Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Two Senses of ‘Tenseless’

    The first sense I mention only to set aside. Timeless entities, if there are any, exist tenselessly and have their intrinsic properties  and some of their relational properties tenselessly.  The 'exists' in '7 exists' is tenseless, and so is the 'is' in '7 is prime.' And please note that the tenselessness is not a result of a de-tensing operation or an abstraction from tense: the tenseless terms are inherently tenseless because the entity in question is inherently timeless.  So far, no problem.  Talk of tenselessness with respect to timeless entities, if any,  is wholly intelligible.

    Problems arise when we ask whether temporal objects, items in time, can be intelligibly described as tenselessly existing or tenselessly propertied.   Is it intelligible to say that Boethius tenselessly exists and is tenselessly a philosopher?  In one sense it is; but the  sense in which it is gives no aid and comfort to presentism.  That is what I will rehearse in this post. 

    TENSELESSNESS AS DISJUNCTIVE OMNITEMPORALITY

    We consider the disjunctively omnitemporal sense according to which 'x tenselessly exists' means 'x existed or x exists or x will exist' where each disjunct is tensed, and 'x is tenselessly F' means that 'x was F or x is F or x will be F' where each disjunct is tensed. This sense of 'tenseless' is not properly tenseless: tensed expressions must be used to formulate it. But while improper, it is has the virtue of being wholly intelligible. Thus Julius Caesar tenselessly exists in the disjunctively omnitemporal sense in that he either existed, or exists (present tense), or will exist. He tenselessly exists because the first of these tensed disjuncts is true. When we say that he tenselessly exists we are simply abstracting from when he existed. We are leaving the 'when' out of consideration. We are not thereby attributing to the man some non-disjunctive property of tenseless existence, whatever that might be.

    And similarly with 'Julius Caesar is a Roman emperor.' We all understand the sentence to be true despite Caesar's having ceased to exist long ago. We take the sentence to be tenselessly true because we read the copula in the disjunctively omnitemporal sense.  The same goes for 'Hume is an empiricist,' a sentence one might find in a history of philosophy. Although Hume does not now exist, we can say, intelligibly, that he IS an empiricist because we are using 'is' in a disjunctive omnitemporal way.  

    DOES DISJUNCTIVELY OMNITEMPORAL TENSELESSNESS HELP US UNDERSTAND THE PRESENTIST V. ETERNALIST DEBATE?

    Unfortunately, it doesn't.  The presentist tells us that only present items exist, whereas the eternalist says that past, present, and future items all exist.  To engage each other they have to be using 'exist' in the same sense: their disagreement is predicated upon an agreement as to the sense of 'exists.' Now  it it is clear that this cannot be the present-tensed sense of 'exists.'   Nor can it be the timelessly tenseless sense of 'exists.'  And not the disjunctively omnitemporal sense either.  Why not?

    Everyone agrees that Boethius no longer exists. But 'no longer exists' can be understood in two ways. The eternalist (B-eternalist) holds that what no longer exists exists all right, but in the past. The presentist, however, holds that what no longer exists does not exist.  For the eternalist, Boethius tenselessly exists.  For the presentist, Boethius does not tenselessly exist. Therefore, for the presentist, it is not the case that Boethius either did exist or does exist or will exist.  But this is plainly false, since Boethius did exist. Therefore, the sense of 'exists' that allows presentist and eternalist to engage each other cannot be the disjunctively omnitemporal sense of 'tenseless.'

    So what the hell sense of 'tenseless' is it?  

    More later. It's Saturday night. Time for a stiff one and Uncle Wild Bill's Saturday Night at the Oldies.

    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “Two Senses of ‘Tenseless’”

  • What, Me Worry?

    What me worryThe evil event will either occur or it will not.  If it occurs, and one worries beforehand, then one suffers twice, from the event and from the worry.  If the evil event does not occur, and one worries beforehand, one suffers once, but needlessly.  If the event does not occur, and one does not worry beforehand, then one suffers not at all.  Therefore, worry is irrational.  Don't worry, be happy.

    Am I saying that that one ought not take reasonable precautions and exercise what is pleonastically called 'due diligence'?  Of course not.  Rational concern is not worry.  I never drive without my seat belt fastened.  Never! But I have never been in an accident and I never worry about it.  And if one day it happens, I will suffer only once:  from the accident.

    Worry is a worthless emotion, a wastebasket emotion.  So self-apply some cognitive therapy and send it packing. You say you can't help but worry?  Then I say you are making no attempt to get your mind under control.  It's your mind, control it!  It's within your power.  Suppose what I have just said is false.  No matter: it is useful to believe it.  The proof  is in the pragmatics.

    Bill Vallicella

  • We Lesser Lights

    The great thinkers think for humanity, and the great writers write for humanity.  The great teachers are teachers of humanity. Buddha was such a one and so were Jesus and Socrates. We lesser lights think and write to clear our heads, and to appropriate what we have inherited. 

    Was du ererbt von deinen Vätern hast,
    erwirb es, um es zu besitzen!
     
    What from your fathers you  received as heir,
    Acquire if  you would possess it. 
     
    (Goethe's Faust, Part I, Night, lines 684-685, tr. W. Kaufmann)

     
    We think and write to know our own minds, to form our minds, and attract a few of the like-minded.  As Aristotle says somewhere, we philosophize best with friends. Philosophy does not make progress in us so much as we make progress in philosophy. We are teachers of humanity only at second-hand, and only to a few.  But we too participate in the great tradition and are grateful for the vocation to such participation.
     
