Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Could it be like this?

    I find the following scenario exceedingly strange. We die and become nothing and no question gets answered. Could it be like this? It is epistemically possible, possible for all we know. All we know is damned little. But then what would have been the point of the evolution of animals that pose unanswerable questions? No point! Human life would then be like a joke, but a joke without a teller.

    We can't know that the above scenario is true, and we can't know that it is false. So in the end you must decide what you will believe and how you will live. There is no theoretical resolution of the problem; the resolution must be personal, pragmatic, and existential. So I say: if you have the aptitude and the stamina, you live best by seeking the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters with your whole heart and mind and soul, with everything else you do subordinate to that quest and in service of it, and you keep up that quest until the hour of death, always a little out of breath, with no comfortable lounging in any dogmatic edifice, whether atheist, theist, or agnostic.

    You meet death with faith, hope, and love. Faith that in some way we cannot now understand we will continue to exist as persons; hope that this is the case and that our present predicament will open out onto something marvellous and finally satisfactory; love for everybody and everything that brought us to this point. You don't want death to find you cursing and snarling, doubting and despairing, let alone sunk in evil-doing.

    But to meet death in that salutary way, you must live now as if the above is true. So you can't live like Anthony Bourdain who lived for food and the pleasures of the flesh ("The body is not a temple but an amusement park.") He hanged himself last year as if to say: there is no life beyond this brief material life and its paltry pleasures; so when they run out, you ought to as well. Was he quite sure that there is nothing beyond this mortal predicament? Is that not an astonishing form of dogmatism, the equal of the dogmatism of those who claim to have precise information about the afterlife, its rewards and punishments, and who gets which?

    Related:

    The Body: Temple or Amusement Park?

    Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone

    Bill Vallicella

  • More on Assertion and Presupposition

    I continue to worry this technical bone, which is not a mere technicality, inasmuch as the topic of presupposition opens out upon some very Big Questions indeed. Anyway, back to work. I thank Ed Buckner for getting me going on this.

    …………………

    It should be obvious that one does not assert everything that the content of one's assertion entails.  If I assert that Venus is a planet, I do not thereby assert that either Venus is a planet or Putin is a former KGB agent, even though the content of my assertion entails the disjunctive proposition.  The content of an assertion is a proposition, and for any proposition p, p entails p v q.

    A more interesting, and more difficult, question is whether one asserts any proposition that the content of one's assertion entails (apart from the proposition that is the content of the assertion).

    Suppose you ask who won the 10K Turkey Trot and  I assert that Tony won the race.  Do I thereby also assert that he competed in it?  That he competed in it is entailed by the fact that he won. And it is entailed in a stronger sense that the sense in which Venus is a planet entails Venus is a planet or Putin is a former KGB agent.   For there is a semantic connection between winning and competing, but no semantic connection in the Venus-Putin case. You could say that it is analytically impossible that Tony win without competing: what makes it true that there is no possible world in which Tony wins but does not compete is the semantic connection between winning and competing.

    Still, I want to say that Tony's competing is presupposed but not asserted when I assert that he won the race.  Necessarily, anything red is colored.  But when I assert that Tom the tomato is red, I do not thereby assert that it is colored, although of course I presuppose that it is colored. Note the word 'thereby.' It is no doubt possible for me to assert that Tom is colored, a 'vegetable of color' if you will, but that is a different assertion.

    Go back to Tony the runner. That Tony did not cheat by taking a short cut is analytically entailed by the fact that he won. (To win a foot race it does not suffice to be the first to cross the finish line. Remember Rosie Ruiz of Boston Marathon 1980 notoriety?)  Will you say that when I assert that Tony won the race I also thereby assert that he did not cheat by taking a shortcut? I would say No. For that would be an unbearably counter-intuitive thing to say. I presuppose, but do not assert, that Tony did not cheat by taking a shortcut

    You can see how this series of questions can be extended. One can cheat  by  getting a head start or by jumping in at mid-course, which is what Rosie Ruiz did at Boston. You can cheat by hiring a a world-class doppelgaenger, by wearing special shoes . . . .

    Note also that if Tony won, it follows that he either won or didn't win. Will you say that when I assert that Tony won the race I am also thereby asserting that he either won it or didn't?  When I assert that Tony won, I am not asserting the Law of Excluded Middle (LEM). At most, LEM is a presupposition of my assertion, and of every assertion.

    If Tony won, then it was possible that he win.  For everything actual is possible. But when I assert that Tony won, I presuppose, but do not assert, that it was possible at the time of the race that Tony win.

    I am toying with a strong thesis:

    When an agent A makes an assertion by uttering or otherwise tokening a sentence s (which is typically, but needn't be, in the indicative mood), the content of the assertion is exactly the (Fregean) proposition explicitly expressed by the tokening of s and no other proposition.  Propositions other than the content proposition that are entailed by the content proposition are at most presuppositions of the assertion.

    Why hold this view? Well, it seems to me that what I assert on any occasion is precisely what I intend to assert on that occasion and nothing else.  When I make an assertion I translate into overt speech a belief that I have. The content/accusative of the belief is a Fregean proposition and there is nothing in that proposition that is not open to my mind at the time I express my belief.

     

     

    Bill Vallicella

    6 responses to “More on Assertion and Presupposition”

  • Did Kepler Die in Misery?

