Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • A Complete Unknown

    A lot happened to young Bob in a few short years, from Song to Woody to Like a Rolling Stone.

    I saw the movie and it moved me. How about you?

    Here is a good article about Dylan's falling out with Seeger.  

    A Complete Unknown isn’t that interested in clarifying this point. Because the film almost entirely ignores politics. And it should ignore Dylan’s politics, whatever they might be. But it makes an unforgivable error in ignoring the politics of his Greenwich Village confederates who adhered to the Maoist dictum that art must serve the people, avoid manifestations of the individual, and reject commercial concerns.

    As one critic complained in the aftermath of Newport, for the new, electrified Dylan “the words [matter] less than the beat.” What he “used to stand for, whether one agreed with it or not, was much clearer than what he stands for now. [Which is] maybe himself.” Irwin Silber, the rigidly Communist editor of Sing Out! magazine, the in-flight magazine of the radical folk scene, excoriated the New Dylan for having abandoned political songs in favor of “inner-directed, innerprobing, self-conscious” music. Decades later, Silber reflected on his criticism by acknowledging that his “biggest concern was not with the electricity. . . but with what Dylan was saying and doing about moving away from his political songs.”

    Dylan was so desperate to slip out from folk’s rigid ideological strictures that he would simply deny the politics even of his most transparently political songs. “Blowin’ in the Wind” wasn’t topical but “just a feeling I felt because I felt that way.” Already in 1964, he would shrug at a song he wrote about the lynching of Emmett Till, “which in all honesty was a bullshit song. . . . I realize now that my reasons and motives behind it were phony.”

    Bill Vallicella

    9 responses to “A Complete Unknown”

  • Suffering, Evil, and Galen Strawson’s ‘Proof’ of the Nonexistence of the Christian God

    This just in from our old friend Malcolm Pollack:

    I'm writing because I went to your Substack to read your 2A post, and beneath it was a link to your post about Galen Strawson's audacious letter to the NYT — in which Professor Strawson, in a single paragraph, proves the nonexistence of the Christian God!
     
    I have a quibble, however, about your response. In the version of Strawson's argument you offer, you make a move from "suffering" (Strawson's word) to "evil", and then rely on the incoherence of the idea of objective "evil" in a Godless world to undercut Strawson's argument.
     
    Strawson, though, never mentions evil; he only speaks of suffering. This means, it seemed to me, that the word "suffering" should take the place of "evil" in your framing of Strawson's argument, and I think it changes that line of attack that you might have used. (Evil is always wrong, of course, but how are we to know what suffering might be necessary in ways that, like children, we can't understand?) 
     
    Am I being petty here? It seems to me that the distinction between the concepts of suffering and evil, though they share deep connections, is important enough to point out.
     
    1) It is perfectly plain that the words 'suffering' and 'evil' have different meanings and that the corresponding concepts are different. I implied as much when I asked, "Is it certain that evil exists?  Is it even true?  Are there any evils?  No doubt there is suffering.  But is suffering evil?"   
     
    2) A different but related question is whether every instance of animal or human suffering is evil.  I am inclined to say No, and that some instances of suffering are evil and some are not. William Rowe, however, disagrees.  Here is my view in contrast to Rowe's from a February 2019 entry:
     
    Suppose that to be restored to health a child must undergo an extremely painful medical treatment. So the parents of the child allow the treatment to be administered. We will agree that the infliction of the suffering upon the child is morally justified by the fact that the treatment is necessary to prevent a greater evil such as the child's death. Now what Rowe is saying above [in the linked article] is that in a case like this, the suffering is (morally) justified but evil nevertheless.

    I find this difficult to understand. It sounds like a contradiction. For if the infliction of the suffering is morally justified, then the infliction is morally permissible. But if the suffering is morally evil, then its infliction is also morally evil, which is to say that its infliction is morally impermissible. But surely it is a contradiction to affirm of any action A that A is both morally permissible and morally impermissible.  