    Faust im Studierzimmer Kersting

    Bill Vallicella

  • “Only the Present Exists”

    The above title gives the gist of presentism in the philosophy of time. It is an answer to Quine's ontological inventory question: What is there?  What, by category, should we count as existent?  The presentist answer is that only (temporally) present items exist: wholly past and wholly future items do not exist.  Among these items are times, events, processes, individual substances, property-instantiations.  

    'Only the present exists' is doubly ambiguous. 

    FIRST AMBIGUITY

    It is first of all ambiguous as between a tautology and a substantive thesis. It depends on how one construes 'exists.'  Is it present-tensed?  Then we get a tautology:

    TAUT:  Only the present exists at present.

    Presentists, however, are not in the business of retailing tautologies. They are out to advance a substantive and therefore non-tautological claim about what exists.  But to do this, their characteristic thesis cannot sport a present-tensed use of 'exists.'  So they have to say something like this:

    SUBS: Only the present exists simpliciter.

    But what does 'simpliciter' mean?  One might take it to mean 'tenseless.' Thus

    SUBS*: Only the present exists tenselessly.

    That is not a tautology. One might reasonably object that (SUBS*) is false on the ground that there are (tenselessly) wholly past and wholly future items such as Julius Caesar, his assassination, and my death.  That is what the so-called 'eternalists' maintain: 

    E: Past, present, and future items all exist tenselessly.

    All existents are on a par in point of existence. All are equally real.  Boethius exists just as robustly (or as anemically) as I do.  It is just that he exists in the past.  Now most eternalists are B-theorists.  They accept the B-theory of time. And so they would say that 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' can and must be cashed out relationally in terms of the B-relations: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with.  Boethius exists in the past in that he tenselessly exists at times earlier than some reference time such as the time of my writing this sentence.  He exists just as I do, but elsewhen.  London is elsewhere relative to here, where I flourish, but is no less real than where I flourish.  Gloomier, no doubt, but no less real.

    The main thing for 'present' purposes is that presentism and eternalism are both substantive claims. Neither is a tautology and neither is a contradiction.  Note also that if 'exists' in 'Past, present, and future items all exist' is read present-tensedly, then the sentence just mentioned would be a contradiction. We also note that to formulate either presentism or eternalism we must invoke a tenseless sense of 'exists.' 

    SECOND AMBIGUITY

    Now we notice that 'Only the present exists' is also ambiguous as between

    SPM: Only this present exists: there is (tenselessly) exactly one time, the present, at which everything (tenselessly) exists.

    and 

    PP:  Only the present present exists: there are (tenselessly) many times, and every time t is such that everything that exists exists (tenselessly) at t.

    The first view is Solipsism of the Present Moment.  This is a lunatic view, although it seems logically possible. It amounts to saying that everything that ever existed and everything that ever will exist exists now. Imagine that the entire universe, together with fossils, monuments, memories, and dusty books just now sprang into existence, lasts a while, and then collapses into non-being.

    Presentism as usually understood affirms something like (PP), which implies that there are past presents, a present present, and future presents.  The idea is that, at any given time, whether past, present, or future, all that exists is what exists at that time. If reality is the totality of what exists, (PP) implies that reality is always changing. (PP) implies that reality is 'dynamic' whereas (E) implies that it is static.

    (PP) strikes me as problematic. (PP) implies that there are (tenselessly) many different times. But there cannot be (tenselessly) many times if at each time there is only what exists at that time. For if at each time there is only what exists at that time, then at each time there are no times other than that time.  Is there a formulation of presentism that is consistent with its own truth?  I suspect that there isn't.

    Presentism is at present very popular among philosophers.  I am wondering why.  Some distinguished writers actually say that it is common sense. What?  The proverbial man on the street has no opinion on any of these questions.

    Bill Vallicella

    8 responses to ““Only the Present Exists””

  • Will I Vote for Donald J. Trump in 2020?

    Absolutely.

    I didn't support Trump's nomination. In fact, I wrote many posts against it, one example here.  But when Trump gained the Republican nomination, I realized that no serious conservative could fail to support him given the alternative.  So I decided to roll the dice and encourage others to do so.  The gist of my reasoning in two sentences: With Hillary, we know what we will get. With Trump, there is a good chance that we will get some of what conservatives want.  Ergo, etc.  A nice tight little enthymeme that I unpacked over many a post, e.g., in Catholics Must Support Trump.

    What happened in the last two and one half years is that we conservatives got far, far more than we expected.  The Orange Man  is proving to be a great president:

    . . . Trump has accomplished more in two years than his four immediate predecessors accomplished in four to eight years.

    The economy is in the best shape in modern history. New and better trade agreements have been developed with the major economies. Our defense is much stronger, including a stronger and better funded NATO. Our principal adversaries — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — are more off-balance than they have been in decades. Each of them is tough and ruthless, but they see in Trump someone who understands them and is equally tough in defending his country. And, with the collapse of ObamaCare, Trump has a huge opportunity to advance an effective, market-based approach to American health care coverage and cost control to help everyone.

    Belying the hysteria of the left, all Americans are moving forward; these are not “sad times,” and there is no “crisis.”

    This raises the central question to be framed in the next election: What should we demand of our president? If we’re looking for dignity, manners, grace and orderliness, Trump is vulnerable. If we’re looking for strong leadership to provide real opportunity for economic advancement for all Americans and a strong defense of America and its interests, then Trump has a claim to greatness over his current opponents and his predecessors.

    The weak field of Democrats presents voters with a virtual Hobson’s choice. It will be interesting to see how they choose.

