Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Some Questions about White Privilege

    There is a lot of talk these days about white privilege.  The notion cries out for some squinty-eyed scrutiny.

    1. White privilege is presumably a type of privilege.  What is a privilege?  This is the logically prior question. To know what white privilege is we must first know what privilege is.  Let's consider some definitions.

    D1.  A privilege is a special  entitlement or immunity granted to a particular person or group of persons by the government or some other corporate entity such as a university or a church on a conditional basis.

    Driving on public roads is a privilege by this definition.  It is not a right one has  just in virtue of being a human being or a citizen.  It is a privilege the state grants on condition that one satisfy and continue to satisfy certain requirements pertaining to age, eyesight, driving skill, etc.  Being a privilege, the license to drive can be revoked.  By contrast, the right to life and the right to free speech are neither conditional nor granted by the government.  They can't be revoked.  Please don't confuse a constitutionally protected right such as the right to free speech with a right granted by the government. 

    Faculty members have various privileges, a franking privilege, a library privilege, along with such perquisites as an office, a carrel, secretarial help, access to an an exclusive dining facility, etc.  Immunities are also privileges, e.g., the immunity to prosecution granted  to a miscreant who agrees to inform on his cohorts.

    Now if (D1) captures what we mean by 'privilege,' then it it is hard to see how there could be white privilege.    Are there certain special entitlements and immunities that all and only whites have in virtue of being white, entitlements and immunities granted on a conditional basis by the government and revocable by said government?  No.  But there is black privilege by (D1).  It is called affirmative action. 

    So if we adopt (D1) we get the curious result that there is no white privilege, but there is black privilege!  Those who speak of white privilege as of something real and something to be aware of and opposed must therefore have a different definition of privilege in mind, perhaps the following:

    D2. A privilege is any unearned benefit or advantage that only some people have in virtue of their identity.  It needn't be granted by any corporate entity, nor need it be conditional.  Aspects of identity that can afford privilege in this sense include race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, wealth, ability, or citizenship status.

    White privilege cardPeople who speak of white privilege probably have something like (D2) in mind.  The idea is that there are certain unearned advantages that accrue to whites just in virtue of their race, advantages that do not accrue to members of other races.

    One question arises right here.  What justifies the broadening of the term 'privilege' to cover any unearned benefit?  If the term is used strictly, there is no white privilege.  To speak of white privilege one has to engage in a semantic stretch.  What justifies this stretch?  Is it a legitimate stretch or a example of linguistic distortion?  And what is the agenda behind it? 

    One thing to note about (D2) is that it leads to a proliferation of privileges. There will be as many privileges as there are unearned benefits possessed by some but not all.  For example, there will be the 'privilege' of being right-handed since this is a minor  advantage — better to be right-handed than either left-handed or ambisinistrous — and it is unearned and not possessed by everyone.  And the same goes for being ambidexterous.  I lack the  'privilege' of ambidexterity, being right-handed only,  and so I am disadvantaged relative to the ambidexterous.  But I am not as disadvantaged relative to the ambidexterous as the ambisinistrous.  They are the worst off when it comes to handedness.  Should they receive something like reparations for nature's niggardliness?

    Now clearly all of us enjoy all sorts of unearned benefits. Tall men, of whatever race, have an unearned advantage over short men, as long as they are not too tall.  In the USA at least it is better to be 6'1" rather than 4'11".  (D2) therefore implies that there is a tallness privilege in some cultures.  Is this a problem?  Does justice demand that heights be equalized?  And who will appoint and equalize the Procrustean equalizers?  Or are the equalizers exempt from equalization?  If so, this would be an immunity, hence a  'privilege,' a leftist privilege.

    Blacks born in the post-war USA have an unearned advantage over both whites and blacks born in some other parts of the world.  Blacks born into two-parent homes in the USA have an unearned advantage over blacks born into single-parent homes in the USA.  Blacks born without birth defects have an unearned advantage over blacks born with birth defects.  Many blacks born without birth defects have an unearned advantage over some whites born with birth defects.  And so on.

    If there is an advantage to being white, is this an advantage enjoyed by all whites?  And if it is not shared by all whites, why should this advantage be called white privilege?  Do 'poor white trash' share in white privilege?  Wouldn't it be better to be born into a solid, middle-class two-parent black or Hispanic family than to be born into a 'poor white trash' family?  Do rednecks and Southerners generally share in white privilege?  It didn't seem to help Paula Deen very much.

    What is the relation between white privilege and majority privilege?  I grant that, ceteris paribus, it is better to be white than black in the USA at the present time.  But how much of this advantage is due to whites' being a majority?  When Hispanics become a majority in California, say, will there be talk of Hispanic privilege?  Should Hispanics then start feeling guilty about their unearned advantage?