    If the suffering is morally justified in that it leads to a good unobtainable without it, then the suffering, though certainly unpleasant, disagreeable, repugnant, awful, excruciating, etc., is not under the conditions specified evil in a sense of 'evil' inconsistent with the divine omnibenevolence.  It is instrumentally good.  In the situation we are imagining, it is not only morally permissible but also morally obligatory for the parents to allow the painful treatment to be administered. This implies that the treatment ought to be administered. Therefore, if you say that the child's suffering remains evil despite its leading to a greater good, then you are committed to saying that the infliction of evil upon the child is morally obligatory, something that ought to be done. But this smacks of absurdity since it is hard to understand how any infliction of evil could be morally obligatory. Since in our example the infliction of suffering is morally permissible, I conclude that even intense suffering is not in every case evil.

    What Rowe is saying is that suffering is intrinsically evil, and that its evilness remains the same whether or not the suffering is instrumentally good. What I am asserting contra Rowe is that whether or not an instance of suffering is evil depends on whether or not it is instrumentally good. For me, suffering that is instrumentally good is not evil. I concede of course that such suffering remains unpleasant, disagreeable, repugnant, awful, excruciating, etc. But I do not understand how suffering in itself, or intrinsically, can be said to be evil in circumstances in which it serves a greater good.

    Perhaps the problem is that there are two senses of 'evil' in play, one non-normative (amoral) the other normative (moral), and that Rowe is appealing to the former sense. Accordingly, the non-normatively evil is that which elicits aversion. In this sense, mental and physical suffering is evil in that beings like us are prone to shun it. The normatively evil, on the other hand, is that which ought not exist. So perhaps the puzzle can be resolved by saying:

    a) Every instance of suffering is evil in the non-normative sense that, as a matter of empirical fact, beings like us are prone to shun it.

    b)  Some instances of suffering are not evil in the normative sense that it is false that they ought not exist.

    c) If an instance of suffering conduces to a good that outweighs it, and the good is unobtainable by any other means, then the instance of suffering ought to exist. Thus the child's suffering in our example ought to exist. Admittedly, this sounds paradoxical. But note that this 'ought' is not categorical but hypothetical or conditional: the child's suffering ought to exist given that, on condition that, the treatment that causes it is the only way to avoid the child's death, which would be an evil worse than the child's suffering from the treatment.

    d) (c) is not paradoxical or incoherent.

    e) The moral goodness of God is called into question not by the existence of evils in the non-normative sense, but by the existence of evils in the normative sense. Thus the mere existence of suffering, which is non-normatively evil, does not by itself cause a problem for the divine moral goodness. For it may well be that all instances of suffering are morally justifiable in the light of a greater good. This does not make these sufferings any less repugnant; but this repugnance is not a moral repugnance but the non-normative property of thwarting desire or eliciting aversion.

    3) Therefore, if Strawson follows Rowe and not me, then 'suffering' and 'evil' are intersubstitutable in the following argument both salva veritate et salva significatione:

    i) If God exists, then God is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect.

    ii) If God is omnipotent, then God has the power to eliminate all evil.

    iii) If God is omniscient, then God knows when and where any evil exists or is about to exist.

    iv) If God is morally perfect, then God has the desire to eliminate or prevent all evil.

    v) Evil exists.

    vi) If evil exists and God exists, then either God doesn’t have the power to eliminate or prevent all evil, or doesn’t know when or where evil exists, or doesn’t have the desire to eliminate or prevent all evil.

    vii) Therefore, God doesn’t exist.   

    4) But I have argued against Rowe, so my response to Malcolm has to be different. I don't say that every instance of suffering is evil in a sense of 'evil' incompatible with the goodness of God.  I say only that some instances of suffering are evil in that sense.  But then it seems to me just to impute to Strawson the above argument. 

    5) Malcolm misconstrues what I am doing in that Substack article. He thinks I am "rely[ing] on the incoherence of the idea of objective evil in a Godless world to undercut Strawson's argument." I am not doing that. I am not presupposing that the objective existence of evil requires the existence of God.  If I did that I would be begging the question against Strawson. For it may be that evil objectively exists whether or not God exists.  What I am doing is refuting Strawson's claim to have proven the nonexistence of God. He has not done that because he has not proven that (ii) and (v) are objectively certain. 

