Maverick Philosopher – Page 206 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Anthony Flood Reviews David Horowitz, Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win

An Amazon review by our long-time correspondent. I award it the plenary MavPhil endorsement. Tony coins a brilliancy, 'academedia complex.' I would add a qualifier, 'academented.'

Anthony Flood

5.0 out of 5 stars The Blitzkrieg the Berserkers Have Coming to Them

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2020

“The virus and its consequences will eventually be resolved. Far more ominous for the future of our country is the war described in the pages of this book.”

Thus David Horowitz, in a note penned as this book went to press, anticipated this question: how will Trump meet the challenge of the virus-predicated lockdown, now aggravated by the Left’s violent (and lockdown-undermining) assault on America’s institutions?

A few days after Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win was published, the answer came: millions of jobs were created in May 2020, more than any analyst predicted. (They predicted job losses.) That would have been impossible had the economy’s fundamentals not been as sound as they were in early March—which they wouldn’t have been had Trump not been at the helm of state for the preceding three Marches.

Following up his best-selling Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America, Horowitz surveys the landscape of Trump’s vindication, recording the genuine (i.e., anti-“progressive”) progress America has made in the face of past onslaughts and those that threaten us a season away from the general election.

For divide, sabotage, resist is the battle plan of the anti-American contingent we call the Left. Truth means nothing to them; power, everything. They align with every movement that holds out the promise of “transforming” America: environmentalism, Islam, solicitude for criminals (homegrown or foreign trespassers).

The English word “blitz” contracts the German Blitzkrieg, “lightning war,” which entered our vocabulary during the Second World War. It makes for a snappier book title, but the reference to war should not be lost, given Horowitz’s own words.

“Traditionally [Horowitz notes] Democrats have approached politics as a form of war conducted by other means, while Republicans have entered the political arena as pragmatists and accountants. But the siege of Donald Trump has begun to create a new Republican Party, passionate and combative in defense of a leader they believe has stood up for them, and—equally important—who exceeds them in his appetite for combat. ‘Populism’ is the term political observers have drawn on to describe this phenomenon. The energy populism creates adds up to the blitz that is described in this book, and that has enabled him to overpower his opposition.”

By itself, of course, the German Blitz means “lightning,” suggesting the speed of the response. But speed is not to the point: Trump’s counterpunching is, and that’s what Horowitz shines a Klieg light on.

For three years, Trump’s supporters have put up with what Blitz chronicles: the vicious innuendos against, potty-mouthed slanders of, and outright lies about the man they put in the White House. Feigning fear he wouldn’t accept the results of the 2016 election, Leftists in the academedia complex have demonstrated repeatedly that they wouldn’t and didn’t.

There’s nothing so vile they won’t impute to him, his family, and those who work for him. Modeling a derangement syndrome not yet listed in the Physicians’ Desk Reference, Democrats project onto him the defects they major in. Trump has survived a battery of personal attacks that would have felled lesser men. It’s useful to have its details arrayed compactly in one place. Even those familiar with them need to be reminded of them.

Passing in review are the stages of the coup that began even before its object materialized: from its inception in the counterintelligence effort against Trump and his campaign (which only Obama’s White House could have authorized), with every vendor of mainstream opinion cheering it on; the rival-financed foreign intelligence, even as foreign collusion was imputed to him; the predicateless FISA “investigations”; to the hysterical cries of “illegitimacy” and the importuning of electors to be faithless; the Mueller “investigation,” whose “investigators” knew they had no foundation; through the Ukrainian phone call fiasco, to the impeachment farce that distracted Washington from the Beijing-spawned and -spread virus that became a global pandemic.

Horowitz reminds readers of the reputation Trump enjoyed long before he announced his candidacy: the businessman who kept an eye on how the world in which he made his fortune works, who never hesitated to voice his disgust with the way the New York’s liberal establishment (of which he had been arguably a member in good standing) ran his city and country (that is, into the ground). The promoter (and terminator) of a string of apprentices was a pop icon, a favorite of the very people who now vilify him.