    So yes, I will vote for Trump in 2020.  

    Bill Vallicella

  • Speaker Pelosi Defames Attorney General Barr

    Nancy Pelosi, that mendacious tool of Democrat delusion and self-destruction, beclowns herself once again. 

    Joseph Klein:

    Frustrated that their Russian-Trump conspiracy narrative has gone up in smoke, Democrats are looking to hang an obstruction of justice charge around President Trump’s neck and are targeting Attorney General Barr as a convenient scapegoat for getting in their way. Speaker Pelosi’s accusation of criminal conduct against Mr. Barr is a desperate act that crosses the line into malicious falsehood of her own.

    Speaker Pelosi followed the example of such lightweights on the Senate Judiciary Committee as Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, who made the same charge Wednesday during Mr. Barr’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on which she sits. Senator Hirono followed up her baseless accusation with this bit of self-praise: "Please, Mr. Attorney General, give us some credit for knowing what the hell is going on around here with you." The only thing that Senator Hirono deserves “credit” for after her disgraceful performance during Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing and during Mr. Barr’s Wednesday appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee is how easily she embarrasses herself.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Stealth-Jihad and the Hijab

    William Kilpatrick:

    After all the years that have passed since 9/11, many American still misunderstand the nature of the Islamic threat. The main way that Islamic power advances in the West is not through terror attacks, but through stealth-jihad—the slow-motion co-option of our cultural and political institutions.

    [. . .]

    Cultural battles are won—or lost—by cultural institutions. Most stealth jihadists don’t hope to impose sharia law through armed struggle, but rather through influence operations designed to enlist these institutions on their side. They already seem to have enlisted two major cultural institutions on their side—universities and media.

    Many universities, for example, seem to have adopted a pro-hijab stance. Faculty and student groups present the hijab as a symbol of a woman’s right to choose—in this case, to choose what clothes she will wear. Thus, on International Hijab Day, students are encouraged to don the hijab in order to show solidarity with their Muslim sisters.

    Having thus been primed to see the hijab as a symbol of choice and diversity, the typical college grad will have no difficulty understanding the decision by Fox News to suspend Judge Jeanine Pirro for her criticism of Representative Ilhan Omar’s wearing of the hijab. Pirro suggested that Omar’s hijab might be “indicative of her adherence to sharia law.”  And that was enough to bring on the two week suspension.

    Read it all.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Should Felons Have the Right to Vote?

    Bernie Sanders thinks that felons should have the right to vote even while incarcerated.  That is a foolish and irresponsible view.

    1) Felons have shown by their destructive behavior that they cannot productively order their own lives. Why then should they have any say in the ordering of society?  Why should the thoughtful vote of a decent, law-abiding citizen be canceled out by the vote of an armed robber, a rapist, a drug dealer, a terrorist, or any other miscreant?  That could make sense only to someone who substituted feeling for thought.  

    Criminals have no interest in the common good; their concern is solely with their own gratification.   They do not, as a group, contribute to society; they are, as a group, a drag on society. So I ask again: why should they be allowed to vote? And how many of them would even want to vote if they weren't given incentives by leftist activists?

    I concede the following. Some 'felons' have been wrongly convicted. Some felonies should be misdemeanors.  There are different classes of felonies.  Some felons reform themselves and become productive members of society. But none of these concessions affects the main point, namely, that  it is foolish and irresponsible to maintain  that felons as a group should have the right to vote even while incarcerated.

    2) Sanders:

    . . . the right to vote is an inalienable and universal principle that applies to all American citizens 18 years and older. Period. As American citizens all of us are entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and all the other freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights.

    By this logic, felons have the right to keep and bear arms even while incarcerated. After all, Second Amendment rights are "enshrined in our Bill of Rights."  And they are "inalienable and universal." But of course, there are excellent reasons to deny felons the right to buy and own guns, and in particular the 'right' to pack heat while in prison!  You would have to be insane to to think that an armed robber's right, qua citizen, to keep and bear arms is in no way affected by his history of armed robbery.  Rights can be lost, limited, and forfeited. Rights cannot be coherently thought of as absolute and unexceptionable.

    The right to free speech does not give a person the right to say absolutely anything in any context.  There is no right to freedom of religion if your 'religion' involves human sacrifice. The right to freedom of assembly is limited by property rights.  You have no right to assemble on my property without my permission. There is no right to block public thoroughfares or destroy public property. Individual property rights are limited by legitimate eminent domain considerations. Eminent domain laws have been misused, but that is no argument against them in principle. 

    But doesn't capital punishment violate the right to life? Capital punishment does not involve a violation of a citizen's right to life: the murderer or anyone who commits a capital crime forfeits his right to life by committing a capital crime.  If I use deadly force against you in a self-defense situation in which you threaten my life, and in so doing cause your death, I have done something both morally and legally permissible. It follows that I haven't violated your right to life. Rights violations are by definition impermissible.   By your action, you have forfeited your right to life.

    Sanders tells us that the right to vote is a "universal principle that applies to all American citizens 18 years and older."  But if it were truly universal, then  children should allowed to vote.  Why the restriction to 18 years and older?  Nancy Pelosi recently maintained that the voting age should be lowered to 16 so as to involve young people in politics. But why 16 and not 14?  Think of how many more young people would be involved in politics if the voting age were reduced to 10.  The stupidity of this is obvious  and the motive behind it is transparent.