    Bill Vallicella

    5 responses to “Suffering, Evil, and Galen Strawson’s ‘Proof’ of the Nonexistence of the Christian God”

  • Word of the Day: Bafflegab

    Gobbledygook

    Bill Vallicella

  • Shakespeare on Lust

    Sonnet 129: Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame
     
    Th' expense of spirit in a waste of shame
    Is lust in action; and till action, lust
    Is perjured, murd'rous, bloody, full of blame,
    Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
    Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,
    Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had
    Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
    On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
    Mad in pursuit and in possession so,
    Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
    A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
    Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
        All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
        To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

        

    Related:
     
     
    Like a Moth to the Flame.  A sermon of sorts on romantic folly. Jean van Heijenoort plays the moth, Anne-Marie Zamora the flame. The moth dies.
    Bill Vallicella

    4 responses to “Shakespeare on Lust”

  • ‘2A’ a Terrorist Marker?

    Top o' the Stack.

    It emerged in the Congressional FBI whistleblower hearings that the abbreviation '2A' is a "terrorist marker." That came as news to me. (But see here.) I have been using '2A' from time to time as an innocuous abbreviation of 'Second Amendment.' The context, of course, is the Bill of Rights which are the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.

    I have written sentences like this:

    2A does not confer, but protects, the citizen's right to keep and bear arms.

    My use of the harmless abbreviation makes me a terrorist, a white supremacist, and what all else in the eyes of the Biden regime. What does it make the regime? A police state.

    Read it all.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “‘2A’ a Terrorist Marker?”

  • Could a Jew Pray the “Our Father”?

    I return an affirmative answer at Substack.

    It dawned on me a while back that there is nothing specifically Christian about the content of the Pater Noster. Its origin of course is Christian. When his disciples asked him how they should pray, Jesus taught them the prayer. (Mt 6:9-13) If you carefully read the prayer below you will see that there is no mention in it of anything specifically Christian: no mention of Jesus as the Son of God, no mention of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us (the Incarnation), no mention of the Resurrection, nothing that could be construed as even implicitly Trinitarian. So I thought to myself: a believing (non-Christian) Jew could pray this prayer, and could do so in good faith. There is nothing at the strictly doctrinal level that could prevent him. Or is there?

    Read the rest.

    Bill Vallicella

    12 responses to “Could a Jew Pray the “Our Father”?”

  • Birthdays

    People celebrate birthdays.  But what's to celebrate?  First, birth is not unequivocally good.  Second, it is not something you brought about.  It befell you.  Better to celebrate some good thing that you made happen.

    "It befell you."

    Riders on the storm . . .
    Into this house we're born, into this world we're thrown.

    Thus Jim Morrison recycling Heidegger's Geworfenheit. (Sein und Zeit, 1927, sec. 38)

    For all we can legitimately claim to know, however, we may have pre-natally, or rather 'pre-conceptually' chose to enter this crap storm and go for a ride. Can you rule that out with objective certainty? No more than you can rule it in with the same certainty.

    As for anti-natalism, see my Anti-Natalism and Benatar categories. Here too no objective certainty either way.

    Bill Vallicella

  • It’s Later than You Think

    Decay is inherent in all component things. Work out your salvation with diligence! This was the last word of the Tathagata.

    Mahāparinibbāna Sutta

    Substack latest.

    Carpe Diem

    Bill Vallicella

  • New Year’s Eve Again

    Last year I wrote, in an excess of pessimism,

    Happy New Year, everybody. Not that there is much to be happy about. As our great republic approaches its end, whether with a whimper or a bang remaining to be seen, Irving Berlin's "The Song is Ended" seems an appropriate way to convey the thought that happiness in the coming year is more likely to be found by an inner path.  "Take your happiness while you may." Here's a hipster version, my favorite.

    But November 5th brought a change, and things are looking up.  

    Bang on the first link supra for last year's tune list.

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Rise and Fall of the Never-Trump Machine

    At Tom Klingenstein's place:

    Kamala Harris and the Democrat establishment may have blown over a billion dollars to lose the 2024 election, but it’s their Never Trump allies most likely facing oblivion after President Donald Trump’s historic victory.