    Here is an important question.  Am I not entitled to my unearned benefits despite the fact that I have done nothing to earn them?  My being tall is not my own doing, and I don't do much of anything besides staying alive to keep myself tall.  I don't work at it in the way I work at improving my mind and work at maintaining my physical and fiscal fitness. 

    Suppose you are a black male born in the post-war USA into a middle-class, two-parent, loving home.  You have all sorts of unearned benefits.  Do you feel guilty because you have  unearned benefits that a lot of 'poor white trash' lack?  Should you feel guilty?  Change the example slightly: you were born in London and have the unearned benefit of a British accent.  You come to the States and are hired by CNN or FOX News, beating out white competitors, in large part because of that beautiful and charming accent.  Do you 'check' your privilege or feel guilty about it?  Does it bother you that a Southern accent is a definite disadvantage?

    So those are some questions that come to mind when I think about white privilege.  I'll end with a bit of analysis of an interesting quotation from this article:

    Those of us who are white and male in the U.S. were born with significantly more chips [with which] to play the poker game of life than were people of color or women. Although our white, male status is a biological reality, the unearned benefits that our race and gender identity provides us are a social construction, that is—they are special perks granted by a white patriarchal society.

    The second sentence is gibberish.  Males are on average taller than females.  Being tall is an unearned benefit, but surely it is no social construction.  The very notion of social construction is dubious by itself.  What does the phrase mean? Care to define it?  It smacks of the fallacy of hypostatization.  There is this entity called 'society' that constructs things?  I am not saying the phrase 'social construction' cannot be given a coherent meaning; I'm just saying that I would like to know what that meaning is.  Define it or drop it. 

    Perk? Isn't that what the coffee does — or used to do back in the day?  The word our 'professor' wants is 'perquisite.'  As I suggested above, perquisites are privileges.  So what the 'professor' is doing is conflating privileges with unearned benefits.  That conflation needs to be either justified or dropped. We are told that these 'perks' are granted by a white patriarchal society?  Smells like the fallacy of hypostatization again.  Where can I find the group of people who collectively decide to grant these special 'perks' to white people? 

    I could go on, but this is enough 'shoveling' for one day.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Harley-Davidson: Stickin’ it to the Man

    Check out this H-D promotional video.  A celebration of individuality by people who dress the same, ride the same make of motorcycle, and chant in unison.

    "Some of us believe in the Man Upstairs, but all of us believe in stickin' it to the Man Down Here." 

    But without the Man Down Here there would be no roads, no gasoline, no science, no technology, no motorcycles, no law and order, no orderly context in which aging lawyers and dentists could play at stickin' it to the Man on the weekends. 

    The Man is discipline, self-denial, repression, deferral of gratification, control of the instinctual.   The Man is civilization, discontents and all. Without the Man there would be no one to stick it to, and nothing to stick it to him with.  Adolescents of all ages need the Man to have someone to rebel against.

    Still and all, after watching this video, what red-blooded American boomer doesn't want to rush out and buy himself a hog? Get your motor runnin', head out on the highway . . . .

    Personal anecdote: A few years back I took a three-day motorcycle course, passed it, and got my license.  I was about to rush out and buy myself a hog when Good Sense kicked in.  So I rushed out and bought myself a Jeep Wrangler instead.  

    Bill Vallicella

  • Cops: A Necessary Evil

    I don't much like law enforcement agents (qua law enforcement agents) and I try to avoid contact with them, not because I violate laws or have something to hide, but because I understand human nature, and I understand how power corrupts people, not inevitably, but predictably. Cops and sheriffs are too often arrogant, disrespectful, and willing to overstep their lawful authority.

    But there is a species of varmint that I like even less than law enforcement agents: criminals and scofflaws. They are the scum of the earth. To clean up scum you need people who are willing to get dirty and who share some of the attributes of those they must apprehend and incarcerate. I mean such attributes as courage, cunning, some recklessness, with a dash of ruthlessness thrown in for good measure. Government and its law enforcement agencies are a necessary evil. That is not pessimism, but realism.

    There are anarchists and others who dream of a world in which good order arises spontaneously and coercive structures are unnecessary. I want these anarchists and others to be able to dream on in peace. For that very reason, I reject their dangerous utopianism.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Grateful to Live in Arizona

    I've lived in Hawaii, Santa Barbara, Boston, and the Midwest, not to mention other places in the USA and abroad: Salzburg, Austria, Freiburg, Germany, and Ankara, Turkey.   No place beats Arizona, all things considered. That is a mighty subjective judgment, to be sure, but if a blogger cannot vent his subjectivity, who can?