Given his record of success, however, especially among African Americans—criminal justice reform (now undoing the mass-incarcerating effects of the legislation Joe Biden co-wrote), the First Step Act, Opportunity Zones, record low unemployment, and so on—the Black column holding up the edifice of vilification is cracking. If it crumbles, costing the Democrats another ten percent of the Black vote, it’s over for them. (For details, see my Amazon review of Robinson and Eberle’s Coming Home: How Black Americans Will Re-Elect Trump.) No wonder the Left is going berserk on all platforms, all issues, throwing everything against the wall to see what, if anything will stick. So far, nothing has.

For those who like numbered lists, Horowitz appends two. The first is “The Nine Biggest Dangers to America from the Anti-Trump Left”: Resistance; Identity Politics; Open Borders; Green Communism; Communist Health Care; Support for Criminals and Contempt for the Law; Hostility to Religious Liberty and the First Amendment; Support for America’s Enemies; and Attack on America’s Heritage.

The second: “The Top Ten Lies the Democrats Have Told You.” Each charge is reversible, and Horowitz reverses them all, concisely and unanswerably: Republicans Are Racists; Democrats Care About Minorities; Republicans Betrayed the Constitution; Democrats Care About Minorities; Slavery and Racism Are America’s True Heritage; The Iran Deal Prevented Iran from Getting Nuclear Weapons; Donald Trump Colluded with the Russians; Republicans Are Religious Bigots; The “Green New Deal” Is Scandinavian Socialism; Israel Occupies Palestine; Single-Payer Health Care Is a Human Right. Even Trumpistas who think they know how to refute these canards will benefit from Horowitz’s refresher course. (For instance, this reviewer.)

“From the beginning of the Resistance to Trump,” as Horowitz concludes Blitz, “Democrat attacks on the president have been attac
ks on America’s foundations: resistance to the results of a fair and free election; abetting a deep state coup to undermine the presidency, and the pursuit of a transparently sham impeachment. All this added up to a campaign of baseless slanders against the nation’s commander-in-chief, worthy of America’s most determined enemies. Collectively these constitute the greatest crime against America committed by its own citizens since the Civil War.”

This November Americans will have an opportunity to repel those attacks. Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win provides an armamentarium for the counterattack.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall of Sound

Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions. It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack.

Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

Crystals, He's a Rebel

In the thinly-populated supermarket this afternoon, I was struck by all the sheep dutifully wearing their ridiculous and useless masks. So easily manipulated; so easily controlled by 'experts' and power-hungry pols. Masks are what the pandemic pussies have in common with the left-wing fascist Antifa thugs.

Ronettes, Be My Baby

Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona. He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015. Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good. After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love. When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and it has been very good indeed.

Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

‘Systemic Racism’ is a Vicious, Hate-America, Leftist Myth

The Democrat Party is a party of race-hustlers. Clear proof of this is their endlessly repeated lie about 'systemic' or 'structural' or 'institutional' racism. David Horowitz, Big Agenda (Humanix, 2017), p. 51:

While institutional or systemic racism has been illegal in America for 50 years, the 2016 Democratic Party platform promises that "Democrats will fight to end institutional and systemic racism in our society." There is no evidence that such racism actually exists. It is asserted in a sleight of hand that attributes every statistical disparity affecting allegedly "oppressed" groups to prejudice against them because of their identity. This "prejudice," however, is a progressive myth. This is not to say that there aren't individuals who are prejudiced. But there is no systemic racism in America's institutions, and if there is, it is already illegal and easily remedied.

The Dem's race-obsession is an amazing thing to behold. With every passing day it becomes more insane. An Asian man becomes the focus of a controversy because his surname 'Lee,' which is a mere sound-preserving transliteration of some Asian characters, reminds some idiots of Robert E. Lee. Soon thereafter, a banana peel ignites a controversy at Ole Miss. One can only hope that the Dems keep it up and destroy themselves. They have found that playing the race card has gotten them what they want in many cases. But they need to think twice about transforming every card in the deck into a race card. For while the leaders of the party are extremists, many of the rank and file retain a modicum of common sense.

Add This to the Fallacy File

Beware of Kafkatrapping!

A Comment Thread on Tribalism and Identity Politics from December, 2015

Part of an uncommonly good thread. Here is the entry to which the thread attaches.

