Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Believing on Insufficient Evidence

    The notion that we should always and everywhere apportion belief to evidence in such a way that we affirm only that for which we have sufficient evidence ignores the fact that belief for beings like us subserves action. If one acted only on those beliefs for which one had sufficient evidence one  would not act as one must to live well.

    When a young person believes that he or she can do such-and-such, it is almost always on the basis of insufficient evidence.  And yet such belief beyond the evidence is a sine qua non of success.  There are two necessary conditions of success in life: one must believe that what one proposes to do is worth doing, and one must believe that one is capable of doing it.  In both cases one believes and acts on evidence that could hardly be called sufficient. 

    This strikes me as a good maxim:  Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing than not believing. 

    For a detailed discussion of what is behind the above remarks, see The Pragmatic and the Evidential: Is it Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

    Bill Vallicella

  • Christianity has civilized us . . .

    . . . but it has also weakened us.  Our virtues, which once were strengths, are now weaknesses.  Some of our virtues have come to vitiate as much as some of our vices. 

    We in the West no longer crucify malefactors or break them on the wheel. We now wring our hands, absurdly, over whether lethal injection is "cruel and unusual punishment."  A nation that has lost the will to execute its worst and most destructive criminals is a nation not long for this earth.  Can the will to live exist in a people who under no circumstances can muster the will to kill?

    One of the fruits of civilization is toleration, that touchstone of classical liberalism.  It is a beautiful thing. It becomes a weakness, however, when it extends to the toleration of those who crucify and behead and throw homosexuals off of buildings.

    Crucifixion in Islam:

    It is all too common to view the practice of crucifixion as a form of torture and execution from antiquity which hasn’t been used in nearly two millennia, yet this is hardly the case. In fact, crucifixion is a standard means of execution in Saudi Arabia, and there is a growing movement among Islamists to bring back crucifixion as the preferred means of punishment for a variety of crimes, including apostasy from Islam, “fitna,” which is a pliable term which can refer to unbelief or mischief-making, or anything which goes against Islam and Shariah. This is explicitly taught in the Qur’an:

    The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this: that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off… (Qur’an 5:33).

    Ominously for Christians, strongly associated with fitna is “shirk,” the associating of partners with Allah. Believing Jesus to be the Son of God is, for Muslims, one of the worst forms of shirk, and is therefore punishable by death, including crucifixion. (There is a dark irony here, as Muslims do not believe Jesus was crucified, yet they prescribe crucifixion as punishment for Christians.)

    Read it all. Disturbing images.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Born of Propinquity, Dead of Distance

    Most friendships are born of propinquity and die the death of distance.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Hey ‘Liberal’!

    Either STFU about Nazis or report the crimes of the Commies.

    Bill Vallicella

  • At the Corner of Spirit and Flesh

    Bodily lusts exist at the intersection of spirit and flesh. Neither merely bodily nor merely mental, they trouble neither angel nor beast. They trouble man, who is neither.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Flip-Floppin’ Joe

    The inner compass of the professional politician is a weather vane. The political winds having shifted, no one should be shocked that Joe Biden is now against what he was for, the Hyde Amendment. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fathers and Fatherhood

    Harry Chapin, Cat's in the Cradle. The best song about fatherhood I am aware of. Bond with your son when he's five. Wait till he's 50 and he won't give you the time of day. Harry Chapin was a major talent who died young.  Here is his great Taxi. We Boomers are damned lucky to have the greatest popular music soundtrack of any generation.

    What Happened to Harry Chapin?

    Emmylou Harris, To Daddy

    Arizona's own Marty Robbins, That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine. The old Gene Autry tune from the '30s. 

    Joan Baez, Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. The great Dylan song slightly modified. Not addressed to a literal father, you understand. At :40, the girl depicted is not Joan Baez but Suze Rotolo, Dylan's first New York girlfriend. How do I know that? Because I am a self-certified Dylanologist from way back.

    Shep and the Limelites, Daddy's Home, 1961. Anyone who prefers rap crap to this has a hole in his soul.

    Rivingtons, Papa Oom Mow Mow. Stretching a bit. 

    James Brown, Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, 1965

    Horace Silver, Song for My Father, 1964

    Hank Williams, I'm a Long Gone Daddy

    No, I am not going to link to Alan Sherman, Hello Mudda, Hello Faddah, 1963.