    3) Sanders on voter suppression:

    Indeed, our present-day crisis of mass incarceration has become a tool of voter suppression. Today, over 4.5 million Americans — disproportionately people of color — have lost their right to vote because they have served time in jail or prison for a felony conviction.It goes without saying that someone who commits a serious crime must pay his or her debt to society. But punishment for a crime, or keeping dangerous people behind bars, does not cause people to lose their rights to citizenship. It should not cause them to lose their right to vote.

    It is true that a person who is justly incarcerated does not cease to be a citizen. But it hardly follows  that he retains every right of a citizen. To underscore the obvious, the prisoner is not free to come and go as he pleases.  He is not immune to searches and seizures. Etc. Limitation and suspension of rights is part of the punishment.

    And then we have the obfuscatory leftist talk of 'voter suppression' and 'mass incarceration.'  One does not suppress the vote of illegal aliens; they have no right to vote in the first place.  Similarly, one does not suppress the vote of felons; they have no right to vote.

    Sanders apparently thinks that 'people of color' are the victims of voter suppression because they are disproportionately represented among the prison population. The suggestion is that they are incarcerated to keep them from voting. Nonsense. They are disproportionately incarcerated because they are disproportionately involved in criminal behavior. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ohio Songs

    Today being the 49th anniversary of the Kent State shootings, we kick things off with 

    Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Ohio This one goes out to my old Ohio friend, Bill Marvin who attended Kent State.

    Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, The Banks of the Ohio

    Joan Baez with Jerry Garcia, The Banks of the Ohio, 1981

    Phil Ochs, Boy in Ohio, 1970.  Underrated and largely forgotten, but not by this '60s veteran. Rest in peace, Phil.

    Randy Newman, Dayton, Ohio 1903

    Bruce Springsteen, Youngstown

    Randy Newman, Burn On. An allusion to the Cuyahoga River catching on fire?

    The Band, Look Out Cleveland

    Ian Hunter, Cleveland Rocks

    Bill Vallicella

  • Maverick Philosopher 15th Anniversary Celebration and Renewal of Vows

    BV in PragueToday is my 15th 'blogiversary.' I look forward to tomorrow and the start of Year 16.  Operations commenced on 4 May 2004. 

    Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

    I've missed only a few days in these fifteen years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.'  Blogging for me is like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and playing the guitar and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always scribbling, on loose leaf, in notebooks, on the backs of envelopes, in journals daily maintained.  Maintaining a weblog is just an electronic extension of all of that. 

    Except that now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, some in the flesh.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't call forth spirits or at least snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scum sucker and bottom feeder are no counterargument.

    I thank you all for your patronage, sincerely, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. I have a big fat file of treasured fan mail that more than compensates me for my efforts.

    I am proud to have inspired a number of you Internet quill-drivers.  Some of you saw my offerings and thought to yourself, "I can do this too, and I can do it better!" And some of you have. I salute you.

    And now some thoughts on this thing we call blogging.

    In the early days of the blogosphere, over 18 years ago now, weblogs were mainly just 'filters' that sorted through the WWW's embarrassment of riches and provided links to sites the proprietor of the filter thought interesting and of reasonable quality.  So in the early days one could garner traffic by being a linker as opposed to a thinker.  Glenn Reynold's Instapundit, begun in August 2001, is a wildly successful blog that consists mainly of links.  But there are plenty of linkage blogs now and no need for more, unless you carve out  a special  niche for yourself. 

    What I find interesting, and what I aim to provide, is a blend of original content and linkage delivered on a daily basis.  As the old Latin saying has it, Nulla dies sine linea, "No day without a line."  Adapted to this newfangled medium: "No day without a post."  Weblogs are by definition frequently updated.  So if you are not posting, say, at least once a week, you are not blogging.  Actually, I find I need to restrain myself by limiting myself to two or three posts per day: otherwise good content scrolls into archival oblivion too quickly. Self-restraint, here as elsewhere, is difficult.

    Here is my definition of 'weblog':  A weblog is a frequently updated website consisting of posts or entries, usually short and succinct, arranged in reverse-chronological order, containing internal and off-site hyperlinks, and a utility allowing readers to comment on some if not all posts.

    'Blog' is a contraction of 'weblog.'  Therefore, to refer to a blog post as a blog is a mindless misuse of the term on a par with referring to an inning of a baseball game as a game, a chapter of a book as a book, an entry in a ledger as a ledger, etc.  And while I'm on my terminological high horse: a comment on a post is not a post but a comment, and one who makes a comment is a commenter, not a commentator.  A blogger is (typically) a commentator; his commenters are — commenters.

    There are group blogs and individual blogs.  Group blogs typically don't last long and for obvious reasons, an example being Left2Right.  (Of interest: The Curious Demise of Left2Right.) Please don't refer to an individual blog as a 'personal' blog.  Individual blogs can be as impersonal as you like. 

    I am surprised at how much traffic I get given the idiosyncratic blend I serve. This, the Typepad version of MavPhil, commenced on Halloween 2008.  Since then the Typepad site has garnered over five million page views (5, 192, 776 to be exact as of 14:06 hours) which averages to 1,353.4 page views per day.  Spikes sometimes reach as high as 20, 000 page views in a day.   Total posts: 9, 216.  Two years ago: 7,486.  Total comments: 11, 394.

    How did I get my site noticed?  By being patient and providing fairly good content on a regular basis.  I don't pander: I write what interests me whether or not it interests anyone else.  Even so, patience pays off in the long run. I don't solicit links or do much to promote the site.  I have turned down a few offers to run advertising. This is a labor of love. I don't do it for money. "Not that there is anything wrong with that." (Seinfeld)

    Blogging is like physical exercise.  If you are serious about it, it becomes a daily commitment and after a while it becomes unthinkable that one should stop until one is stopped by some form of physical or mental debilitation.