………………………………………………….

Anon,

My point was that many short comments are better than one long one.

One problem here is that I tossed out a word, 'tribalism,' but did not define it. What's worse is that I used it very loosely. Mea culpa. It is a stretch to think of women as a 'tribe.'

Perhaps we have a 'family' of tribalisms: racial, sexual, etc.

Now I'll take a stab at a definition:

A person P is a racial tribalist =df P defines himself and values himself first and foremost in terms of his being a member of the race of which he happens to be a member.

I'm Caucasian as you may have guessed. But when I get up in the morning I don't look into the mirror and affirm: I am a white man! This is who I am most fundamentally. This is what makes me be ME. This fact is what constitutes my innermost identity and is that attribute upon which my value as a person primarily supervenes.

I am therefore not a racial tribalist by my definition. This is not to say that I am not white or that being white is not a part of WHAT I am, namely an animal, a bit of the world's fauna. Indeed, insofar as I am an animal, it is arguable that I am essentially (as opposed to accidentally) white if we grant Kripke's point about the essentiality of origin: if I could not have had parents other than the parents I in fact have, then, given that both are white, I could not have failed to be white. So I am essentially white.

But is it essential to WHO I am that I be white? (Related question: Are persons reducible to objects in the natural world?)

Now in my definition above there is the phrase "member of the race of which he happens to be a member" which suggests that it is a contingent fact about me that I am white. There is the animal that bears my name, an animal that is essentially white. But there is a sense, brought out by Thomas Nagel in various writings, in which I am contingently the animal I am. I am contingently an animal that is essentially white.

But now we are drifting towards some very deep waters.

Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Saturday, December 12, 2015 at 11:12 AM

I’m not sure we need to even address the question of whether our race is essential to our personal identity or not. Isn’t it enough that it is a feature of us that is deeply important to our functioning in the world and part of the natural categories into which we separate ourselves?

As you define it, I doubt anyone here is a racial tribalist, because saying that you are “first and foremost” part of a race makes it sound as though the interests of that group or yourself as a member of that group trump everything else. I take it that the position that Jacques and I are defending is just that racial groups are morally legitimate and one’s racial affiliation provides genuine moral grounds for certain prioritizations of members of that race.

Posted by: Anonymous | Saturday, December 12, 2015 at 11:43 AM

Anon. writes,

>>it is obvious that it is morally permissible to prioritize one’s family, one’s country, one’s species, etc. in various ways. So, it’s already obvious that “tribalism” is morally permissible. Why arbitrarily think that racial tribalism is illegitimate given that tribalism in generally is clearly morally permissible?<<

I take it that what you mean by tribalism in general is favoring or "prioritizing" one's X over another person's X, if they are different. So racial tribalism is favoring or "prioritizing" one's race over another's assuming they are different.

Whether or not this is morally permissible in a given case will depend on the nature of the favoring. In the O. J. Simpson case, the black jurors voted to acquit despite a mountain of evidence showing that he had murdered two white people. They favored Simpson over his victims because he is black. I would say that their favoring was morally impermissible.

We have to agree upon a definition of 'tribalism,' however, if we are to move forward.

Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Saturday, December 12, 2015 at 12:08 PM

Continue reading “A Comment Thread on Tribalism and Identity Politics from December, 2015”

When Quotation Suffices for Refutation

'White America' is a syndicate arrayed to protect its exclusive power to dominate and control our bodies, Sometimes this power is direct (lynching), and sometimes it is insidious (redlining). But however it appears, the power of domination and exclusion is central to the belief in being white, and without it, "white people" would cease to exist for want of reasons.

Welcome to the delusional world of Ta-Nehisi Coates, that darling of 'liberal' elitists and the winner of numerous awards and accolades. I read his Between the World and Me a while back. The above is from that book.

Who is sicker, Coates, or the 'liberals' who fete him?

How Could God be Justice itself?

David Gudeman writes; I reply:

George Berkeley was the first author who really shook my confidence in my existing world view. Before I read Berkeley, I had a Mr. Johnson-style contempt of physical idealism; after reading Berkeley, I realized that I had been naive–not because Berkeley was necessarily right, but because once I suppressed my presuppositions, I found him hard to refute, and came to realize how logically futile Mr. Johnson's refutation was.

