Sweet Sixteen

BV in PragueToday is my 16th 'blogiversary.' 

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these sixteen years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.'  Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always writing, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals daily maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of that. 

Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, some in the flesh.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

I had more to say on last year's anniversary if you care to look.

An Exchange on the Reality of the Past

I wrote:

Our penal [and other] practices presuppose the reality of the past. But how can presentism uphold the reality of the past?  The past is factual, not fictional; actual, not merely possible; something, not nothing. 

The past is an object of historical investigation: we learn more and more about it.  Historical research is discovery, not invention.  We adjust our thinking about the past by what we discover. It is presupposed that what happened in the past is absolutely independent of our present thinking about it.

In sum, historical research presupposes the reality of the past. If there is a tenable presentism, then it must be able to accommodate the reality of the past.  I'd like to know how.  If only the present exists, then the past does not exist, in which case it is nothing, whence it follows that it is no object of investigation. But it is an object of investigation, ergo, etc.

David Brightly responds:

History, archaeology, palaeontology investigate not so much the past but vestiges (from vestigium, footprint or track) of the past. Things from the past that are not wholly past, such as documents, artifacts, and fossils that have come down to us. These things are sometimes hidden away in archives and attics, or under the soil, or in rock strata, and have to be discovered. But then comes a process of invention whereby a story about the past is put together that must be consistent with the found vestiges. Sometimes the account is revised in the light of new discoveries. Such an account may well contain truths but we cannot be sure. We can't acquaint ourselves with the wholly past.

We of course agree that the practitioners of the above disciplines study the causal traces of the past in the present. Since we cannot travel back to the past, the only accessible evidence, whether archaeological or documentary, is all in the present. The researchers then infer from present evidence various facts about the past.  "But then comes a process of invention whereby a story about the past is put together that must be consistent with the found vestiges."  That seems right.  We can also agree that any account/story of the past is subject to revision in light of new discoveries. 

Here are some points of possible disagreement.  If the reader disagrees, he should tell me about what and why.

1) Although we write history, the subject-matter written about is independent of us and what we write. Similarly, although we in the present remember some past events, the past events we veridically remember (as opposed to merely seem to remember) are typically if not always independent of us and our veridical memorial acts.  So, while without us there would be no history of the past, the past itself does not need us to exist.   (Compare: without us there would be no physics; but nature does not need us to exist.) To put it another way, the past is not immanent in our historiography; it is not 'constituted' (Husserl) by our historiography or by our collective memory.  Affirming this, I affirm the reality of the past, and deny anti-realism about the past.

2) While the (partially invented) story must be consistent with the evidence discovered, and consistent with itself, it cannot be both true of historical facts and complete.    Either Big Al drank a glass of vino rosso  on January 1st, 1940, or he did not.  But there is nothing in the present that could either confirm or disconfirm the proposition or its negation.  Whatever effects Big Al's drinking or non-drinking had surely had petered out by the end of 1940.  The past is complete (completely determinate). It is as complete as the present. But no true account we give could be complete. 

3) While our account of the past is subject to addition and revision, the past itself is not.  It is not only determinate in every detail, but also fixed and unalterable.  Although the past's events are logically contingent, they have a kind of accidental necessity (necessitas per accidens) inasmuch as neither man nor God can do anything to alter or expunge them. Not even God can restore a virgin, as Aquinas says somewhere.  What is done is done, and cannot be undone.  J. Caesar might not have crossed the Rubicon, but, having crossed it, he couldn't uncross it.

Now how can presentism accommodate these points? How can presentism uphold the reality of the past?

a) On presentism, whatever remains of the past must be locatable in the present. For on presentism, the present and its contents alone exist.  It follows that past events for which there are no causal traces in the present are nothing at all.  On presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all.  It does no good to say, with the Ostrich, that what no longer exists existed, for on presentism, what existed is nothing if it cannot be found in some form in the present. 

b) Most past events leave no causal traces in the present.  Therefore:

c) The  totality of causal traces  of the reality of the past in the present is incomplete.

d) The past is complete. Therefore:

e)  The past cannot be identified with  the totality of its causal traces in the present. Therefore:

f) Presentism cannot accommodate the fully determinate (complete) reality of the past. Therefore:

g) Presentism is false.

 

Style and Thought

I sing the praises of Joseph Joubert, but here is a very bad aphorism of his:

The style is the thought itself. (Notebooks, p. 44)

This is an exaggeration so absurd that not even a Frenchman should be allowed to get away with it. Much, much better is this brilliancy from the pen of Schopenhauer:

Style is the physiognomy of the mind.