    For one thing, Arizona is in the West and we all know that the West is the best, far, far away from the effete and epicene East, lousy with liberals, and the high taxes they love; but not so far West as to be on the Left Coast where there was once and is no more a great and golden state, California. Geographical chauvinism aside, there is beauty everywhere, even in California, when you abstract from the political and economic and social malaise wrought by destructive leftists, the majestic Sierra Nevada, for example, the Range of Light (John Muir). Herewith, an amateur  shot of the the Sedona red rock country:

    IMG_0337

    Related articles
     
    Bill Vallicella

  • For Political Linkage and Commentary . . .

    . . . go to my Facebook page.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Defending Barry Miller against Herman Philipse: Existence as a First-Level Property, Part II

    This is the second in a series. Here is the first installment. Read it for context and references. We are still examining only the first premise of Barry Miller's cosmological argument, as sketched by Philipse:

    1) Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals.

    Philipse gave two arguments contra. In my first entry I refuted the weaker of the two. Philipse argued that Kant in 1781 had already put paid to the proposition that existence is a "real predicate," i.e., a real property of individuals.  I showed that Philipse confuses two different senses of 'real.'  When the Sage of Koenigsberg tells us that Offenbar, Sein ist kein reales Praedikat, he is telling us that it is obvious that being or existence is not a first-level quidditative determination.  This is true, whether or not it is obvious.  But when Miller tells us that existence is a real property of individuals, he is telling us that it is a non-Cambridge property of individuals.  Philipse confuses 'real' in the sense of 'quidditative' with 'real' in the sense of 'non-Cambridge,' and on the basis of this confusion takes Kant to have refuted Miller.  The ineptitude of Philipse's 'argument' takes the breath away.

    The other argument Philipse gives is not so easily blown out of the water, if it can be so blown at all. He writes:

    It is not necessary to discuss here all the attempted refutations Miller puts forward, for the simple reason that if he fails to refute convincingly only one plausible argument to the effect that existence is not a real predicate, his negative strategy is shipwrecked.

    Let me take the so-called absurdity objection as an example (pp. 21-23). According to this objection, if existence is an accidental real first-order property of individual entities, so must non-existence be, but this would imply an absurdity. For in order to attribute truly a real property to a specific individual, we must be able to refer successfully to that individual by using a proper name, a pronoun, or by pointing to it, etc. However, we can refer successfully to an individual only if that individual exists or at least has existed, so that non-existence cannot be a real property. Hence existence cannot be an accidental real first-level property of individuals either.

    The absurdity objection can be put like this:

    a) Existence is a (real, non-Cambridge) property of individuals if and only if nonexistence is also a (real, non-Cambridge) property of individuals.

    b) Non-existence cannot be a property of individuals: if an individual exists, then it cannot have the property of nonexistence. 

    Therefore

    c) Existence is not a property of individuals.

    This is an argument that cannot be dismissed as resting on an elementary confusion. But let's take a step back and formulate the problem as an aporetic triad or antilogism the better to reconnoiter the conceptual terrain.

    a) Existence is a (real, non-Cambridge) property of individuals if and only if nonexistence is also a (real, non-Cambridge) property of individuals.

    b) Non-existence cannot be a property of individuals: if an individual exists, then it cannot have the property of nonexistence. 

    c*) Existence is a property of individuals.

    Each of these three propositions is individually plausible. And yet they cannot all be true on pain of logical contradiction. Individually plausible, but collectively inconsistent. So, if we adhere to the law of non-contradiction,  one of the propositions must be rejected.  Which will it be?

    A. The Fregean will reject (c*).  A Fregean or Fressellian for present purposes is someone who, first, holds that 'exist(s)' is univocal in sense and second, has only one admissible sense: as a second-level predicate.  Thus the general existential 'Cats exist' is logically kosher because it can be read as predicating of the first-level property of being a cat the second-level property of being instantiated.  But the singular existential 'Max exists' is not logically kosher and is indeed meaningless in roughly the way 'Max is numerous' is meaningless.  For if 'exists' is univocal and means 'is instantiated,' then one cannot meaningfully say of Max that he exists for the simple reason that it is meaningless to say of an individual that it is instantiated.  Max could conceivably have an indiscernible twin, but that would not be an instance of him. By definition, the only instantiable items are properties, concepts, and the like.  Some will say that the Fregean analysis can be made to work for singular existentials if there are such haecceity properties as identity-with-Max, 'Maxity' to give it a name.   Suppose that there are.  Then 'Max exists' is analyzable as 'Maxity is instantiated.'  But this does not alter the fact that 'exist(s)' is a second-level predicate, and existence a second-level property.

    B. The Meinongian will reject (b).  A Meinongian for present purposes is someone who denies that everything exists, and holds instead that some items exist and some do not.  For the Meinongian, existence is a classificatory principle: it partitions a logically prior domain of items into those that exist and those that do not.  For the Meinongian, both existence and non-existence are first-level properties. Existence cannot be classificatory for the Fregean because, for the Fregean, everything exists.  And so for the Fregean, there cannot be a property of non-existence.

