My Approach to Study and Writing

A reader inquires,

A question. It seems I hit a wall every year or so in my intellectual life which involves uncertainty about what books/essays to read next, what subject matter to systematically pursue, what to reread and review (review is all too important). Now I know everyone is different, but could you share your approach to study during the week/month? Do you have a review day once a week? Do you have both a long-term project and a short term one going at the same time? Sorry if you’ve answered this in a post before, you may refer me to it.

I do have a long-term project, namely, a book I am trying to finish. The subject matter is extremely difficult and technical and so the going is slow.  I am perhaps perversely attracted to the nastiest and toughest problems there are, problems that tax my poor pate to its paltry limits.  I work on the book a little each day.  And then I have a number of short-term projects going at the same time. One is a review article I have been invited to write, and another is an invited contribution to a collection of essays that must be submitted by January 1st.  And then there is my pursuit of all sorts of other questions via blogging.  On top of that 'culture war' activities: Blasting away day by day against the insanity of the destructive Left. The Kavanaugh proceedings galvanized me and 'inspired' me to bring the fight into the belly of the beast, Zuck's Facebook.  I can't sit back and only think about God and the soul, time and existence, while my beloved country is destroyed by liberal-left filth.

You ask about review. Blogging helps with this. You shouldn't read serious material if you are not willing to study it, and there is little point in studying it if you don't take notes, assemble them into a coherent commentary, and evaluate what the author is maintaining, taking on board what is useful to you.  For example, I have written series of posts on books by Benatar, Nagel, Plantinga, and others.  These posts are available for review and cannibalization.  The book I am writing will have a chapter on death.  Some of the material from the Benatar posts will find its way into it.  

Above all you need a direction and a definite focus. What is it that most concerns you that you want to understand? What is the cynosure of your interest? The nature of disagreement? The rationality/irrationality of religious belief? The foundation of morality? The nature of the political? Mind's place in nature?  In Aristotelian terms, you need a 'final cause' of your inquiries, a unifying telos lest you spread yourself too thin and scatter your energies — as I am wont to do.

Related:

Peter Suber, Taking Notes on Philosophical Texts

A Method of Study

Studiousness as Prophylaxis Against the Debilities of Old Age

Environmental Racism!

The other night we heard Elizabeth Warren speak of various forms of racism, including 'environmental racism.' Bear with me as I try to figure out what this might be.

An industrial polluter dumps chemicals into a river. Now rivers come in colors. Anything that has a color, however, has a race. After all, race = color. So rivers are of various races. Now the river in question that the capitalist dog sullies is a River of Color. The rapids portion of the river is of course white and therefore white supremacist; but that doesn't count since the portion of the river where the pollutants enter is brown. So what we have here is a River of Color being maltreated by a white supremacist capitalist dog.

Here, then, is a clear case of environmental racism.

Alles klar?

Addendum

Another important question is whether any river is an illegal alien. Could a river change its course in such a way as to violate the territorial sovereignty of the USA, say? The Rio Grande perhaps? Would such a river become an illegal alien river? Presumably it would. And given the leftist conflation of illegal aliens with Hispanics, would such a river be rightly deemed an Hispanic river eligible for certain perquisites and privileges such as 'free' health care? Polluted rivers need health care; to withhold such care from an Hispanic river would be racist!  We need to have a 'conversation' about this.

Truth, Fallibilism, Objectivism, and Dogmatism

It is important not to confuse the question of the fallibility of our cognitive faculties, including reason, with the question whether there is truth.  Truth is one thing, fallibility another. A fallibilist need not be a truth-denier.  One can be both a fallibilist and an upholder of truth.  What's more, one ought to be both a fallibilist about some, but not all, classes of propositions, and an upholder of the existence of  truth. Indeed, if one is a fallibilist, one who admits that we  sometimes go wrong in matters of knowledge and belief, then then one must also admit that we sometimes go right, which is to say that fallibilism presupposes the existence of truth. If we can be wrong about how Epstein met his end, then we can be right.