    Would allowing comments on all posts increase readership?  Probably, but having tried every option, I have decided the best set-up is the present one: allow comments on only some posts, and don't allow comments to appear until they have been moderated. 

    MY PLEDGE

    You will never see advertising on this site.  You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field.  You will not be assaulted with unwanted sounds.  I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.'  This is a labor of love and I prize my independence.

    I also pledge to continue the fight, day by day, month by month, year by year, against the hate-America, race-baiting, religion-bashing, liberty-destroying, Constitution-trashing, gun-grabbing, lying fascists of the Left.  As long as health and eyesight hold out.

    I will not pander to anyone, least of all the politically correct.

    And I won't back down.  Are you with me?  Then show a little civil courage. Speak out. Exercise your constitutional rights. We are engaged in a battle for the soul of America and indeed for the soul of the West.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Damon Linker on Never-Trumping Neo-Cons

    Why do never-trumping neo-con nitwits such as the bootless Max Boot allow Donald Trump to live rent-free in their heads and drive them crazy?  That's my formulation of the question, not Linker's,  but he provides a good answer to it ( emphases added):

    More fully than any other faction in the American commentariat, neocon pundits believe axiomatically in the goodness of America — in the nobility of our national aims, and in the capacity of that nobility to sanctify the means we use to achieve them. They believe that all good things go together under the benign rule of the global Pax Americana. What's good for the United States is automatically good for all people of good will everywhere, who with our help get to enjoy ever-greater freedom, democracy, and prosperity. This is the neocons' faith. They believe it as fervently as any adherent of any religion.

    But of course not everyone in American politics takes this view, and so there is partisanship, with the neocons working to uphold this pristine, highly idealized, and empirically unfalsifiable vision of the U.S. against various heretics and apostates from the faith. Until the rise of Trump, most of these heretics and apostates were found on the left, with a few (like Pat Buchanan) popping up from time to time on the paleocon right. From their home in the Republican Party, the neocons sometimes won these battles and sometimes lost. But the cause was righteous, so every defeat was admirable in its way and merely temporary — a prelude to the next victory.

    Those who described Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 primaries as a hostile takeover of the Republican Party were correct — at least from the standpoint of the party's Washington establishment, which very much included the neocons. But unlike the establishment's other factions — wealthy donors and business interests out for another tax cut; lobbyists hoping to advance the interests of an industry or group of citizens — the neocons couldn't just play along with the changing of the guard. They were much too high-minded to accept the debasement of the presidency and the party. There was thus no place for them in the new order.

    The neocons not only lost a policy battle. They also lost their perch, their perks, and their power in the party. That made, and still makes, Trump's victory intensely personal.

    When the Trump haters set out to write their umpteenth denunciation of the president, calling him bad for the country, bad for the GOP, and bad for the world, they undoubtedly mean it. But they also have other motives. The rise of Donald Trump has above all been exceedingly bad for them. They're still angry about it, and they're still out for revenge, every single time they sit down to write.

    Both leftists and neo-cons are obsessed with Trump the man. If they were really as high-minded as Linker says they are, they wouldn't take it all so personally. Besides being unhealthy, Trump-obsession is vicious and immoral. They should stop slandering him as a racist, xenophobe, Islamophobe, etc. and stop trying to 'get him' on some trumped-up charges.  The more his enemies vilify him, the more support he will get from the Coalition of the Sane.  What lefties and neo-cons should be discussing are his policy ideas.  See Michael Anton, The Trump Doctrine. 

    We who support Trump do not do so because of his lack of class, his braggadoccio, his orange hair, inarticulate  tweets, exaggerations, and other blemishes, but because he is a patriot* with good ideas and the will to implement them.  He has delivered on his campaign promises despite the nasty obstructionism of the Dems, the media, and members of his own party.   We support him because he is willing to punch back hard against the enemies of America foreign and domestic.  We support him because he is not an ever-losing pussy like Jeb! Bush or a milque-toast maverick like John McCain.

    ____________

    *Unlike Obama. No patriot seeks a fundamental transformation of his country.  What you love you do not seek fundamentally to transform.  Trump: MAGA. Obama, Hillary, and the Left: Destroy America as she was founded to be.

    ADDENDUM (5/3). Jacques reacts:

    A quick unsolicited thought about Linker's statement that the neocons were "too high minded to accept the debasement of the presidency and the party".  It is utterly absurd to describe these people as "high minded".  These are the same people who have supported futile bloody foreign adventures, for transparently phony reasons.  These are the people who always support Israel and its ethnonationalist policies while denouncing even the slightest hint of ethnic consciousness in white Americans.  Linker claims that they believe in the "goodness" of America.  I doubt that most of them really believe in anything.  They're utterly dishonest.  Calling themselves "conservatives" (of any kind) is dishonest.
     
    But more importantly, it's absurd to think that the Republican party was "debased" by Trump.  We are talking here about a racket.  The function of the Republican party for many decades has been to fool its pathetic and deluded but fundamentally decent and patriotic base.  The party pretends to care about the well-being and religion and values of these people, but has never done anything for them.  On the contrary, the party represents crony capitalists, oligarchs, Washington insiders and lobbyists.  The policies of the party have always been designed to benefit the wealthy con artists in the party and the wealthier donors and interests who control it.  
     