Latin and Greek for Philosophers

Here, by James Lesher. Sample:

Ex vi terminorum: preposition + the ablative feminine singular of vis/vis(‘force’) + the masculine genitive plural of terminus/termini (‘end’, ‘limit’, ‘term’, ‘expression’): ‘out of the force or sense of the words’ or more loosely: ‘in virtue of the meaning of the words’. ‘We can be certain ex vi terminorum that any bachelors we encounter on our trip will be unmarried.’

Uncle Bill advises,

When it comes to Latin, and not just Latin, don't throw it if you don't know it.

Reading Now: Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing

KolakowskiI'm on a Kolakowski binge.  I've re-read Metaphysical Horror (Basil Blackwell, 1988) and Husserl and the Search for Certitude (U. of Chicago, 1975).  I purchased the first at Dillon's Bookstore, Bloomsbury, London, near Russell's Square in late August, 1988.  Auspicious, eh? I was in the U. K. to read a paper at the World Congress of Philosophy in Brighton.  Both of the aforementioned books are outstanding even if the translations are inadequate. But knowing the ideas, I can figure out how the translation should have gone.

Kolakowsi is erudition on stilts. The man's range is stunning. While some of his essays are sketchy, he can be scholarly when he wants to be, as witness his magisterial three-volumed Main Currents of Marxism.

Kolakowski began as a communist but soon saw through the destructive ideology. For the great sin of speaking the truth, he was stripped of his academic post and prohibited from teaching in Poland.  He found refuge in Canada, The U. S. A. and the U.K. When the Left takes over the West, where will dissident truth-tellers go? Here is what Kirkus has to say about the exciting book I am now reading:

GOD OWES US NOTHING: A BRIEF REMARK ON PASCAL'S RELIGION AND ON THE SPIRIT OF JANSENISM

by Leszek Kolakowski ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1995

A provocative critique of the Jansenist movement and of its celebrated proponent Blaise Pascal, from internationally renowned scholar Kolakowski (The Alienation of Reason, 1968, etc.; Committee on Social Thought/Univ. of Chicago). Jansenism, the powerful 17th-century heresy condemned by Rome, has often been called the Catholic form of Calvinism. Inspired by the writings of Bishop Cornelius Jansen of Utrecht, the Jansenists claimed to be orthodox disciples of St. Augustine and taught that salvation was gratuitous in a way that ruled out any human cooperation. Since those whom God had freely predestined would inevitably be saved, Jesus Christ died only for the elect; all others would be justly condemned to eternal torments, irrespective of whether they were good or bad, including unbaptized babies. Human nature was totally corrupted by sin, especially original sin. Kolakowski gives us a detailed account, with copious quotations, both of St. Augustine and of the positions of Jansen and his followers, and he guides us through the central questions of the debate. He devotes the second half of his study to the writings of Pascal, whose profound pessimism he sees as embodying the Jansenists' world-denying ideals. The arts, free intellectual inquiry, and even hugging one's children had no place in what Kolakowski calls Pascal's religion of unhappiness. The author rarely refers to other studies of this great controversy. He is surely being malicious when he holds that Rome's rejection of Jansenism was a compromise with the world and a de facto abandonment of the Church's tradition, since he presents the latter in an overly Augustinian form, choosing to ignore, for example, the Eastern Fathers, Aquinas, and the basic doctrine that the human person, endowed with free will, is made in the image of God. Brilliantly cynical presentation of an unpopular but still influential religious outlook.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-226-45051-1

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Univ. of Chicago

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1995

Categories: PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

Are You a Gray Man?

In contemporary Internet lingo, a gray man is typically a prepper who seeks to be unobtrusive and to blend in.  He is 'gray' in that he tries not to call attention to himself, his beliefs, and his stock of guns, ammo, food, and other survival supplies that he hopes will see him and his family through a collapse of the social order. His 'bug-out bag' is at the ready should he need to split for his hideaway.  He worries whether he can make his escape without drawing attention to himself.

Grasshopper and Ant _by_Charles_H._BennettIt is the old Aesop tale of the Ant and Grasshopper revived and updated. The Grasshopper spends the summer in the pleasures of the moment, dancing and singing, giving no thought to the future. Comes the winter he must beg the Ant for provender, whereupon the And delivers a stern rebuke, telling the Grasshopper to dance the winter away.

The latter-day Grasshopper does not beg; he demands, in concert  with others of his shiftless ilk.  He cannot be reached by any rebukes or sermonizing. He is a dangerous hombre who poses a lethal threat.  The latter-day Ant appreciates the threat and seeks to meet it by being both armed and unobtrusive.

He who provokes an evil-doer bears some responsibility for his evil-doing.