    If so, good riddance.

    My sentiments exactly. Circa 2016, the NT-ers were warning that Trump would destroy the Republican Party. He did destroy a party, the other one.  More:

    Never Trumpers were riding high. In October, pundits speculated that Liz Cheney could end up with a senior position in the future Harris administration. At an October 21 town hall in Pennsylvania — moderated by Sarah Longwell — Cheney urged Republicans to dump Trump over the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. “I have been troubled by the extent to which you have women who — as the vice-president said, in some cases have died — who can’t get medical treatment that they need because providers are worried about criminal liability.”

    It’s worth pointing out Cheney’s cynical about-face: She launched her congressional career in 2016 on a strong anti-abortion platform with the endorsement of the Susan B. Anthony List, which gives her an “A” ranking on its pro-life scorecard. Now she says state abortion bans “cannot stand,” but only after left-wing donors like Jeffrey Katzenberg spent millions of dollars trying to rescue her failing reelection campaign in 2022.

    Bill Kristol himself was once a member of the board of the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the most influential pro-life organizations in the country. Under his leadership, The Weekly Standard was among the most reliably pro-life publications in the country. But his final advice in the 2024 election, published in The Bulwark on November 3, was this: “Reproductive freedom is a crucial issue, and a winning one, and the Harris campaign would be foolish not to make it a closing one in these last couple of days.”

    Bill Vallicella

  • An Intra-MAGA Contremps

    I need to bone up before I weigh in. If I ever do. 

    Civil War in MAGA-Land?

    A House Divided

    Steve Sailer puts the point with pith and precision: America First or Americans First? (Sailer via Malcolm Pollack).

    But see Roger Simon, The Great Fake H1-B Controversy.

    Bill Vallicella

  • How Much Bad Behavior Ought We Tolerate from Our ‘Friends’?

    The following arrived on Christmas Eve:

    Apatheia, Ataraxia, and Holiday Spirit

    I was wondering if you had any advice for those struggling to maintain their Stoic calm as Christmas approaches. Alas, I am one of those souls this year. I will not burden you with the details, but it seems the holidays also bring out many of our dear friends’ struggles with booze. To wit, a friend of nearly 20 years began a bender about a week ago that culminated this morning with his saying to me, this morning, some things that no self-respecting man could forgive in one to be labeled a friend, especially when one has had to forgive booze related outbursts several times before.

    So, it seems the modifiers, not the nouns, are the functional words in phrases like “old friends” and this friendship will now be over. I have consulted Seneca on friendship and anger, and I recall Cicero’s advice, but I fear the philosophers offer little in the way of immediate comfort as I accept this loss (and also reflect on what the whiskey demons bring out in myself). I expect you must be inundated with mail this time of year, so know that I appreciate your reading this message. If you have any advice, or perhaps a reading suggestion, I’d appreciate the time you took to do so very much. Merry Christmas!

    There are two main topics here, interpersonal relationships and the role of alcohol.

    How you negotiate interpersonal relations depends on your psychological type.  I'm an inner-directed man in roughly David Riesman's sense, who knows what he is about and what he wants to achieve. So for me, cost-benefit analysis comes into play when I choose whom to associate with and whom to avoid.  Will contact with this person help me achieve my goals or will it hinder me? Any relationship with anyone incurs costs and provides benefits. So I calculate whether the benefits will outweigh the costs,  given my goals. To do this requires self-knowledge. So that is where you must start. Know thyself! But it also requires knowledge of the people you will be associating with.   Some people are trouble. You can't help them, but they can harm you. Why are you associating with them? For literary purposes? Because you foolishly overestimate your healing powers?  Christ hung out with sinners. But he had special powers, to put it mildly.