    Just think of George W. Bush, that semi-literate fool, orchestrating war with Iraq on the basis of absurd lies about Hussein's connection to bin Laden.  Millions died.  Ordinary Americans were killed and maimed for nothing.  At the same time, Bush was spouting leftist horseshit about "no child left behind" and getting teachers fired because they couldn't meet his Soviet-style diktats about the test scores that low IQ students were supposed to achieve.  (Of course the teachers cheated.  What were they supposed to do?)  He also gave us such memorable phrases as "the religion of peace" and celebrated Ramadan at the White House.  And all the while the country was being flooded with immigrants whose presence makes life ever more miserable for the Republican base.  
     
    That was the neocon Republican party.  The party of pointless killing and "regime change" with no plan beyond "elections".  The party of leftist lies about race and IQ.  The party of multicultural inclusion and corporate capitalism.  Could that party be "debased"? 
     
    From my perspective, Trump's tone is crude but–during his campaign at least–his message was infinitely more noble and high minded than anything these party insiders had ever said.  True, they don't use swear words and they (maybe?) don't bang call girls.  But their "ideas" were never anything more than a thin veneer meant to distract from their psychopathic greed and narcissism.
     
    Comments now enabled.

     

    Bill Vallicella

    6 responses to “Damon Linker on Never-Trumping Neo-Cons”

  • What is Time?

    Si nemo a me querat, scio, si quarenti explicare velim, nescio.

    Augustinus (354-430), Confessiones, lib. XI, cap. 14.

    Maximae res, cum parvis quaeruntur, magnos eos solent efficere.

    Augustinus, Contra Academicos, 1. 2. 6

    Time is a tangle of the most elusive and difficult topics in philosophy. For a mere mortal to grapple with any of them may be hubris, given the Augustinian predicament: “If no one asks me, I know [what time is]; if I want to explain it to someone who asks me, I do not know.”

    But undaunted we proceed under the aegis of the second quotation above: “Matters of the greatest importance, when they are investigated by little men, tend to make those men great.”

    Bill Vallicella

  • Feser on Vallicella on Feser on the Truth-Maker Objection to Presentism

    I argued in my first critical installment that Edward Feser in his stimulating new book, Aristotle's Revenge, does not appreciate the force of the truth-maker objection to presentism in the philosophy of time. Ed's response to me is here. I thank Ed for his response. Herewith, my counter-response.

    So, as I say, I don’t think the “truthmaker objection” is very impressive or interesting.  Bill disagrees.  He asks us to consider the following propositions:

    (1) There are contingent past-tensed truths.

    (2) Past-tensed truths are true at present.

    (3) Truth-Maker Principle: contingent truths need truth-makers.

    (4) Presentism: Only (temporally) present items exist.

    The problem, Bill says, is that “the limbs of this aporetic tetrad, although individually plausible, appear to be collectively inconsistent.”

    But I would deny that there is any inconsistency.  There is a presently existing fact that serves as the truthmaker for past-tensed truths such as the truth that Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March – namely, the fact that Caesar really was assassinated on the Ides of March.  To be sure, Caesar no longer exists and his assassination is no longer taking place.  But the fact that he was assassinated on the Ides of March still exists.  

    I take it that Ed accepts all four of the above propositions as stated. So far, agreement. We also agree that 'Julius Caesar was assassinated' is past-tensed, true, presently true, contingently true, needs a truth-maker, and has a truth-maker. But whereas I take the fearsome foursome to be collectively logically inconsistent, in that any three of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining proposition,  Ed finds no logical inconsistency whatsoever. Hence he finds the truth-maker objection to presentism to be neither impressive nor interesting.

    The nub of the disagreement is precisely this: Ed thinks that the fact that Caesar was assassinated suffices as truth-maker for 'Caesar was assassinated' even if presentism is true. That is precisely what I deny. If by 'fact that,' Ed means 'true proposition that,' then I say that Ed is confusing a truth-bearer with a truth-maker.  But I hesitate to tax him with such an elementary blunder. So I will take him to be saying that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact of Caesar's having been assassinated.  This is a concrete state of affairs, the subject constituent of which is Caesar himself. This state of affairs cannot exist unless Caesar himself exists.  Now Feser grants the obvious point that Caesar no longer exists.  That is is a datum that no reasonable person can deny. It follows that the truth-making state of affairs no longer exists either. 

    On presentism, however, what no longer exists does not exist at all.  Presentism is not the tautological thesis that only the present exists at present.  Everybody agrees about that. So-called 'eternalists' in the philosophy of time will cheerfully admit that only present items exist at present. But they will go on to say that wholly past and wholly future items exist as well, and just as robustly as present items. It is just that they exist elsewhen, analogously as Los Angeles, although elsewhere relative to Phoenix, exists just as robustly (or as anemically) as Phoenix.

    It is important to be clear about this. Presentism is a hard-core, substantive,  metaphysical thesis, in the same metaphysical boat with the various anti-presentisms, e.g, the misnamed 'eternalism.'   Presentism is not logically true or trivially true; it is not common sense, nor is it 'fallout' from ordinary language.  Speaking with the vulgar I say things like, 'The Berlin Wall no longer exists.' I am using ordinary English to record a well-known historical fact. Saying this, however, I do not thereby commit myself to the controversial metaphysical claim that wholly past items are nothing at all and that present items alone exist, are real, or have being. The Berlin sentence and its innumerable colleagues are neutral with respect to the issues that divide presentists and eternalists.

    Presentism is the controversial metaphysical claim that only the (temporally) present exists, period. Or at least that is the gist of it, pending various definitional refinements. On presentism, then, Caesar does not exist at all. If so, there is nothing to ground the truth that Caesar was assassinated. We don't even need to bring in truth-making facts or states of affairs.  It suffices to observe that, on presentism, wholly past individuals such as Caesar do not exist.  One should now be able to see that the grounding problem represented by (1)-(4) is up and running.  