The gray man is the opposite of the 'tacti-cool' dude who foolishly flaunts his preparedness and advertises his tools.  His truck sports NRA, Sig Sauer, and other decals. A bumpersticker reads, "I'm your huckleberry." The 'tacti-cool' dude carries open or with inadequate concealment. His T-shirt is tight so that you can admire his marvellous pectorals, but he 'prints' like crazy. If questioned, he insists on his Second Amendment rights. He is right to do so, but nonetheless imprudent. 'Liberals' have no respect for the rights he invokes, and there is no reaching them by any appeal to reason.

Imprudent advertising leads to pointless conversations and worse. Years ago, a man questioned my open carry deep in the Superstition Wilderness, claiming that guns are illegal in a National Park. I pointed out that we were in a National Forest.  I don't think I got through to the idiot. But I did marvel at his foolishness in arguing with an armed man in the middle of nowhere.

There are foolish people who don't know what 'brandish' means. They see a man with a gun strapped to his belt and they call the cops claiming that some guy is 'brandishing' a firearm. This can lead to an unpleasant encounter with law enforcement. The wise man, understanding human nature, avoids contacts with cops, knowing full well their propensity for arrogance and overreach. Power corrupts. Power suborns moral sense.  I say this as a hard-assed law and order conservative who believes in the death penalty.  I believe that said penalty is not only morally permissible, but also in some cases morally obligatory.

And then there are the bad guys who, seeing an armed man, will calculate whether they can take his weapon from him. Or they may be planning an attack of some sort. The armed citizen, seen to be armed, will be the first target.

So I advise a certain grayness in these and related matters.  Exercise your rights, but do not flaunt them. Stand on principles, but don't sacrifice prudence to principles.

Grasshopper by Lefebvre

Wikipedia, The Ant and the Grasshopper:


Because of the influence of La Fontaine's Fables, in which La cigale et la fourmi stands at the beginning, the cicada then became the proverbial example of improvidence in France: so much so that Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836–1911) could paint a picture of a female nude biting one of her nails among the falling leaves and be sure viewers would understand the point by giving it the title La Cigale. The painting was exhibited at the 1872 Salon with a quotation from La Fontaine, Quand la bise fut venue (When the north wind blew), and was seen as a critique of the lately deposed Napoleon III, who had led the nation into a disastrous war with Prussia.

Presentism, Punishment, and the Past

One man steals from another. The thief is caught, the thievery is proven, and the penalty required by law is demanded.  It turns out that the thief's attorney is a philosophy Ph.D., a presentist in the philosophy of time, who could not find a job in academe. So he went to law school, and here he is in court. He argues on behalf of his client that, since the present alone exists, the past and its contents do not exist. So the act of thievery does not exist. 

Now a  person cannot be justifiably punished for what he does not do.  Since the act of thievery, being wholly past, does not exist, the criminal case against the man in the dock should be dismissed.  A man cannot be justifiably punished in the present for nonexistent past deeds any more than he can be punished in the present for nonexistent future deeds. Or so argues the defense.

The prosecutor, who is also a presentist, objects that, while the particular act of theft in question does not exist, it did exist, and that this past-tensed truth suffices to render the punishment just.  Both defense and prosecution agree that the past-tensed truth that Smith stole Jones' car is a brute truth, that is, a contingent truth that has no truthmaker, no ontological ground of its being true. 

The defense attorney replies that the past-tensed truth, being brute and groundless, is just words, an empty representation that does not  represent anything, and this for the simple reason that the event does not exist.  He adds that a man cannot be justifiably punished because of a string of words, even if the words form a sentence, and even if the sentence is true.  For if there is nothing in reality that makes it true, the brute truth's being true is irrelevant.  The defense further argues that a contingent sentence that lacks a truthmaker cannot even be true.

Our penal practices presuppose the reality of the past. But how can presentism uphold the reality of the past?  The past is factual, not fictional; actual, not merely possible; something, not nothing. 

The past is an object of historical investigation: we learn more and more about it.  Historical research is discovery, not invention.  We adjust our thinking about the past by what we discover. It is presupposed that what happened in the past is absolutely independent of our present thinking about it.

In sum, historical research presupposes the reality of the past. If there is a tenable presentism, then it must be able to accommodate the reality of the past.  I'd like to know how.  If only the present exists, then the past does not exist, in which case it is nothing, whence it follows that it is no object of investigation. But it is an object of investigation, ergo, etc.

Continuing the Discussion of Time, Tense, and Existence

This just in from London.  I've intercalated my responses.

Here is another take. We agree on our disagreement about the following consequence

(A)  X is no longer temporally present, therefore X has ceased to exist.

You think it is not valid, i.e. you think the antecedent could be true with the consequent false. I think it is valid.

BV: Yes. So far, so good. 

However regarding

          (B) X is no longer temporally present, therefore X does not still exist

we seem to agree. We both think the antecedent cannot be true with the consequent false.