I spoke above of truth sans phrase, without qualification. There is no need to speak of objective or of absolute truth since truth by its very nature is objective and absolute.  Talk of relative truth is incoherent.  Of course, what I accept as true or believe to be true may well be different from what you accept as true or take to be true.  But that does not show that truth is relative; it shows that we differ in our beliefs. Suppose you believe that Hillary Clinton ran a child molestation ring out of a Washington, D. C pizza joint. I don't believe that.  You accept a proposition that I reject. But the proposition itself — that Hillary ran a molestation ring, etc. — is either true or false independently of anyone's belief state.

So don't confuse being true with being-believed-by-someone-or-other.

But what about an omnisicent being? Doesn't such a being believe all and only true propositions?  I should think so if the omniscient being has beliefs and has them  in the way we do. But does he believe the truths because they are true, or are they true because he believes them?  This is a nice little puzzle reminiscent of Plato's Euthryphro Paradox, to be found in the eponymous dialog.  (Indeed it has the same structure as that paradox.)  Note that the puzzle cannot get off the ground without the distinction between truth and belief — which is my point, or one of them.

(Like I said, it's all footnotes to Plato, but it's not all from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains.)

Just as a fallibilist is not a truth-denier, a truth-affirmer is not an infallibilist or 'dogmatist' in one sense of this word.  To maintain that there is objective truth is not to maintain that one is in possession of it in particular cases.  The upholder of the existence of truth need not be a dogmatist. One of the sources of the view that truth is subjective or relative is aversion to dogmatic people and dogmatic claims.

But if you reject the existence of objective truth on the basis of an aversion to dogmatic people and claims, then you are not thinking clearly.

A Reader Weighs in on Dreher and Douthat and the Never Trump Phenomenon

Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, writes,

I appreciated your critical post on  Rod Dreher last week. Yesterday (Tuesday, August 6), he was at it again (“The MAGA Kahn & The Abyss’), linking Trump to cultural decline, while exalting a recent column in The New York Times by the never-Trump nincompoop Ross Douthat ("The Nihilist in Chief"), in which he decries "obvious moral vacuum, the profound spiritual black hole, that lies beneath [Trump’s] persona and career.”

As much as I appreciate Dreher’s work on the corruption in the Catholic Church and the existential dangers of 'woke' culture, his judgments are often suffused with a sanctimonious ahistoricity; thus, he refuses to acknowledge that the only effective responses to the vicious and increasingly violent American left have been those of the uncouth, often inarticulate, street fighter Trump. He is by far not a perfect man, but he is the only man we have; he fights back against the left’s crimes, lies, and violence.

I think that guys like Dreher who have only a thin knowledge of history are ultimately shocked by hard political and ideological conflict. He likes to pick saints and other less savory figures out of the flow of time and set them up as exemplars of the good and the bad. But history is dense and far more complicated than he imagines, and in times of crisis, Western values and culture have repeatedly been defended and preserved by political and military figures of dubious personal morality.

Hard times require hard men.

I agree entirely. But we are left with the task of explaining the Never-Trump mentality. I find the obviously decent and intelligent David Frenches and the Mona Charens among them hard to figure. 

I respect the high-minded Mona Charen, I applaud the civil courage it took for her to make her CPAC speech last year, and I condemn any thugs who may have threatened her physically for speaking her mind and heart. (According to reports, she was quickly escorted from the venue.) But people like her have no effect on what actually happens and are useless when it comes to defeating the Left. She doesn't understand the nature of politics. It is war, not gentlewomanly debate.  I wish it were the latter, and it could be if we all agreed on fundamentals; but we manifestly don't.  

You don't like the vulgar Trump? Too bad. He's all we've got, as Caiati says above.  No other Republican has the courage or the ability to accomplish what he has accomplished. Face reality and its limitations. Don't let the best become the enemy of the good. The milque-toast McCains  haven't done jack and won't do jack, except talk and obstruct and aid the enemy. Former red-diaper baby David Horowitz understands the nature of the political:

The movement galvanized by Trump can stop the progressive juggernaut and change the American future, but only if it emulates the strategy of the campaign: Be on the offense; take no prisoners; stay on the attack. To stop the Democrats and their societal transformation, Republicans must adhere to a strategy that begins with a punch in the mouth. That punch must pack an emotional wallop large enough to throw them off balance and neutralize their assaults. It must be framed as a moral indictment that stigmatizes them in the way their attacks stigmatize Republicans. It must expose them for their hypocrisy. It must hold them accountable for the divisions they sow and the suffering they cause. (Big Agenda, Humanix, 2017, p. 142)

Trump alone, a political outsider who doesn't need a job, has the civil courage and is in a position to deliver the needed punches. That's why we support him. That's why we overlook his flaws, just as the Democrats overlook the flaws of their candidates. He punches back and accomplishes what the milque-toast Republicans only talk about.