    C. The Millerian — to give him a name — rejects (a).  A Millerian for present purposes is one who holds, against the Meinongian, that there are no nonexistent items, and against the Fregean that existence is a genuine, non-relational  property predicable of individuals.  Holding that everything exists, the Millerian cannot admit that non-existence is a real (i.e., non-Cambridge) property of individuals.  

    In Part III of this series, I will examine Philipse's atempted rebuttal of Miller's rejection of (a).  For now I will merely point out that the Meinongian and Fregean positions are open to powerful objections and therefore cannot be used to refute the Millerian view.  They merely oppose it. To oppose a theory T with a questionable theory T* is not to refute T.  'Refute' is a verb of success. To refute a theory is to prove that it is untenable. Note also that the Fregean and the Meinongian are at profound loggerheads, which fact undermines both positions. After all, deep thinkers have supported each.  

    My point, then, is that Philipse hasn't refuted Miller; he has merely opposed him from the point of view of the Fregean theory which is fraught with difficulties.  One cannot refute a theory with a theory that is itself open to powerful objections as the Fregean theory is.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Van Inwagen contra Meinong on Having Being and Lacking Being

    There is a passage in Peter van Inwagen's "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities," (in Existence: Essays in Ontology, CUP, 2014, p. 98, emphasis added), in which he expresses his incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being' and 'lacks being': 

    . . . the Meinongian must mean something different by 'has being' and 'lacks being' from what I mean by these phrases. But what does he mean by them? I do not know. I say 'x has being' means '~(y) ~y = x'; the Meinongian denies this. Apparently, he takes 'has being' to be a primitive, an indefinable term, whereas I think that 'has being' can be defined in terms of  'all' and 'not'. (And I take definability in terms of 'all' and 'not' to be important, because I am sure that the Meinongian means exactly what I do by 'all' and 'not' — and thus he understands what I mean by 'has being' and is therefore an authority on the question whether he and I mean the same.) And there the matter must rest.  The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation. 

    Before I begin, let me say that I don't think van Inwagen is on this occasion feigning incomprehension as some philosophers are wont to do: I believe he really has no idea what 'has being' and cognate expressions could mean if they don't mean what he thinks they mean.

    No one articulates and defends the thin theory of existence/being better than Peter van Inwagen who is arguably  'king' of the thin theorists.  The essence of the thin theory is that

    1. x exists =df ~(y)~(y=x).

    Driving the tilde though the right-hand expression, left to right, yields the logically equivalent

    1*. x exists =df (∃y)(y = x)

    which may be easier for you to wrap your head around.  In something closer to  English

    1**.  x exists =df x is identical to something.

    The thin theory is 'thin' because it reduces existence to a purely logical notion definable in terms of the purely logical notions of unrestricted universal quantification, negation, and identity.  What is existence?  On the thin theory existence is just identity-with-something.  (Not some one thing, of course, but something or other.) Characteristically Meinongian, however, is the thesis of Aussersein which could be put as follows:

    M. Some items have no being.

    Now suppose two things that van Inwagen supposes.  Suppose that (i) there is exactly one sense of 'exists'/'is' and that (ii) this one sense is supplied in its entirety by (1) and its equivalents.  Then (M) in conjunction with the two suppositions entails

    C. Some items are not identical to anything.

    But (C) is self-contradictory since it implies that some item is such that it is not identical to itself, i.e. '(∃x)~(x = x).'

    Here we have the reason for van Inwagen's sincere incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being.'  He cannot understand it because it seems to him to be self-contradictory.  But it is important to note that (M) by itself is not logically contradictory.  It is contradictory only in conjunction with van Inwagen's conviction that 'x has being' means '~(y) ~(y = x).'

    In other words, if you ASSUME the thin theory, then the characteristic Meinongian thesis (M) issues in a logical contradiction. But why assume the thin theory?  Are we rationally obliged to accept it?

    I don't accept the thin theory, but I am not a Meinongian either. (Barry Miller is another who is neither a thin theorist nor a Meinongian.)  'Thin or Meinongian' is a false alternative by my lights.  I am not a Meinongian because I do not believe that existence is a classificatory principle that partitions a logically prior domain of ontologically neutral items into the existing items and the nonexisting items.  I hold that everything exists, which, by obversion, implies that nothing does not exist.  So I reject (M).

    I reject the thin theory not because some things don't exist, but because there is more to the existence of what exists than identity-with-something.  And what more is that?  To put it bluntly: the more is the sheer extra-logical and extra-linguistic existence of the thing, its being there (in a non-locative sense of course).  The 'more' is its not being nothing. (If you protest that to not be nothing is just to be something, where 'something' is just a bit of logical syntax, then I will explain that there are two senses of 'nothing' that need distinguishing.)  Things exist, and they exist beyond language and logic. 