BV:  Right.  For example, we agree BOTH that the Berlin Wall is no longer temporally present (and is therefore temporally past) AND that the Berlin Wall does not still exist.  I should think that we also, as competent speakers of English, agree that locutions of the form 'X still exists' are intersubstitutable both salva veritate and salva significatione with locutions of the form 'X existed and X exists' where all of the verbs are tensed and none are tense-neutral or tenseless. Agree?  My second comment has no philosophical implications.  It is merely a comment on the meaning/use of a stock English locution.

My puzzle is that my reading, and I think a natural reading, is that (A) and (B) mean the same, because “X has ceased to exist” and “X does not still exist” mean the same. You clearly disagree.

BV:  If we stick to tensed language, then 'X has ceased to exist' and 'X does not still exist' mean the same.  So I don't disagree if we adhere to tensed language. But note that 'X has ceased to exist' is ambiguous as between

a) X has ceased to presently-exist (or present-tensedly exist)

and

b) X has ceased to be anything at all (and thus has become nothing at all).

For example, the Berlin Wall has ceased to presently-exist.  But it doesn't follow that said wall has become nothing, that it is no longer a member of the totality of entities, that it has been annihilated by the mere passage of time.  If you think that it is no longer a member of said totality, then you are assuming presentism and begging the question against me.  You have restricted the totality of what exists to what presently exists. Note that I do not deny that one can move validly from the premise of (A) to its conclusion if one invokes presentism as an auxiliary premise. My claim is that the inference fails as a direct or immediate inference.

I think you want to argue that there is a covert tensing in “X does not still exist” which is absent in “X has ceased to exist”, which (according to you) is tenseless. But how? Doesn’t the verb ‘cease’ always imply a time at which X ceased to exist? Would it make sense to say that 2+2 has ceased to equal 4? How?

BV: In 'X does not still exist,' 'exist' is present-tensed.  But 'X has ceased to exist' is ambiguous as explained above . It can be read your tensed way, but it can also be read in my tenseless way.  Surely you don't want to say that 'exists' has exactly the same meaning /sense as 'exists-now' or 'exists' (present tense).  We could call that semantic presentism. I don't think anyone is a semantic presentist.  And for good reason. You, as a nominalist, will not countenance abstracta such as numbers and sets and the other denizens of the Platonic menagerie. But you understand what you are opposing when you oppose their admission into our ontology in the Quinean sense (our catalog by category of what there is).  And so you understand the notion of tenseless existence and tenseless property possession as when a 'Platonist' says that 7 is prime. The copula is tenseless, not present-tensed.

So, in summary, my problem (and I am always seeing problems) is how you think (A) and (B) differ.

Over to you.

BV: The Boston Blizzard of '78 was one hell of a storm. When it ended, did it cease to exist? Yes of course, if we are using 'exist' in the ordinary present-tensed way. The storm because wholly past, and in becoming wholly past it stopped being presently existent. Obviously, nothing can exist at present if it is wholly past.  And it is quite clear that what no longer is present is not still present, and that what no longer presently exists is not still presently existent.

So far, nothing but platitudes of ordinary usage.  Nothing metaphysical. 

We venture into metaphysics when we ask: Does it follow straightaway from the storm's having become wholly temporally past, that it is nothing at all?  I say No. If you say Yes, then you are endorsing presentism, a controversial metaphysical theory. 

You can avoid controversy if you stick to ordinary language.  If you have trouble doing this, Wittgensteinian therapy may be helpful.

Problemverlust

The following remark in Wittgenstein's Zettel seems to fit certain ostriches of my acquaintance.

456. Some philosophers (or whatever you like to call them) suffer from what may be called "loss of problems." (Problemverlust) Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem to exist any more, the world become broad and flat and loses all depth, and what they write becomes immeasurably shallow and trivial. Russell and H. G. Wells suffer from this.

‘Unthinkable’ Used Thoughtlessly

WalterPeople say that such-and-such is 'unthinkable.' An electromagnetic pulse, for example, one that destroys the power distribution grid, would be a calamity in comparison to which the current pandemic would pale into insignificance.  This is said to be 'unthinkable.' And yet we are now thinking about it. What one thinks about can be thought about, and is therefore thinkable.  So the calamity in question is precisely not 'unthinkable.' Nor is it 'unimaginable.' I can imagine it and so can you.

People use these expressions because they thoughtlessly repeat what they hear other people say.  That's my explanation. Do you have a better one?

Not every test is a litmus test. So why do people refer to any old test as a litmus test? Same explanation.

I could continue with the examples. And you hope I won't. Don't be a linguistic lemming. Think. The mind you save may be your own.

Language matters.  Walter approves of this message.