Well, no one calls it 'physical idealism.' Stick with 'Berkeleyan idealism.' And of course it cannot be refuted ad lapidem, by kicking a stone. Berkeley was not an eliminativist about material objects. He did not maintain that rocks and trees do not exist; he did not question WHETHER they are; he offered an unusual ontological account of WHAT they are, namely ideas in the divine mind.

I offer this story as evidence of my good faith in the following, because I know I have irritated you before by bringing up topics like this, and very much do not want to do so again. In particular, I do have hopes that there is something to be found here if only I can come to grasp it.

With that, I'd like to ask you if you can explain what you mean by phrases like "God is the measure of Justice. God is Justice itself." (From this entry.)

To me this looks like a couple of category errors. God is a person, a measure of justice is a measure, and justice is a quality. How can these three be equated in any literal sense? [. . .]

Fair questions.

A. I take it that you will grant me that God is a wholly just person. Now assume the following: God is unique; there are non-divine persons; none of the latter are wholly just. You and I are non-divine persons, and neither of us is wholly just, although one of us may be more just than the other. There are degrees of justice in non-divine (created) persons. Now it makes sense to say that God sets the standard with respect to justice or being just. God is the measure of justice in that he is just to the highest degree, and we fail to measure up, to different degrees.

It therefore makes sense to say that God, a person, is the standard, exemplar, measure of justice. There is no category mistake. The second alleged category mistake is harder to deal with, and a wholly satisfactory answer is not possible because when we discuss God, the ultimate source of all being, value, and intrinsic intelligibility, we are at the outer limit of intelligibility. (The Intelligent Source of all intrinsic intelligibility, because it is an Other Mind, cannot be understood with the clarity and completeness with which we understand ordinary objects among objects.) All I can hope to show is that the accusation of category mistake can be turned aside or rationally repelled. So here we go.

B. God is a just person, and he is just to the highest possible degree. Now is God just in virtue of instantiating a property of justice that exists independently of him? You say justice is a quality. I'll play along. Is God just in virtue of instantiating this quality? (Perhaps you are thinking of this quality as a necessarily existent 'abstract object.') If you say yes, then you compromise God's aseity, his from-himself-ness. God is the Absolute. Not an absolute, but the Absolute. As such, he cannot be dependent on anything external to himself for his existence or nature. You will grant that God cannot have a cause of his existence external to himself. You must also grant that for God to be God he cannot be dependent on anything external to himself for his nature (essence). So he can't be just in virtue of instantiating your quality, justice. God sets the standard by being the standard: there is no standard of justice outside of God that he needs to conform to.

If so, if God is not an instance of justice, a just entity, then he must be (identically) justice. The Platonist Augustine drew this conclusion, one that entails the divine simplicity, and the Jansenists followed Augustine in this. God is like a self-exemplifying Platonic Form or paradigm. Supreme Wisdom is itself wise; supreme Justice is itself just. God is at once each of his attributes and also their unique instance. God is, but he is not a being among beings. God is (identically) Being itself, but not in a way the detracts from his being a being, or to be precise, the being. For God to be God he must be unique in the highest possible sense: not one of a kind, not necessarily one of a kind, but necessarily such that in him kind and instance are one.

The theist faces a dilemma. Either God is or is not distinct from his attributes. if the former, then God is not God. If the latter, then God is beyond the comprehension of the discursive intellect.

(But is the second horn so bad? A God worth his salt must be transcendent, Transcendence itself. (Otherwise, your god is an idol. Whatever you say about Islam, it at least has a lively sense of the transcendence of God.)

In conclusion, Gudeman's second accusation of category error can be rationally resisted as I have just done. One can cogently argue up to the divine simplicity. The problem, however — and I freely admit it — is that the discursive intellect cannot wrap itself around (cannot understand) how something can be ontologically simple. One is reduced to pointing beyond the discursive sphere.

Here we reach an impasse beyond which we cannot move by philosophical means. But what justifies the conceit that the only way to the ultimate truth is the philosophical way?