    Can I argue for this?  It is not clear that one needs to argue the point since it is, to me at least, self-evident.  But I can argue for it anyway.

    If for x to exist is (identically) for x to be identical to some y, this leaves open the question:  does y exist or not?  You will say that y exists.  (If you say that y does not exist, then you break the link between existence and identity-with-something.)  So you say that y exists.  But then your thin theory amounts to saying that the existence of x reduces to its identity with something that exists.  My response will be that you have moved in an explanatory circle, one whose diameter is embarrassingly short.  Your task was to explain what it is for something to exist, and you answer by saying that to exist is to be identical to something that exists.  This response is no good, however, since it leaves unexplained what it is for something to exist!  You have helped yourself to the very thing you need to explain.

    It is the extra-logical and extra-linguistic existence of things that grounds our ability to quantify over them.  Given that things exist, and that everything exists, we have no need for an existence predicate: we can rid ourselves of the existence predicate 'E' by defining 'E' in terms of '(∃y)(y = x).'  But note that the definiens contains nothing but logical syntax.  What this means is that one is presupposing the extra-logical existence of items in the domain of quantification.  You can rid yourself of the existence predicate if you like, but you cannot thereby rid yourself of the first-level existence of the items over which you are quantifying.

    Here is another way of seeing the point.  Bertrand Russell held that existence is a propositional function's being sometimes true.  Let the propositional function be (what is expressed by) 'x is a dog.'  That function is sometimes true (in Russell's idiosyncratic phraseology) if the  free variable 'x' has a substituend that turns the propositional function or open sentence into a true closed sentence.  So consider 'Fido,' the name of an existing dog and 'Cerberus.'  How do I know that substituting  'Fido' for 'x' results in a true sentence while substituting 'Cerberus' does not? Obviously, I  must have recourse to a more fundamental notion of existence than the one that Russell defines.  I must know that Fido exists while Cerberus does not.  Clearly, existence in the fundamental sense is the existence that belongs to individuals, and not existence as a propositional function's being sometimes true.

    Now if you understand the above, then you will be able to understand why, in van Inwagen's words, "The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation."  The thin theory entails that there is no difference in reality between x and existing x.  But for Meinong there is a difference: it is the difference between Sosein and Sein.  While I don't think that there can be a Sosein that floats free of Sein. I maintain that there is a distinction in reality between a thing (nature, essence, Sosein, suchness) and existence.  

    If van Inwagen thinks that he has shown that Meinong's doctrine entails a formal-logical contradiction, he is fooling himself.  Despite his fancy footwork and technical rigmarole, all van Inwagen succeeds in doing is begging the question against Meinong.        

    Bill Vallicella

  • Berdyaev: Communism as a Form of Idolatry

    David Horowitz, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, Touchstone, 1997, p. 55:

    After the Russian Revolution of 1905, the philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev analyzed communism as a form of idolatry in a way that proved to be prophetic. Berdyaev traced the origins of what he called the Marxist “heresy” back to the tower of Babel. In that story, people had tried to achieve their own redemption — without a transcendent God — by building a ladder to heaven. Communists had a similar ambition. They had projected onto fallible beings godlike powers that would enable them to overcome their human fate. In do so, Berdyaev warned, the communists had created demons they would not be able to control.

    Berdyaev soul history

    Bill Vallicella

  • Attitude, Gratitude, Beatitude

    Happy Thanksgiving to all my Stateside readers.

    The attitude of gratitude conduces to beatitude.  Can it be said in plain Anglo-Saxon?  Grateful thoughts lead one to happiness.  However you say it, it is true.  The miserable make themselves miserable by their bad thinking; the happy happy by their correct mental hygiene. 

    Broad generalizations, these.  They admit of exceptions, as goes without saying.  He who is afflicted with Weilian malheur or clinical depression cannot think his way out of his misery.  Don't get hung up on the exceptions.  Meditate on the broad practical truth.  On Thanksgiving, and every day.

    Leftists will complain that I am 'preaching.'  But that only reinforces my point: they complain and they think, strangely, that any form of exhortation just has to be hypocritical.  Besides not knowing what hypocrisy is, they don't know how to appreciate what actually exists and provably works. Appreciation is conservative.  Scratch a leftist and likely as not you'll find a nihilist,  a denier of the value of what is, a hankerer after what is not, and in too many cases, what is impossible. 