    On the basis of the slim facts presented, I say that my reader ought to break off contact with his drunkard 'friend.' Break off a 20-year friendship? Well, was it a friendship of affinity or a friendship of propinquity?  I won't pause to explain what I mean; you should be able to catch my meaning.  If there was a deep bond, and the guy hit hard times and sought solace in the bottle, then that puts a different complexion on things. Maybe my reader should try to help his friend.  There is a difference between a heavy drinker and an alcoholic: every (unreformed) alky is a heavy drinker but not conversely.  If the friend is an alky, it would probably be best to deep-six him, even if he is 'on the wagon.' It's a good bet he will fall off.  As a general rule, people do not change. WYSIWYG! And will continue to get.  Schopenhauer spoke of the immutability of character, with only slight exaggeration. The italicized rule is a very important bit of life wisdom. For example, don't marry someone with the thought that you will change him or her. That way lies misery. To my reader, I say: There is no point in wasting time with some guy whose whole life is dominated by the project of climbing out of a hole he  himself freely dug with a cocktail glass. The same goes for those who dig their holes and graves with fork and spoon or syringe.

    But again, it all depends.  Suppose the guy is not an alky. Is my reader single or married? If married, does he have children? Would you want your wife and children to come into contact with a drunkard? Presumably not.

    And if you associate with drunks, are you not giving tacit moral approval to their immoral behavior? It is not morally wrong to to have a drink, but it is morally wrong to get drunk, even if you harm no one but yourself. I'll spare you the argument, but invite you think about it.  

    My reader mentions Stoicism. Here is a brief summary of the Stoic attitude:

    There are things that are in our power, and things that are not. The flood that sweeps away my house is not in my power; but my response to the flood is. I can make myself miserable by blaming other people, from the president on down; or I can limit my suffering by taking control of my own mind. Your insulting me is not in my power; but whether or not I let it affect me is in my power.

    The Stoics had an important insight into the mind's power to regulate itself. When you really understand their point it can come as a revelation. I was once thinking of a dead relative and how he had wronged me. I began to succumb to negative thoughts, but caught myself and suddenly realized that I am doing it. I saw that I was allowing the negative thoughts to arise and that I had the power to blot them out. The incident was years in the past, and the malefactor was long dead. So the mental disturbance was my own creation. My sudden realization of this — aided no doubt by my reading of Stoic and other wisdom literature — caused the disturbance to vanish.

    The Stoics discerned the mind's power to regulate itself and master its thoughts, rather than be mastered by them. They saw that, within certain limits, we create our own reality. Within limits, we can make ourselves miserable and we can make ourselves happy. There is an inner citadel into which one can retreat, and where a very real peace can be enjoyed — assuming that one is willing to practice the Stoic precepts rather than merely read about them.

    Stoic calm is not that hard to maintain as long as one avoids the near occasion of unnecessary vexation.  Here then is a further reason for my reader to break with his 'friend.'

    Coming back to the question of self-knowledge, I recommend that my reader consult Karen Horney (pronounced like horn-eye, not like whore-knee). I don't know if she is much read these days but her books are well-written and full of insight. Here is a taste:

    Interpersonal Strategies of Defense

    According to Horney, people try to cope with their basic anxiety by adopting a compliant or self-effacing solution and moving toward people, by adopting an aggressive or expansive solution and moving against people, or by becoming detached or resigned and moving away from people. Healthy people move appropriately and flexibly in all three directions, but in neurotic development these moves become compulsive and indiscriminate. Each solution involves a constellation of behavior patterns and personality traits, a conception of justice, and a set of beliefs about human nature, human values, and the human condition. Each also involves a "deal" or bargain with fate in which obedience to the dictates of that solution is supposed to be rewarded.

    I would only add that while healthy people are able to behave in all three ways (compliant, expansive, detached) as circumstances require, one can be psychologically healthy and favor one of the interpersonal strategies over the other two. Those of us who resonate to the Stoic teaching are most likely to favor the detachment strategy and move away from people when their bad behavior erupts, by either minimizing one's contact with them, or cutting them off entirely.  I have done both. Pre-emptive measures are also to be considered. We were invited to Christmas dinner and to a New Year's Eve party, get-togethers in both cases organized by my wife's friends. I told the wife  I would attend one event but not both.  I thereby limited the threat to my apatheia and ataraxia.

    Finally, having just revealed myself as an introvert and an advocate of detachment (better: non-attachment), I now say to my reader that he should consider who is now giving him advice and factor that in when considering how much of it he should take.