E. J. Lowe on Existence and Substantial Change: Critical Remarks

We have seen that and how Lowe reduces property change to existential change. The latter is the change that occurs when something comes into existence and passes out of existence. What of the reverse reduction, the reduction of existential change to property change? What are its prospects? Could we say that when an individual substance (an individual, for short) comes to exist it does so by acquiring the property of existence, and that when it passes out of existence it loses this property? This notion is fraught with difficulties which I will not rehearse. Lowe, like many philosophers, rejects the idea that existence is a first-level property, a property of individuals.

So what then is it for an object to exist, if not to possess the property of existing? Some philosophers would answer: It is for it to be the case that something is (identical with) that object. The contention, in other words, is that . . . 'E!a' ('a exists') is equivalent in meaning to '∃x(x = a).' ("How Real is Substantial Change," The Monist, vol. 89, no. 3 (2006), pp. 275-293, 277)

I deny that the expressions have the same meaning, but I cheerfully accept their logical equivalence. (Logical equivalence is equivalence across all broadly logically possible worlds. It is the necessitation of material equivalence.) I concede that, for example,

1) Necessarily, Max exists iff Max is identical to something.

'Something' here is elliptical for 'something or other.' The idea is not that each thing that exists exists iff it is identical to some one thing; that would lead straightaway to an intolerable monism. The idea is that each thing exists iff it is self-identical. Unless one is a Meinongian, one will accept as true all biconditionals of the form of (1). Lowe continues:

One way to express this idea is to say that the predicate 'exists' in fact expresses or denotes a second-level property, that is, a property of first-level properties: to wit, the property of having at least one instance. Thus, it may be said, 'a exists' expresses the thought that the property of being identical with a has at least one instance . . . . (277)

There are at least two problems with this view that Lowe sees and that I have mentioned many times before. First, there are no haecceity properties. For example, there is no such property as Socrateity, the property of being identical with Socrates. Second, even if there is the property, identity-with-a, a's existence cannot be explained by saying that the haecceity property has an instance. This is because identity-with-a, or a-ness, cannot have an instance unless the instance exists. One moves in an explanatory circle of embarrassingly short diameter if one maintains that for a to exist is for a-ness to be instantiated when a-ness cannot be instantiated unless a exists. I therefore agree with Lowe:

. . . the notion of an object's existing seems to be more basic than that of a (first-level) property's having an instance, whence the former notion cannot really be explained in terms of the latter. (277)

Seems? Nay, 'tis! The upshot for Lowe and me is that existence can be neither a first-level nor a second-level property. Lowe concludes that existence is not a property at all. A property, whether it is a universal or a trope (mode), is an entity within the totality of entities. But neither existence nor identity "figure in an ontological inventory of the entities that reality as a whole comprehends." (278) So existence is not one of the things that exists. Existence does not exist, as it would if it were a property. Existence is not a property, but a concept, a "formal ontological concept." Such concepts do not "pick out beings or entities of any sort." (278) What's more, existence is a "primitive" and "indefinable" concept. It cannot be analyzed in terms of more basic concepts.

But now trouble looms. I quoted Lowe above: "what then is it for an object to exist?" An excellent question! He rightly rejects two answers. The first is that an object exists in virtue of possessing the first-level property of existence. The second is that an object exists in virtue of the instantiation of its haecceity property. Lowe concludes that existence is not something that exists in reality, an item that would have to be listed in an adequate ontological inventory. Objects exist, but existence does not exist. So he says that existence is a concept, and indeed a "primitive" and "indefinable" one.

But if existence is indefinable, then it cannot be explicated in terms of temporal presentness, which is plainly what Lowe is attempting to do. Every presentism maintains, at least with respect to items in time, that only temporally present items exist simpliciter. For Lowe, the items include objects and their tropes, but not times and events. But no matter: he answers his own question by maintaining that for an object to exist is for an object to be temporally present.

But if existence is not a property, then neither is temporal presentness. Temporal presentness is time itself. For what is past is nothing, having been annihilated, and what is future is also nothing, not having been created. Time, in turn, is temporal passage. Temporal passage is real, objective, mind-independent. Temporal passage "consists in the continual coming into and going out of existence of entities . . . ." ("Presentism and Relativity," 137) Lowe insists more than once that the italicized phrases be taken seriously and literally: what passes out of existence is absolutely annihilated. The wholly past is nothing.