    Even the existence of leftists is something to be grateful for.  They mark out paths not to be trodden.  And their foibles provide  plenty of blog fodder.  For example, there is the curious phenomenon of hypocrisy-in-reverse.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Thankfulness

    Thankful for limited gov't

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Dissident Right

    Here:

    The dissident right is, to some degree, a reaction to the shift on the Right, among the Buckleyites mostly, to embrace the blank slate and egalitarianism. This was mostly due to the infestation of neoconservatives and libertarians. The neocons brought with them that old Marxist belief that society can be willed into any shape you like, regardless of the people in it. Libertarians, like Marxists, simply refuse to accept the reality of the human condition. As a result, the mainstream Right implicitly embraced the blank slate.

     

    Bill Vallicella

  • When is Politics War?

    I have been saying that politics is war.  I don't mean to suggest that it is the nature of politics to be war, but only that in the present circumstances it is. When is politics war? When the constitutional order is no longer respected. And that is now in the USA. To mention just three things under assault by the Left: the First Amendment, with its protections of religious liberty and free speech; the Second Amendment; the Electoral College.

    The leftist sees politics as war. And so that is how we must see it if we are to meet their attack. It is the foolish conservative, living in the past, hobbled by his virtues and hindered by his decency, who sees politics as a gentlemanly debate by agreed-upon rules under an umbrella of shared principles. There are no such rules, and there is no such umbrella.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Defending Barry Miller Against Herman Philipse, Part I: Existence as a First-Level Property

    In his Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews  review of Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God, Herman Philipse presents the following sketch of  Miller's cosmological  argument  a contingentia mundi for the existence of God:

    1. Existence is a real first-level accidental property of contingent individuals.

    2. Concrete contingent individuals are distinct from their existence.

    3. This distinction implies a paradox, unless:

    4. All existing concrete contingent individuals are caused to exist by a necessarily existing and therefore uncaused individual that is identical with its existence, and this is God.

    5. At least one concrete contingent individual exists, e.g., the dog Fido, or the universe.

    6. Hence, God exists (from 1-5).

    Philipse is unimpressed with the argument.  He rejects (1) as well as (2)-(4).  In this entry I will confine myself to a discussion of Philipse's rejection of (1), and indeed to just one of his arguments against (1).  

    It is obvious that Miller's cosmological argument cannot get off the ground unless existence is a property of  contingent individuals in some defensible sense of 'property.'  This is what Philipse appears to deny.  He appears to endorse the Frege-Russell view according to which 'exist(s)' is always only a second-level predicate and never an admissible first-level predicate, where a first-level or first-order predicate is one that  stands for a property that is meaningfully attributable to concrete individuals.   On the Frege-Russell view, then,  existence is not a first-level property, but a property of properties, Fregean concepts, Russellian propositional functions or some cognate item.   But this dogma of analysis — as I call it –  (i) flies in the face of the linguistic data and (ii) brings with it troubles of its own. (See my "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, eds. Novotny and Novak, Routledge 2014, pp. 45-75)

    That we predicate existence of concrete individuals seems as obvious as anything.  That we do so is a datum that ought to be  presumed innocent until proven guilty of incoherence or contradiction.  We predicate existence of individuals using proper names, demonstratives, pronouns, and pure indexicals as in 'Socrates exists,' 'This exists,'  'She exists,' and 'I exist.'   'Socrates' is a proper name. 'This' is a demonstrative.  'She' is a pronoun. 'I' is a pure indexical.  Many of these first-level predications of existence are true.  And if true, or false, then meaningful.  This is evidence that 'exist(s)'  functions as a meaningful first-level predicate in singular sentences such as 'Scollay Square no longer exists' and 'Copley Square still exists.'   The linguistic data suggest that 'exist(s)' has a use as a meaningful first-level predicate in the the way that 'numerous' has no use  as a meaningful first-level predicate. 

    (Bertrand Russell made a brave but unsuccessful attempt at assimilating existence to numerousness by arguing that, just as it would be the fallacy of division to argue that Socrates is numerous from the premises that he is a philosopher and that philosophers are numerous, it would also be the fallacy of division to argue that Socrates exists from the premises that he is a philosopher and that philosophers exist. Following Frege, he held that 'exist(s)' is never an admissible first-level predicate.)

    Consider the Cartesian cogito ergo sum.   It terminates in the proposition, sum, I am, I exist. The proposition is true, hence meaningful. First-level predications of existence would thus appear to be meaningful.  When I think the thought that I exist, I attribute to myself the property of existence. This is prima facie evidence that existence is a property of individuals in a suitably broad sense of 'property.'  Of course, when I say of a thing that it exists, I am not adding to its description or to the list of its quidditative determinations. So existence is not a property of individuals in that sense.  The following is a non sequitur:

    Existence is not a quidditative property of individuals.

    Therefore

    Existence is not a property of individuals at all, but a property of properties, the property of being instantiated.