    Frank Zappa, Hungry Freaks, Daddy, 1966

    Paul Peterson, My Dad. To end on a 'wholesome' if schmaltzy note.  

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Greatest Risk We are Taking

    Patrick J. Buchanan:

    But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

    Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

    There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.

    No comity without commonality as one of my  aphorisms has it.

    The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south.  But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."

    The enemy has been identified.

    Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies.  There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so  much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.

    But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not  a white nationalism.  America is of course  'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.  

    I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian.  If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.

    That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.

    My view is eminently reasonable and balanced. It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Orwell’s 1984 at 70

    Here

    Bill Vallicella

  • Asymmetrical Polarization: Which Side Is Mainly Responsible?

    Political polarization is said to be asymmetrical when one of the political poles bears more responsibility than the other for exacerbating the polarization. But given the fact of polarization, it comes as no surprise that the Left blames the Right and the Right the Left. We all seem to agree that polarization is not good, but we disagree as to who the main culprit is.

    We are polarized over polarization!

    As a conservative, it is blindingly evident to me that the Left bears the lion's share of the blame. Leftists have moved much farther to the Left than rightists to the Right. But leftists don't agree, and being the recalcitrant bunch that they are, one cannot reasonably hope to change their minds.  But you never know, and in any case the following may help to buck up my fellow conservatives and supply them with ammo for the ongoing war.  

    Here are some issues on which leftists (Democrats in U. S. politics) have gone far to the Left while conservatives (Most Republicans in U.S. politics) have maintained moderate positions.

    Immigration.  The Republican position is moderate: curtail illegal immigration, but allow legal immigration. The Democrat position is extreme: allow wide-open immigration of any and all. Make no distinction between legal and illegal immigration. Abolish ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). The extremism goes as far as the Orwellian absurdity that one can have border security without border barriers.  Oppose President Trump at every turn, even though any reasonable person can see that construction of a border wall is necessary, although not sufficient, to stem the tide of incoming illegals.  And on top of it all, lie brazenly as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done that the border crisis is a "manufactured crisis."

    Voting. Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats are advocating lowering the voting age to 16. Others want to extend the franchise to felons, allowing those who cannot properly order their own lives to have a say in the proper ordering of society. Still others wish to permit illegal aliens to vote. The extremism of this is evident.

    U.S. Constitution. Prominent Democrats advocate the abolition of the Electoral College and changing the number of seats on the Supreme Court. 

    And so it goes. Here are three others that you can work out for yourself.

    Capital Punishment.  

    Abortion and Infanticide.

    Free Speech.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Politics as Polemics: The Converse Clausewitz Principle

    Would that I could avoid this political stuff.  But I cannot in good conscience retreat into my inner citadel and let my country be destroyed — the country that makes it possible for me to cultivate the garden of solitude, retreat into my inner citadel, and pursue pure theory for its own sake.

    Political discourse is unavoidably polemical. The zoon politikon must needs be a zoon polemikon. 'Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war, strife. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, strife is the father of all: polemos panton men pater esti . . . (Fr. 53) I don't know about the 'all,' but strife  is certainly at the root of politics.  Politics is polemical because it is a form of warfare: the point is to defeat the opponent and remove him from power, whether or not one can rationally persuade him of what one takes to be the truth. It is practical rather than theoretical in that the aim is to implement what one takes to be the truth rather than contemplate it.  What one takes to be the truth: that is the problem in a nutshell.  Conservatives and leftists disagree fundamentally and non-negotiably.  

    Implementation of what one takes to be the truth, however, requires that one get one’s hands on the levers of power. Von Clausewitz held that war is politics pursued by other means. But what could be called the Converse Clausewitz principle holds equally: politics is war pursued by other means.

    David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:

    In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability.  Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles.  But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

    You have only thirty seconds to make your point.  Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it.  Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life.  Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich.  Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case.  You are politically dead.