Well, what is this existence into which things come and out of which they go? It cannot be a concept. It cannot be subjective. It is not something we add to the world; it is the world itself in its temporal reality. Existence, existing, is some sort of metaphysical process, an ongoing upsurge of the Now and of Being, a continual Presencing that combines the temporal sense of 'presence' with the existential sense. This seems to be the root metaphor that underlies Lowe's presentist vision of time and existence: a continual upsurge of presencing. Of course, sober analyst that he is, Lowe would not use such romantic language as I am now using, language reminscent of a Continental philosopher like Sartre.

So, while existence is not an existent among existents, existence in the end does exist as this primal Presencing. There is a structural similarity with the view I arrived at in my A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer, 2002): both Lowe and I think of existence in its difference from existence as a paradigm Existent. In the end, existence exists for both of us, but not as a property or any existent among existents. It is logically and ontologically prior to the Quinian inventory.

Something about Nothing

Consider the following contradictory propositions:

1) Something exists.

2) Nothing exists.

(1) is plainly true. It follows that (2) is false. So much for truth value. What about modal status? Is (1) contingent or necessary? If (1) is contingent, then its negation is possible, in which case it is possible that (2) be true. If (1) is necessary, then it is not possible that (2) be true.

Is it possible that nothing exist? Is it possible that there be nothing at all? Arguably not, since if there were nothing at all, that would be the case: that would be that obtaining state of affairs, in which case there would be one 'thing,' namely, that state of affairs.

Therefore, it is impossible that there be nothing at all. It follows that it is necessary that something (at least one thing) exist.

A strict Pyrrhonian would have to say that there is an argument that cancels out the one just given.

Is there?

The Most Boring Philosophers

Nowadays philosophy so absorbs me in all its branches and movements that I find no philosopher boring. Indeed, no subject is boring except to the bored who make it so. Dry texts, like dry wines, are often delightfully subtle and simply require an educable and educated palate. Although no philosophers now bore me, here is a list of philosophers who bored me, or would have bored me, when I was one and twenty:

   1. G. E. Moore
   2. Elizabeth Anscombe
   3. Paul Ziff
   4. Norman Malcolm
   5. John Wisdom
   6. Roderick Chisholm

Philosophers who excited my 21-year-old self:

   1. Nicholas Berdyaev
   2. Miguel de Unamuno
   3. Karl Jaspers
   4. Friedrich Nietzsche
   5. Martin Heidegger
   6. Jean-Paul Sartre

Now imagine a philosophy department composed of the twelve aforementioned. Do you think it would split into two factions? What, if anything, do they have in common that justifies subsuming them under the rubric, philosophers?

I have become in many ways more analytic and less Continental over the years. I tend to think that this is a lot like becoming less liberal and more conservative, as these terms are popularly understood. One becomes more cautious, careful, precise, piece-meal, rigorous, attentive to details and differences and empirical data, less romantic, more patient, more logical, less impressionistic, less sanguine about big sweeping once-and-for-all solutions. . . .

In sum, and in a manner to elicit howls of protest: In philosophy, the trajectory of maturation is from Continental to analytic. In politics, from liberal to conservative.

Howl on, muchachos.

Pascal the Jansenist

Herewith, a note on Pascal inspired by Leszek Kolakowski's fascinating book, God Owes Us Nothing (University of Chicago, 1995).

Faith is a divine gift, bestowed arbitrarily, not a reward for merit. We postlapsarians groaning under Adam's sin are wholly without merit. There is no way we can get right with God by our own efforts. Grace is both necessary and sufficient for salvation. God cannot be called unjust in arbitrarily bestowing the grace that leads to faith and salvation on some but not others — for God is not measured by Justice, a standard external to him; God is the measure of Justice. God is Justice itself. In this respect he is like a self-exemplifying Platonic Form. Justice is just; God is Justice; God is just. Whatever Supreme Justice does is just by definition. This is a consequence of God's absolute sovereignty. Kolakowski hasn't (so far in my reading) mentioned divine simplicity, but this doctrine is arguably entailed by absolute sovereignty.