    It doesn't follow, because existence might be a non-quidditative property of individuals.  The premise is obvious and contested by no one; but one cannot leap straightaway from it to the Fressellian doctrine which removes existence from individuals entirely and installs it at the level of concepts/properties/propositional functions.  

    It is well known, however, that certain puzzles arise if we treat 'exist(s)' as a genuine first-level or first-order predicate.  And so a defender of (1) needs to be able to rebut the arguments against the view that 'exist(s)' is a genuine first-level predicate and existence a genuine first-level property.  Philipse claims that  if even one of these arguments contra is sound, then (1) cannot be sustained. 

    Let us consider a famous argument from Kant who is widely regarded as having anticipated Frege.  Philipse writes,

    Finally, does Miller succeed in refuting the Kantian argument to the effect that existence is not a real property? According to this argument, it is always possible to assert of one and the same entity (described by a list of its properties) both that it exists and that it does not exist. It follows from this plausible premise that existence cannot be a property (Critique of Pure Reason, A600/B628). Miller answers by stipulating that although existence is a real first-order property of concrete individuals, it differs from all other properties in two respects. First, existence does not add anything to what the individual is, and second, it does not add anything to an antecedent reality (p. 38). In my view, however, this stipulation amounts to changing the ordinary meaning of the term 'property', so that Miller's reply to Kant commits a fallacy of ambiguity. I conclude that Miller does not succeed in establishing that existence is a real accidental first-level property of concrete individuals.

    This response is a total misunderstanding.  Kant does not show that existence cannot be a property; what he shows, if he shows anything, is that it cannot be a real property where a real property is a determining property, and where "a determining predicate [property in contemporary jargon] is a predicate [property] which is added to the concept of the subject and enlarges it." (A598 B626) 

    Let the concept be cat. This relatively indeterminate concept can be further determined and made more specific by adding  real or determining properties to it such as male, short-haired, black, five-years-old, and so on.  Kant's point is that existence is not a property that could be added to this, or any, concept to further determine it.  Existence is not a determining property. And in that sense it is not a real property.  To predicate it of an individual leaves its whatness (quidditas) unaltered. Existence is not a quidditative determination.

    Suppose the process of determination were taken to the max such that our cat concept becomes fully determinate in the sense that if anything in reality were to instantiate it, exactly one individual would instantiate it.  The concept would then be so specific as to be individuating. But it would not follow that anything in reality does instantiate it.  And if anything in reality were to instantiate it, then that individual would be quidditatively indistinguishable from the concept.  The concept and its object, it there is one, would coincide quidditatively. (A599 B627)  This is why Kant says that "the actual contains no more than the merely possible." The concept expresses the mere possibility of a corresponding object; whether there is a corresponding object, however, is an extra-conceptual matter.   

    You can see how this puts paid to the Cartesian ontological argument "from mere concepts." No doubt the concept of God is the concept of a being possessing all perfections. But even if existence is a perfection ( a great-making property in Plantinga's lingo) in God, existence is not contained in any concept we can wrap our heads around, and so cannot be analytically extracted from any such concept.  Hence we cannot prove the existence of God by sheer analysis of the God concept. No concept in he mind of a discursive, ectypal intellect, not even the concept of God,  is such that by sheer analysis of its content one could prove the existence of a corresponding object.  

    The point that Philipse misses is that Kant's claim that existence is not a real, i.e., determining property of individuals is consistent with Miller's claim that existence is a real, i.e., non-Cambridge property of individuals. Philipse mistakenly thinks that if existence is not a determining property of an individual, then it is not a property of an individual.  That is the same non sequitur as was exposed above.  If existence is not a quidditative property of individuals, it does not follow that that it is not a property of individuals, but a property of properties.

    Kant's argument does not refute Miller's (1) above.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Buddhism, Suffering, and One Reason I am not a Buddhist

    (This entry touches upon some themes discussed with greater rigor, thoroughness, and scholarliness in my "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466.)

    For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering.  All is unsatisfactory.  This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking:  doesn't life routinely offer us, besides pain and misery and disappointment, intense pleasures and deep satisfactions?  How then can it be true that all is unsatisfactory?  For the Buddhist, however, what is ordinarily taken by the unenlightened worldling  to be sukha (pleasure) is at bottom dukkha.  Why? 

    Because no pleasure, mental or physical, gives permanent and plenary satisfaction.  Each satisfaction leaves us in the lurch, wanting more.  A desire satisfied is a desire entrenched. Masturbate once, and you will do it a thousand times, with the need for repetition testifying to the unsatisfactoriness of the initial satisfaction.   If it were fully satisfactory, why would you be inclined to repeat the pleasure? Each pleasure promises more that it can possibly deliver, and so refers you to the next and the next and the next, none of them finally satisfactory.  It's a sort of Hegelian schlechte Unendlichkeit, bad infinity.  Desire satisfied becomes craving, and craving is an instance of dukkha.  One becomes attached to the paltry and impermanent and one suffers when it cannot be had.  One also suffers when the satisfaction sought is achieved but revealed to be less than what one expected.