    It is a datum that 'Caesar was assassinated' (or the proposition expressed by an assertive utterance of the sentence) is a contingent, past-tensed truth. It is also a datum that this truth is true now.  Now my datum might be your theory. But since Feser will grant both of these datanic points, I need say nothing more here in their defense. Given the datanic points, and given that the problem is soluble, one must either accept the truth-maker principle and reject presentism, or accept presentism and reject the truth-maker principle. And this is what most philosophers of time do. Trenton Merricks, for example, does the latter. (Truth and Ontology, Oxford, 2007)  Back to Feser:

    To get an inconsistency, Bill would have to add to the list some further claim like:

    (5) Only facts about what does exist (as opposed to facts about what used to exist) can serve as truthmakers.

    But that would simply beg the question against the presentist.  And of course the presentist would say: “There will be no inconsistency if you get rid of (5).  ‘Problem’ solved!”

    Not at all. There is no need to add a proposition to the tetrad to generate inconsistency. It is of course understood by almost all truth-maker theorists that only existing truth-makers can do the truth-making job.  There are few if any Meinongian truth-maker theorists.  Few if any will maintain, for example, that 'There are golden mountains' is made true by Meinong's nonexistent golden mountain. That being well-understood, it must also be understood that truth-maker theorists do not hold that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers.  They don't build presentism into truth-maker theory. What they hold is that some, if not all, truths need (existing) truth makers.  Truth-maker theory is neutral on the question that divides presentists from eternalists. Now the past-tensed  'Caesar existed' is true.  It cannot just be true: there must be something 'in the world,' something external to the sentential representation, that grounds its truth. But what might that be on presentism?  If only present items exist, then Caesar does not exist. And if Caesar does not exist, then there is nothing that could serve as the truth-maker of 'Caesar existed.'

    One ought to conclude that the quartet of propositions supra is collectively inconsistent. If the tetrad is not a full-on aporia, an insolubilium, then either one must reject presentism or one must reject the truth-maker principle.

    The Temporal Neutrality of Truth-Maker Theory and Whether I Beg the Question

    I do not assume that only presently existing items can serve as truth-makers.  What I assume is that only existing items can serve as truth-makers.  To appreciate this, consider timeless entities.  God, classically conceived, is an example: he is not omnitemporal, but eternal. He doesn't exist in time at every time, but 'outside of' time.  Now consider the proposition that God, so conceived, exists.  What makes it true, if true? Well, God. It follows that a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to do its job.  Or consider so-called 'abstract' objects such as the number 7. It is true that 7 exists.  What makes this truth true? The number 7! So again a truth-maker needn't be temporally present, or in time at all, to serve as a truth-maker. But it must exist. 

    Truth-maker theory, as such, takes no stand on either of the following two questions: Does everything that exists exist in time? Does everything that exists in time exist at the present time?

    I therefore plead innocent to Ed's charge that I beg the question. Consider 'Caesar existed.' I don't assume that this past-tensed truth needs a presently existing truth-maker to be true.  I assume merely that it needs an existing truth-maker to be true. It is not that I beg the question; it is rather that Feser fails to appreciate the consequences of his own theory. He fails to appreciate that, on presentism, what no longer exists, does not exist at all.  It is because Caesar does not exist at all that I say that 'Caesar existed' lacks a truth-maker on presentism. It is not because he doesn't exist at present. Of course he doesn't exist at present!

    Feser's Dilemma

    It seems to me that Ed is uncomfortably perched on the horns of a dilemma. Either the truth-maker of a past-tensed truth is fact that or it is a fact of.  But it cannot be a fact that, for such an item is just a true proposition, and no proposition can be its own truth-maker. For example, the fact that (the true proposition that) Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. On the other horn, the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' can be a fact of, i.e., a concrete state of affairs, but on presentism this fact does not exist. For on presentism, Caesar, who does not now exist, does not exist at all. Hence the fact of does not exist  either, for its existence depends on the existence of its constituents, one of which is the roman emperor in question.

    I suggests that Ed does not see the dilemma because he equivocates on 'fact.'  That should be clear from his talk, above, of "facts about."  He wants to say that "facts about" are truth-makers. but no truth-making fact is about it constituents. A "fact about" can only be a proposition.  It is a fact about Caesar and Brutus that the latter stabbed the former (Et tu, Brute?), But that "fact about" is just a true proposition that needs a truth-maker. The gen-u-ine truth-maker, however, is not about anything.  For example, the truth-maker of 'I am seated' is a concrete fact-of that has as one of its constituents the 200 lb sweating animal who wears my clothes. This truth-making fact is not about me; it contains me.

    Michael Dummett sees the problem with presentism very clearly:

    . . . the thesis that only the present is real denies any truth-value to statements about the past or the future; for, if it were correct, there would be nothing in virtue of which a statement of either type could be true or false, whereas a proposition can be true only if there is something in virtue of which it is true. We must attribute some form of reality either to the past, or to the future, or both.  (Truth and the Past, Columbia UP, 2004, p. 74.)

    Feser again:

    The point I was trying to make, in any event, is that past objects and events were real (unlike fictional objects and events, which never were).  That fact is what serves as the truthmaker for statements about past objects and events.  Statements about present objects and events have as their truthmakers a different sort of fact, viz. facts about objects and events that are real.  