    Politics is war.  Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An 
    Intellectual Odyssey     Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)

    Bill Vallicella

  • Integralism in Three Sentences

    Here:

    Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

    The crucial proposition is the first. By 'end of human life' is meant the ultimate or final goal or purpose of human life, not its cessation or stoppage.  It is presupposed that all human lives share the same final purpose. And what might that be? For a traditional Catholic, the Baltimore Catechism gives the answer:

    LESSON FIRST
ON THE END OF MAN
1. Q. Who made the world?
A. God made the world.
2. Q. Who is God?
A. God is the Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things.
3. Q. What is man?
A. Man is a creature composed of body and soul, and made to the image
and likeness of God.
6. Q. Why did God make you?
A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world,
and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

    The Catholic integralist is making the following claims. First, every human life has an ultimate purpose. Second, the  purpose is not different for different people: all, regardless of race, sex, or any other difference, share the same purpose. Third, the final common purpose is known and not open to doubt or debate: it is not a matter of conjecture or speculation or private opinion.  Fourth, the final common purpose is to know, love, and serve God in this world, and to be happy with him in the next. And of course the Catholic integralist is committed to the presuppositions of these claims, e.g., that there is a God, that he created everything distinct from himself, that man has a destiny that transcends this life, and so on.

    Suppose all of the above is true. Then the political order here below must subserve the divinely ordained eternal order.   The temporal power, the State, must be subordinated to, and therefore cannot be separated from, the true church, the Roman Catholic Church.  If so, classical liberalism is an erroneous and pernicious political philosophy.

    One consequence of this view seems to be that state power can be justifiably used to coerce dissidents.  Some of them hold that human life has no purpose at all. Others hold that it has a purpose but one that is determined by the individual. Still others think that there is a common ultimate purpose but that it is secular and humanistic and therefore atheistic.

    And then there are the classically liberal theists who hold that when it comes to the final purpose of human life and how to attain it, there is reasonable belief, but no knowledge. If there is no knowledge in this area then coercion of atheists, agnostics, and non-Catholics could not be justified.  Finally, there are those who, while holding that there is knowledge in this area, knowledge that justifies the coercion of dissidents, reject the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Some Protestants for example, or Islamists.

    My view is that we ought not stray too far from the classically liberal view of the Founders. We do not KNOW that the Catechism worldview is true. ONLY IF it were known to be true could it be justifiably imposed via the awesome power of the State. In a well-ordered Republic, the dissent of secular humanists, atheists, and non-Catholic theists ought to be tolerated. At the same time, State power must never be used to violate the consciences of Catholics by, say, forcing them to support the grave moral evil of abortion on demand with their tax dollars.

    Government by ts very nature is coercive. I stand for limited government and limited coercion.

    So that's my initial take on Catholic integralism. It is a non-starter.

    Bill Vallicella

    13 responses to “Integralism in Three Sentences”

  • Better ‘Has Been’ than ‘Never Was’

    Why, if the present alone is real? 

    The wholly past no longer exists. But this truism, accepted by all who understand English and its verb tenses, is not what the presentist in the philosophy of time maintains. He intends something substantive and non-tautological: what no longer exists does not exist at all, and what does not yet exist does not exist at all.  But if the first half of the substantive thesis is true, then why is it better to be a has-been rather than a never-was? X cannot be better than y unless x is different from y.

    Presentism, taken full-strength, implies that there is no difference between what has been and what never was. For the wholly past has fallen into the same hole out of which the 'never was' never arose. How then can presentism be common sense as many of its noted contemporary defenders say? It appears to conflict with the widespread commonsensical intuition that 'has been' is better than and therefore different from 'never was.' 

    Sometimes, when we reflect upon our accomplishments, we append the thought, "And no one can ever take that away from me." You are no longer at the top of your game, but you once were — and no one can take that away from you. They said you couldn't do it but you did, and they can't take that away from you. 

    Interestingly, not even divine omnipotence extends to the erasure of the past. What was is forever inscribed in indelible ink in the roster of being.  Aquinas admitted it: not even God can restore a virgin. 

    Two points. First, what was has an ontological status superior to that which never was — which has no ontological status at all. Second, what was, though logically contingent at the time of its occurrence, is now in a sense necessary, but without ceasing to be logically contingent.  The mere passage of time works  a modal promotion, from contingency to necessitas per accidens, accidental necessity.  Socrates freely drank the hemlock, hence his drinking was logically contingent.  But once past, the deed cannot be undone by god or mortal, chance or fate. Cannot. Under the aspect of eternity, however, the heroic act remains logically contingent.

    How curious the reality of the past!  On the one hand, the wholly past seems to possess a lesser degree of being than the present and is therefore inferior to the present in point of reality. On the other, the wholly past, unlike the present, is unalterable. Bad news and good news.

