, thereby eliminating singular existence, but it ends up presupposing singular existence. If you tell me that the instances neither exist nor do not exist and that this contrast first arises at the level of concepts , then I will point out that you are thereby committed to Meinongian objects, to pure Sosein without Dasein.
 
The circularity I allege is the circularity of ontological/metaphysical explanation.  Is 'Tom exists' true because Tom exists, or does Tom exist because 'Tom exists' is true?  If this question makes sense to you and you respond by opting for  the former, then you understand metaphysical explanation.  It is an explanation that is neither empirical nor narrowly logical. Somewhat murky it might be, but nonetheless indispensable for metaphysics.  Similarly with the question: does Tom exist because some concept C is instantiated, or is C instantiated because Tom exists? The question makes sense and the answer is the latter.
 
I want to note that these are questions someone asked me about this view, and I wasn't sure how to respond, even though I ultimately do agree with your analysis of the thin theory. For the third problem, I would have said that that sort of response would merely ignore the fact that the question 'what is existence?' has ontological consequences, and is not merely a question of semantics. [Right!] If that is all we are concerned with (semantics), then we are concerned with something different than what most classical philosophers are concerned with when they are talking about the question 'what is existence?', which is the ontological aspect of that question, and as such, the circularity issue is a real problem. [You got it!]
 
BV: The problem with Frege, Russell, Quine, van Inwagen, and the rest of the 'thin  crew' is that they try to reduce existence to a merely logical topic. An opposite or at least different mistake is made by the phenomenologists who (most of them, not all of them) try to reduce existence to a phenomenological topic.  Heidegger, near the beginning of Sein und Zeit, opines that "Ontology is only possible as phenomenology." 
 
So I got me a two-front war on my hands: against the nuts-and-bolts analysts to the West and against the febrile phenomenologists to the East.
 

Why Haven’t Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day Been Cancelled?

Is it because they are occasions of debauchery and drunkenness, and therefore conducive, along with legalized dope, mindless sporting spectacles, prime-time Grammy Awards pornography, infantilizing government handouts, allowance of opioid smuggling and distribution, et cetera ad nauseam,  unto the ever-deepening stupefaction of Hilary's deplorables and Obama's clingers the better to rule them?  It's worth thinking about.

There is a 'war' on Christmas but no 'war' on St. Patty's Day. Why is that?