Charen and French and Co. are intelligent and morally decent. They are not foolish and destructive like Ocasio-Cortez, Gillibrand, Warren, O'Rourke, Booker, Sanders, and Biden.  What the former fail to understand, however, is that their political opponents are in fact domestic enemies who  do not care at all about the values they cherish: civility, decorum, free speech, the rule of law, and the rest. 

They can't see past Trump's obnoxious mannerisms, and they cannot see into the true nature of their opponents.  They project into their opponents the values that they themselves uphold. Perhaps that is the source of their blindness.

It's all fascinating even if disturbing, and a plentiful source of grist for the philosopher's and the psychologists' mills.

Contemporary ‘Liberals’ Have Trouble with Distinctions: Beginning of a Catalog of Examples

Contemporary 'liberals' (leftists)  seem incapable of distinguishing between

  • nationalism and white nationalism
  • patriotism and jingoism
  • legal and illegal immigration
  • immigration and emigration
  • race and skin color
  • racism and race realism
  • statements whose subject matter is race and racist statements
  • white people and white supremacists
  • legitimate and illegitimate forms of discrimination
  • free speech and hate speech
  • hate and dissent
  • people and propositions
  • democracies and republics
  • fact-stating and emotive uses of language
  • races and religions
  • social constructs and natural realities
  • equality of opportunity and equality of outcome
  • a citizen and a person who happens to be within a nation's geographical boundaries.

We are Bothered by Different Things

Brian Kennedy, A Passion to Oppose: John Anderson, Philosopher, Melbourne University Press, 1995, p. 141:

Melbourne intellectuals came to regard [John] Anderson 'as the man who had betrayed the Left, a man who had gone over to the other side.  Melburnians wanted Anderson to answer a simple question: was he or was he not interested in the fact that some were very rich and some were very poor?'  To this question Anderson replied that 'we are all bothered by different things.  That finished him with the Melburnians'. [Kennedy quotes Manning Clark, The Quest for Grace, Melbourne, 1991, p. 193]

"We are all bothered by different things."  And even when we are bothered by the same things, we prioritize the objects of botherment differently.  Now suppose you and I are bothered by exactly the same things in exactly the same order.  There is still room for disagreement and possibly even bitter contention: we are bothered to different degrees by the things that bother us.

"It angers me that that doesn't anger you!"  "It angers me that  you are insufficiently angered by what angers both of us."

Here then is one root of political disagreement.  It is a deep root, perhaps ineradicable.  And it is a root of other sorts of disagreement as well.  We are bothered by different things.

Are conservatives bothered by gun violence?  Yes, of course.  But the Americans among them are bothered more by the violation of the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Liberals, even if they are slightly bothered by the violation of these rights, assuming they admit them in the first place, are much more bothered by gun violence.  Now there are factual questions here concerning which agreement is in principle possible, though exceedingly unlikely.  For example there is the question whether more guns in the hands of citizens leads to less crime.   That is a factual question, but one that is not going to be resolved to the satisfaction of all.  Conservatives and liberals disagree about the facts.  Each side sees the other as having its own 'facts.'

But deeper than facts lie values.  Here the problem becomes truly intractable.  We are bothered by different things because we differ about values and their ordering.  American conservatives and presumably most liberals value self-reliance but conservatives locate it much higher up in the axiological hierarchy.  This probably explains why liberals are more inclined to rely on professional law enforcement for protection against the criminal element even while they bash cops as a bunch of racists eager to hunt down and murder "unarmed black teenagers" such as Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri fame.  (Brown was unarmed, but tried to arm himself with the cop's gun. This is an important detail conveniently left out of the biased mainstream media accounts.)