    Ed and I will agree that Caesar's assassination is an actual past event: it is not something that merely could have happened way back when but didn't, nor is it a fictional event of the sort that one finds in historical novels. Ed is committed to saying that this event was real.  But if so, then it is true now that Caesar was assassinated. What makes it true?  Feser's answer is that the fact that Caesar was assassinated is what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated.  But this is not a satisfactory answer since it merely repeats the datum. It is given that Caesar was assassinated. The problem is to explain what makes this true given the truth of presentism.

    It is obvious that the true proposition that Caesar was assassinated cannot be what makes it true that Caesar was assassinated. That would be to confuse a truth-maker with a truth-bearer. The truth-maker cannot be an item in the 'representational order'; it must be something in the 'real order' of concrete spatiotemporal particulars.  The truth-maker must be either Caesar himself, battle scars and all, or a concrete state of affairs that has him as a constituent. But if presentism is true, then there is no such man. And if Caesar does not exist, then no concrete state of affairs involving him exists.  But now I am starting to repeat myself.

    Bill also writes:

    I conclude that Feser hasn't appreciated the depth of the grounding problem. 'Caesar was assassinated' needs an existing truth-maker. But on presentism, neither Caesar nor his being assassinated exists. It is not just that these two items don't exist now; on presentism, they don't exist at all. What then makes the past-tensed sentence true?  This is the question that Feser hasn't satisfactorily answered.

    End quote.  In fact I have answered it.  Yes, “Caesar was assassinated” needs an existing truthmaker.  And that truthmaker is not Caesar or his assassination (neither of which exist anymore) but the fact that he was assassinated (which does still exist – after all, it is as much a fact now as it was yesterday, and will remain a fact tomorrow).  To this Bill objects that “obviously this won't do [because] the past-tensed truth cannot serve as [its] own truth-maker.”  But again, this conflates facts with propositions, and these should not be conflated. 

    Ed's response is a very strange one. I am suggesting that Ed might be conflating truth-makers with truth-bearers, truth-making facts with propositions.  He says he is not. Fine. But since I explicitly made the distinction, he cannot reasonably accuse me of conflating truth-making facts with propositions.  In any case, it definitely seems to me that Ed is succumbing to the conflation in question, as I have explained above.

    Are My Objections Sound Only if I Have a Correct Alternative Theory?

    This is a fascinating metaphilosophical question. Ed again:

    One further point.  Even if the defender of the “truthmaker objection” could get around the criticisms I have been raising, the objection nevertheless will succeed only if some alternative to presentism is correct.  And as I argue in Aristotle’s Revenge, none of the alternatives is correct.  So it will not suffice for the critic merely to try to raise problems for the presentist’s understanding of truth-making.  He will also have to defend some non-presentist understanding of truth-making, which will require responding to the objections I’ve raised against the rivals to presentism.

    In particular, the critic presupposes that we have a clear idea of what it would be for past objects and events and future objects and events to be no less real than the present is, and thus a clear idea of what it would be for such things to be truthmakers.  But I claim that that is an illusion.  The eternalist view is in fact not well-defined.  It is a tissue of confusions that presupposes errors such as a tendency to characterize time in terms that intelligibly apply only to space, and to mistake mathematical abstractions for concrete realities.  Indeed, on the Aristotelian view of time that I defend in the book, the approaches to the subject commonly taken by various contemporary writers are in several respects wrongheaded.  Again, what I say about the truthmaker objection must be read in light of the larger discussion of time in Aristotle’s Revenge.

    I deny what Feser asserts in the second sentence of the quotation immediately above. The assertion seems to trade on a confusion of possible theories and extant theories. Even if there is no tenable extant competitor to Feser's version of presentism — which is of course only one of several different versions — it does not follow that there is no possible tenable competitor theory.  That is one concern. Another is more radical. 

    It may be that all of the extant theories in the philosophy of time are untenable and open to powerful objections. In particular, I am not an 'eternalist' and I am very sensitive to the problems it faces. To mention one, it seems that eternalism needs an understanding of tenseless existence and tenseless property-possession that I suspect is unintelligible. Could all the extant theories be false? Why not? They might all, on deep analysis, turn out be logical contraries of each other.

    An even more radical thought: It may be that all possible theories (all theories that it is possible for us to formulate)  in the philosophy of time are untenable and rationally insupportable in  the end  in such a way as definitively to give the palm to one of theories over all the others.

    But even apart from the two radical proposals just bruited, it is not entirely clear why, if the objections I have raised are sound, I would have to consider Feser's (putative) refutations of the other theories.  If my objections are in fact sound, then I can stop right there.  In any case, I did in installment three of my ongoing critique consider Feser's notion that the truth-makers of past-tensed truths all exist at present.  By the way, it is not clear to me how this notion (causal trace theory) is supposed to cohere with what Feser says elsewhere in his section on time. How does it cohere with what we discussed above?  It is one thing to say that the truth-maker of 'Caesar was assassinated' is the fact that C. was assassinated, and quite another to say that the truth-maker exists in the present in the form of present effects of C.'s past existence.  

    Time to punch the clock!

    Bill Vallicella

    22 responses to “Feser on Vallicella on Feser on the Truth-Maker Objection to Presentism”

  • Warning to Retromingent Leftists

    If you erase history, 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.

    Story here. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Four Pillars of the Trump Doctrine

    Malcolm Pollack summarizes Michael Anton's latest.

    Lefties love 'conversations' about this and that. Why not a conversation — no sneer quotes this time — about Trump's policy ideas rather than about his personality?

    Bill Vallicella

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  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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