    There is more to it than this, but this is the essence of it.  The thing to note is that the claim in the First Noble Truth is not the triviality that there is a lot of suffering in this life, but that life itself, as insatiable desiring and craving for what is unattainable to it, is ill, pain-inducing, profoundly unsatisfactory, and something to be escaped from if possible. It is a radical diagnosis of the human predicament, and the proposed cure is equally radical: extirpation of desire.  The problem for the Buddhist is not that some of our desires are misdirected and inordinate; the problem is desire itself.  The solution, then, is not rightly-ordered desire, as in Christianity, but the eradication of desire.  The root (radix) of suffering is desire and that root must be uprooted (e-radi-cated).  It is a radical solution.

    Although Buddhism appears in some ways to be a sort of 'empirical religion' — to hazard an oxymoron — the claim that all is suffering involves an interpretation of our experience that goes well beyond the empirically given.  Buddhism, as a development from Hinduism, judges the given by the standard of the permanent. It brings the meta-physical or super-sensible to bear in the evaluation of the physical or sensible.   Permanence is the standard against which the  ordinary satisfactions of life are judged deficient.  Absolute permanence sets the ontological and axiological standard.  The operative presupposition is that only that which is permanent is truly real, truly important, and truly satisfactory. But if, as Buddhism also maintains, all is impermanent, then one wonders whence the standard of permanence derives its validity. If all is impermanent, and nothing has self-nature, then the standard is illusory.  If so, then we have no good reason to reject all ordinary satisfactions.

    For Buddhism, the fundamental problem is suffering in the radical sense above explained, and the solution is entry into nibbana by the extirpation of desire, all desire (including even the desire for nibbana), as opposed to the moderation of desire and its redirection to worthy objects.  I question both the diagnosis and the cure.  The diagnosis is arguably faulty because arguably incoherent: it presupposes while denying the existence of an absolute ontological and axiological standard.  The cure is faulty because it issues in nihilism, as if the goal of life could be its own self-extinction.

    I am talking about primitive Buddhism, that of the Pali canon.  Attention to the Mahayana would require some qualifications.

    So one reason I am not a Buddhist is that I reject the doctrine of suffering.  But I also reject the doctrines of impermanence and 'no self.'  That gives me two more reasons.  These other doctrines are inseparable from the doctrine of suffering, and they, like it, have a radical meaning. It is not just that things change, but that they are in Heraclitean flux.  It is an observable fact that things change, but the nature of change cannot be 'read off' from the fact of change.  Is change Heraclitean or Aristotelian?  If the former, then everything is continuously changing; if the latter, then there are enduring substrata of change which, for a time at least, do not change: one and the same avocado is first unripe and then ripe.  Neither of these views of change is empirically obvious in the way that it is empirically obvious that there is change.

    Now it is radical impermanence that underpins radical unsatisfactoriness and that also implies the doctrine of anatta, which, in Western terms, is the denial of the existence of  substances. This denial, too, is radical since it is not merely the denial that substances are permanent, but a denial that there are any substances at all. 

    But I should say that I take Buddhism very seriously indeed.  It is deep and sophisticated with a rich tradition of philosophical commentary.  Apart from its mystical branch, Sufism, I cannot take Islam seriously –except as a grave threat to other religions and indeed to civilization itself.  But perhaps I have been too much influenced by Schopenhauer on this point.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Of Ether, Lead, and Misattribution

    Those of us who pursue the ethereal should never forget that it is blood, iron, and lead that secure the spaces of tranquillity wherein we flourish.

    I found the following in a gun forum:  “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” It was attributed to George Orwell.

    I don't know whether Orwell wrote those exact words.  I rather doubt that he did.  But he did write, in Notes on Nationalism, "Those who 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."  The thought is essentially the same, and a good and true thought it is.

    Pacifism is for angels.  But we are mixed and mixed-up beings, half animal, half angel.

    You should never trust any unsourced attribution you find on the Internet.

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

  1. And then there is the Sermon on the Mount. Here is a list of 12 different interpretations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermon_on_the_Mount

  8. Bill, One final complicating observation: The pacifist interpretation of Matt 5:38-42 has been contested in light of Lk 22: 36-38…

  9. The Kant-Swedenborg relation is more complicated than I thought. https://philarchive.org/archive/THOTRO-12

  10. Ed, Just now read the two topmost articles on your Substack. I’m a Kant scholar of sorts and I recall…

Categories

Philosophy Weblogs

Other Websites