And so the very question whether God acts justly in damning some and saving others presupposes what cannot be the case given absolute sovereignty, namely, that God can be judged by a standard external to him. This view leads by inexorable logic to some horrific consequences. One is the justice of the consignment of unbaptized infants to eternal torment. Pascal bites the Augustinian bullet. See p. 85 ff.

The Presentism of E. J. Lowe: Summary

This entry is Part One of a multi-part attempt to understand and evaluate the late E. J. Lowe's 'untimely' version of presentism. It is 'untimely' in that he resists what he takes to be the reification of time and times, and because his presentism is very different from its contemporary competitors. I am basing my interpretation mainly on "Presentism and Relativity: No Conflict" in Ciuni, et al. eds., New Papers on the Present (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 2013, 133-152) and on "How Real is Substantial Change," The Monist, vol. 89, no. 3 (2006), 275-293. Page references in parentheses refer to the first article unless otherwise noted. All emphases are in the original.

1) Lowe insists on "The ontological primacy of present reality and the objective status of temporal passage." (133) These commitments justify calling him a presentist.

2) But he "repudiates [what he takes to be] the reification of time and 'times,' including the 'present moment' . . . ." (133) To reify is to treat as real what is not real. Lowe appears to be saying that there are no such items as times, and thus no such item as the present time. If so, one cannot quantify over times. This would seem to scotch fairly standard definitions or definition-schemata of 'presentism' along the following lines:

(P1) Always, only present items exist.

That is: every time is such that only what is non-relationally present at that time exists simpliciter.

3) The focus for Lowe is not on the present moment, but on the "fundamental reality of change . . . ." (133)

4) Change, however, is in every case "existence change — that is, the coming into or going out of existence of entities of one kind or another . . . ." (133) We are being told that all change is existential or substantial change. (See The Monist article cited above.) Now one kind of change is qualitative change as when a tomato goes from being green to being red. This can be understood to be a species of existence change if properties are assayed as tropes. The greenness trope in the tomato goes out of existence and a redness trope comes into existence while the tomato stays in existence. On this way of thinking, both the coming into existence of the tomato and its change of color are existential changes.

5) Objects (individual substances) change, but there are no events in addition to these changes. We need only the object and its tropes: we need no events such as the event of a leaf's turning brown. Furthermore, there is no event of a trope's going out of existence or coming into existence. If there were, a vicious infinite regress would ensue. (150) Events are "shadows cast by language rather than fundamental ingredients of temporal reality." (151) There are changes, but no events. I take Lowe to be saying that an event is an (illicit) reification of a change. If an animal dies, there is no such event as the animal's death in addition to the dead animal. There is just the animal which ceases to exist. (137)

6) Because there are no events, change cannot be ascribed to events. Because there is no such entity as my birth, my birth has no properties such as occurring at a certain place or being past. Because there are no events, no events change in their A-determinations, their monadic (non-relational) pastness, presentness, and futurity. There is thus no event, my birth, that was once future, then present, then past, and then ever more past. To think otherwise is to confuse events with objects, which amounts to a reification of events, an illicit treatment of them as if they are objects when all they could be are changes in objects.

7) It is not just that nothing has A-determinations; there are no such determinations to be had. McTaggart's A-determinations are pseudo-properties based on a "false analogy between events and objects." (136) There are no times, no events, and no A-determinations. This puts paid to McTaggart's claim that the A-series is contradictory, which is a key lemma in his overall argument for the unreality of time. That lemma requires that there be events and A-determinations. Very roughly, what McTaggart argues is that time is unreal because (i) time requires the A-series, but (ii) said series is contradictory in that each event has all three of the A-determinations. D. H. Mellor is a contemporary philosopher of time who accepts McTaggart's argument against the A-series, but concludes, not that time is unreal, but that time is exhausted by the B-series.

8) But if there are no events, then there is no B-series either. There is no series of events ordered by the so-called B-relations, earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. This puts paid to the view of D. H. Mellor and others that real time (to allude to the title of Mellor's book) is exhausted by the B-series. For Lowe, then, there are no times, no events, no A-series, and no B-series.