    Post-finally, here is a short video clip from Tombstone in which the bad behavior of Johnny Ringo is excused by Curly Bill on the ground that it is the booze in Johnny that is talking.  The relevance to my reader's problem is obvious.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Intercessory Prayer

    A friend inquired,

    Never understood how your prayers can benefit me. Do you?

    I wrote back,
    If you have  no trouble understanding petitionary prayer, why should you have a problem understanding intercessory prayer? 
    He responded,

    Prayer is hard to understand. In a legal proceeding if my testimony can exonerate some one, I see the relevance. When I pray for you, does this imply I have some grounds for defending or recommending you morally? I don't think so. Is prayer a plea for mercy more than justice? Don't know. If I pray for someone fighting cancer, am I pleading for mercy? Well, sort of.

    A Substack entry of mine opens as follows:

    I tend to look askance at petitionary prayer for material benefits. In such prayer one asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or for another, as in the case of intercessory prayer. In some of its forms it borders on idolatry and superstition, and in its crassest forms it crosses over. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of petty, ego-enhancing benefits, a sort of Cosmic Candy Man, as does the nimrod who prays to win the lottery.  Worse still is one who prays for the death of a business rival.

    Perhaps not all petitionary prayer for mundane benefits is objectionable.  Some of it simply reflects, excusably,  our misery and indigence.  (Did not Christ himself engage in it at Gethsemane?)  But much of it is objectionable.  What then should I say about the "Our Father," which, in the fourth of its six petitions, appears precisely to endorse petitionary prayer for material  benefits?

    Now let's consider my friend's cancer example. Suppose you have stage 4 pancreatic cancer, and I pray to God for you. That would be a case of petitionary prayer in its intercessory form.  I could pray for your recovery or I could pray that God grant you the spiritual strength bear up well and accept your coming demise with equanimity as a sort of purgatory on earth and thus as an opportunity to atone for your sins and put your spiritual affairs in order.  It seems obvious to me that I should do the latter and not the former, especially if the friend is say 60+ years old and has had a good life.

    Would it not be utterly absurd, and indeed morally offensive, to call upon God to grant a few more years of life to the old coot so he could waste more time chasing women, hitting little white balls into holes, and piling up  loot? I would even go so far as to argue that it is metaphysically offensive. After all, if the God of classical theism exists, then everything else is next-to-nothing in comparison ontologically (being-wise) and axiologically (value-wise).  This is is traditional RCC doctrine, not that the likes of Begoglio & Co, understand it or could explain it.

    My friend asked, "If I pray for someone fighting cancer, am I pleading for mercy?" In some cases, but not in every case.  In the case I just sketched, I am not praying that God have mercy on the cancer victim's soul, or that God intervene in the course of nature  to stop the metastasis of the malignant cells.  I am praying that God spiritually fortify the soon-to-be-dead man so that he can make good spiritual use of his suffering and naturally inevitable death.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “Intercessory Prayer”

  • Leftists as Political Retromingents

    A retromingent is an animal that urinates backwards.

    Posturing as 'progressive,' the leftist pisses on the past, seeking to erase its memory by destroying monuments and redacting the historical record.  There is no piety in the leftist, no reverence. Try using those words at a Manhattan or Georgetown cocktail party and see what happens.

    This political retromingency helps explain the leftists' lack of respect for language. 

    If you erase history, however, not only will you not be able to learn from it, but you won't have anything left to piss on, either.  Your retromingency will cut counter to your benighted and backwards  modus vivendi et micturendi.

    Instructive story here. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • The One Man Who Pre-Exists his Birth

    Christianity is curiously Platonistic about Christ: he is the one man who pre-exists his conception and birth. "Before Abraham was, I am."  (John 8:58) But no such Platonism about any other human, not even Mary, Theotokos (God-bearer).

    If, as Chalcedonian orthodoxy has it, Jesus Christ is fully man and fully God, then he is man and a man.  (There is a riddle here respecting  man and a man, both in Christ and in Adam, which I won't pursue here.)

    What tense is the 'exists' in 'pre-exists' and the 'am' in the Johannine verse?  What should we call it? The eternally present tense?

    Bill Vallicella

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