As for what finished Anderson with the Melburnians, he was apparently not sufficiently exercised by (material) inequality for the tastes of the latter despite his being a man of the Left, though not reliably so due to his iconoclasm.

Does it bother conservatives that there is wealth inequality?  To some extent.  But for a(n American) conservative, liberty trumps equality in the scale of values.  With liberals it is the other way around.  Liberals of course cherish their brand of rights and liberties and will go to absurd extremes in defending them even when the right to free expression, a big deal with them, spills over into incitement to violence and includes the pollution of the culture with pornography.  Of course, this extremism in defense of free expression bangs up against the liberals' own self-imposed limit of political correctness.  The trashers of Christianity suddenly become cowards when it comes to the trashing of Islam.  That takes more courage than they command.  And they are easily cowed by events such as the 7 January 2015 terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.  Liberals are also absurdly eager to spread the right to vote even at the expense of making the polling places safe for voter fraud.  How else do you explain their mindless opposition to photo ID? But not a peep from liberals about 'real' liberties and rights such as gun rights, the right to private property, and the right to freedom from excessive and punitive taxation.

Is material inequality a problem?  Not as such.  Why should it be?  

As I recall John Rawls' Difference Principle, the gist of it is this: Social and economic inequality is justified ONLY IF the inequality makes the worse off better than they would have been without the inequality.  Why exactly?  If I'm smarter than you, work harder, practice the ancient virtues, avoid the vices, while you are a slacker and a screw-up who nevertheless has what he needs, why is my having more justified ONLY IF it makes you better off than you would have been without the inequality? (Yes, I know all about the Original Position and the Veil of Ignorance, but I don't consider that an argument.)

At the root of our differences are value differences and those, at bottom, are irreconcilable. 

On that cheery note, I punch the clock. Have a pleasant weekend.

Will Middle America Go Gentle . . .

. . . into that good night? Patrick Buchanan:

Writes The New York Times‘ Charles Blow in a column that uses “racist” or “racism” more than 30 times: Americans who do not concede that Trump is a racist—are themselves racists: “Make no mistake. Denying racism or refusing to call it out is also racist.”

But what is racism?

Is it not a manifest dislike or hatred of people of color because of their color? Trump was not denouncing the ethnicity or race of Ilhan Omar in his rally speech. He was reciting and denouncing what Omar said, just as Nancy Pelosi was denouncing what Omar and the Squad were saying and doing when she mocked their posturing and green agenda.

Clearly Americans disagree on what racism is.

Buchanan's definition is on the right track except that he conflates race with skin color, which is but a superficial phenotypical indicator of race.  He also uses the silly phrase 'people of color.' But let that pass. He's a journalist; what do you expect?  Journalists, lemming-like, tend to repeat what they hear others saying.

The 'definition' of Omar and the Squad ought to be called a 'daffy-nition.'  You would have to be daft to accept it. To wit:

A racist is a person who criticizes anything any person of color says or does.

By this definition, Nancy Pelosi is a racist.  Now Madame Speaker is many things, few of them good; a racist, however, she is not.  If Pelosi is a racist, then we are all racists, and the word has been rendered useless.

Note also that the Squad definition implies that 'persons of color' can be racists. If Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortz criticize each other's ideas, then both become racists, despite being 'persons of color'!

But this contradicts a key tenet of race-baiters, namely, that 'no person of color' can be racist. Such are the wages of stupidity.

I am not Totally Opposed to Open Borders

I'm for half-open borders, borders open in the outbound direction.  Anyone who wants to emigrate should be allowed to do so. 

Communists need walls to keep people in; we need walls to keep them out.  Hence the rank absurdity of the comparison of a wall on our southern border to the Berlin Wall.  Now the mendacious leftists who make this comparison cannot be so historically uninformed as not to see its rank absurdity.  But they make it anyway because they will say or do anything to win.  They are out for power any way they can get it.

It is interesting that even hate-America leftists do not want to leave the United States. They talk about it, but few do it. And where do they say they will go?

Canada is high on the list. Why not Mexico? Are they perhaps racists?