    The main point however, is that the past is real, a realm of actualities, not mere possibilities. How that fact jibes with presentism is a nice question.  We can expect from the presentists  some fancy footwork.

    Why has presentism been so 'popular' these past ten or twenty years?

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “Better ‘Has Been’ than ‘Never Was’”

  • Politics is War: Civility and Decency are Secondary Values

    Sohrab Ahmari, Against David-Frenchism, conclusion:

    Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism. Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral. To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty.

    I have been coming to something close to this view over the last few years. If the Left sees politics as a form of warfare, we are fools to continue supposing it to be gentlemanly debate  under the umbrella of shared principles and values. Civility is for the civil; it is not for those who represent an existential threat.

    An existential threat need not take the form of a threat to one's physical existence; a threat to one's way of life is an existential threat. This is because human life is not merely physical or biological; it is also cultural and spiritual.  It is our culture that values civility; a progressive threat to our culture of civility, being uncivil,  demands an uncivil response. Civility is like tolerance. Tolerance is a high value, but it has limits: one cannot tolerate the intolerant.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Prayer over Meditation?

    This from a reader:

    As a theist who meditates, would you prioritize prayer over meditation or vice versa? For example, I'm a theist; I like to run, meditate, and pray before work every day. If crammed for time, would you say that one or two are more worthwhile or more important, or that its just a matter of preference?

    Also I'm using Sam Harris' Waking Up app to meditate. I generally like it but he is unrelentingly determined to get listeners to realize the illusion of the self. Would you recommend using a different resource? The app just helps me stay consistent.

    One difference between prayer and meditation is that prayer can be performed instantly by the invocation of a divine name — Lord! — or very quickly by the use of a short phrase such as 'Lord, give us light!' or by the use of the Jesus Prayer of Eastern Orthodoxy, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' Of course, one can repeat the Jesus Prayer as a sort of Christian mantram.  If one does that, then one is engaging in a form of meditation especially if one whittles the phrase down to one word in order to achieve mental onepointedness.

    Meditation, on the other hand, takes much more time: location, posture, breath, and the control of thoughts.  Reining in the wild horse of the mind  might consume twenty minutes or more. One can pray in any place, in any posture, and in any mental state and in any bodily condition, even under torture.  Jesus prayed on the cross.  Not so with meditation.  So if you are pressed for time you can always pray.

    Which is more important, prayer or meditation? The answer depends on what exactly is meant by these terms and what your final metaphysics is. Here, as elsewhere, terminology is fluid and a source of misunderstanding. As I understand prayer it always involves the I-Thou relation and the duality of creature and Creator. To pray is to presuppose that there is Someone who hears and can answer prayers. In petitionary prayer one addresses a petition to another Person. One asks for a mundane or spiritual benefit for oneself or for another.  Inner listening, too, is a kind of prayer in which the I-Thou polarity is preserved.  This listening is a kind of obeying. To hear the Word of God is to obey the Word of God.  Horchen (hear, hearken), gehorchen, Gehorsam (obedience).

    Meditation is an excellent propadeutic to prayer as inner listening because one cannot listen unless one is in a quiescent and receptive state.  Mental quiet is the proximate goal of meditation. It is good in itself but it is also good for inner listening.  No theology is required for meditation up to the point of mental quiet, but once it is achieved one can bring one's Judeo-Christian theology into it.

    In classical Western theism as I understand it, Duality always has the last word and is never superseded or aufgehoben.  The individual soul is never absorbed into the Godhead.  The Eastern systems, by contrast, tend toward Ultimate Monism.  "I am the eternal Atman."  The Self of all things is who I am at bottom, and one can realize through meditation the ultimate identity of the individual self (jivatman) and the eternal Atman = Brahman).   How this differs from the nirvanic obliteration of the individual self in Buddhism is a matter of dispute. Early Pali Buddhism with its anatta/anatman doctrine denies that there is any self at all, little or big. The ego or I is accordingly an illusion and the goal of meditation is to penetrate this illusion.  

    To answer your question, prayer is more important for a convinced orthodox Christian than meditation.

    I avoid all electronics early in the morning before and during prayer and meditation. They have absolutely no place there.

    As for Sam Harris, see Sam Harris on Rational Mysticism and Whether the Self is an Illusion.

    Bill Vallicella

    5 responses to “Prayer over Meditation?”

Latest Comments

  2. 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

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

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

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