9) For Lowe, time is objectively real; it is not unreal as on McTaggart's view, nor is it in any sense transcendentally ideal (Kant) or constituted in consciousness (Husserl). But it is not real in the manner of a container or a dimension. Time is just temporal passage. Since time is objectively real, temporal passage is also objectively real and in no way mind-dependent. Temporal passage "consists in the continual coming into and going out of existence of entities . . . ." (137) Lowe is referring to temporal entities only, those that are not timeless such as propositions. He has in mind objects (individual substances) such as a cat and its properties (assayed as tropes) such as being asleep. This ceaseless existential change is what temporal passage consists in. In sum, for Lowe, time = temporal passage = the ever ongoing creation and annihilation of entities.

As I read him, Lowe is not maintaining that to exist = to be temporally present tout court, but that for temporal items, to exist = to be temporally present. This makes him an existence presentist with respect to temporalia. Recall that for Lowe, all change is existential (substantial) change. See (4) supra.

10) We tend to think of time as the dimension of change, a fourth dimension in addition to the three spatial dimensions. We tend to assume that "time is a dimension in which reality as a whole is extended." (Monist, 283) If you think that objects persist by perduring, by having different temporal parts at different times, then you are making this assumption. But most, though not all, endurantists make the same assumption when they say that an object endures by being 'wholly present' at each time at which the object exists. Lowe denies that time is a dimension. For if there are no times ordered by the B-relations, earlier and later, then time is not a dimension. Reality is not temporally extended. Lowe seeks to uphold an endurantism that does not presuppose that time is a dimension.

11) Lowe's view of time is thoroughly dynamic by contrast with the static character of time on eternalism, and with the partially static and partially dynamic theories of Growing Block and Spotlight. The reality of time "consists simply in the reality of change . . . . (140) The latter "constitutes" temporal passage. This of course implies that without change, there is no time; but we can live with that. What's more, there are no events and there are no times, and so there is no present time. Lowe concludes that we need no account of what times are, and in particular, no "ersatzist" account of time in terms of abstract objects such as propositions. He is opposing views like that of Craig Bourne, for whom "a time is a set of propositions that states the other truths about what happens at that time." (A Future for Presentism, Oxford UP, 2006, 52.)

12) The view that all change is existential change commits Lowe to the view that properties of things in time are not universals but tropes or modes (particularized properties). These are not temporal parts of objects. (141) Tropes are therefore consistent with endurantism. Suppose that a changes from being F at t1 to G at t2. "We can continue to say that a itself exists at both t1 and t2 despite having no temporal parts, thus being, in that sense, 'wholly present' at both of these times." (141) I note in passing how Lowe helps himself to talk of times.

13) The object that has tropes is neither a bundle of tropes not a bare particular or substratum that supports them. The 'relation' between an object and its tropes is left unclear. (141).

14) Objects persist through changes in intrinsic properties. How? Change in intrinsic properties occurs when "monadic tropes" successively "come into and go out of existence while it (the object) stays in existence." (142)

15) Lowe's presentism: "When 'time passes' the content of reality itself changes — entities come into and go out of existence." This is intended "literally and absolutely." Going out of existence is absolute annihilation. (146) But then coming into existence would have to be creation out of nothing, would it not?

16) Yet "some things that exist today already existed yesterday." (146) For example, the very same person who exists and is 'wholly present' now also existed and was 'wholly present' yesterday. (146)

17) Only present objects and tropes exist. The sum-total of these entities is ever changing. What ceases to be present is annihilated. But not everything that exists at present is annihilated at the same time. Suppose Elliot, who was drunk yesterday, is sober today. Elliot yesterday co-existed with a D-trope, and Elliot today co-exists with an S-trope. The tropes, however, are not coexistent with each other since the D-trope was annihilated by the passage of time while the S-trope presently exists. Lowe's presentism thus implies the non-transitivity of co-existence. It also implies that, while temporal reality is ever created and annihilated by the passage of time, not everything is annihilated or created at the same time. The annihilation of Elliot's drunkenness left Elliot the object unscathed.