    KeplerEither he did or he didn't. Suppose I say that he did, and you say that he didn't. We both presuppose, inter alia, that there was a man named 'Kepler.'  Now that proposition that we both presuppose, although entailed both by Kepler died in misery and Kepler did not die in misery is no part of what I assert when I assert that Kepler died in misery.

    Why not?

    Well, to proceed by reductio, if what I assert when I assert that Kepler died in misery is that (there was a man named 'Kepler' & he died in misery), then what you assert when you contradict  me is that (either there was no man named 'Kepler' or that he did not die in misery). But the latter is not what you assert, and the former is not what I assert.  That is because we take it for granted that there was a man who rejoiced under the name 'Johannes Kepler.'

    What I assert is that Kepler died in misery, and what you assert is that Kepler did not die in misery.  But we both presuppose that there was a man named 'Kepler.'  The proposition that we both presuppose, while entailed by what we each assert, is not part of what we each assert.

    That, I take it, is Frege's famous argument in Ueber Sinn und Bedeutung.

    It seems pretty good to me.

    Bill Vallicella

    5 responses to “Did Kepler Die in Misery?”

  • Assertion and Presupposition: An Argument for a Distinction

    1) Someone, such as Sophomore Sam, who asserts that there are no truths does not assert that there are truths.

    And yet

    2) That there are no truths entails that there is at least one truth.  (Why? Because it is impossible for the first proposition to be true and the second false.)

    Therefore

    3) If someone S asserts that p, and p entails q, it does not follow that S asserts that q.  (Assertion is not closed under entailment.)

    4) Although Sam does not ASSERT that there is at least one truth when he assertively utters the sentence 'There are no truths,' he is in some relation to the proposition that there is at least one truth. I will say that he PRESUPPOSES it.

    Therefore

    5) There is a distinction we need to make and it is reasonably labelled the distinction between ASSERTING a proposition and PRESUPPOSING  a proposition.  An act of asserting can carry a presupposition that is not asserted.  Sam's act of asserting that there are no truths presupposes but does not assert that there is at least one truth.

    If you don't accept this argument, tell me which premise(s) you reject and why.

    Bill Vallicella

    10 responses to “Assertion and Presupposition: An Argument for a Distinction”

  • Krauthammer’s Fundamental Law

    Here is Krauthammer's Fundamental Law:
    To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
    It's cute and clever, a nice piece of journalese, but not quite right, although it gets at part of the truth.
     
    Krauthammer's 'law' conversationally implies that conservatives do not think that contemporary liberals or leftists are evil. But surely many of us do. Leftists routinely slander us with such epithets as: sexist, racist, white supremacist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, and so on. This is morally vicious behavior and to that extent evil. My view is that many if not most so-called liberals are not good people. You are not a good person, for example, if you routinely dismiss legitimate concerns for the rule of law in the matter of immigration by accusing conservatives of having an irrational fear of foreigners.  That is a vicious refusal to take conservatives seriously as  rational beings and address their arguments.
     
    A second problem with Krauthammer's 'law' is that intelligent conservatives do not think of most liberals  as stupid but as having the wrong values, or, when they have some of the right values, not prioritizing them correctly.  Generally speaking, political differences reflect differences in values and principles, not differences in intelligence or 'information.' 
    Bill Vallicella

  • Is Assertion Closed Under Entailment? Assertion and Presupposition

    Suppose a person asserts that p. Suppose also that p entails q. Does it follow that the person asserting that p thereby asserts that q?  If so, and if p and q are any propositions you like, then assertion is closed under entailment.  If assertion is not closed under entailment, then there will be examples in which a person asserts that p, p entails q, but the person does not assert that q.

    By 'entailment' I understand a relation between propositions. P entails q iff it is impossible for p to be true, and q false. By 'assertion' I mean a speech act, an act of asserting, a concrete, datable, linguistic performance, not a proposition.  By 'the content of an assertion' I mean the proposition expressed  when a person makes an assertion. A proposition is not the same as a sentence. 'The war has come to an end' is a sentence in English. 'Der Krieg hat zu Ende gekommen' is a sentence in German.  The sentences are different, both at the type level and at the token level. And yet they can both be used to express one and the same thought. That same thought is the proposition.  By 'thought' here I do not mean an occurrent episode of thinking, but the accusative (direct object) of such an act of thinking. You could also call it a 'content' although that term is ambiguous for reasons I won't go into now.

    Preliminaries aside, back to our question.

    That James no longer works for Amazon has among its entailments that James worked for Amazon, that someone named 'James' worked for Amazon, and that someone no longer works for Amazon.

    Now suppose I assert that James no longer works for Amazon.  Do I thereby assert that James worked for Amazon?  I say No.

    Here is a more striking example. Sophomore Sam asserts that there are no truths.  The content of his act of assertion, namely, the proposition that there are no truths, entails that the content of his assertion is not true.  But surely the latter is no part of what Sam asserts. 

    So assertion is not closed under entailment.

    Suppose that Tom asserts that he is glad that Trump beat Hillary.  The content of the assertion entails that Trump beat Hillary. But that Trump beat Hillary is not what Tom asserts.  We can say that Tom's act of assertion presupposes that Trump beat Hillary.  But neither Tom nor his act of assertion is a proposition. So if Tom's act of assertion presupposes that Trump beat Hillary, then presupposition is not a relation between propositions, but a relation between a non-proposition (a person or his speech act) and a proposition.

    On the other hand, that Tom is glad that Trump beat Hillary entails that Trump beat Hillary. This is a relation between propositions and it makes some sense to say that the first presupposes the second.

    This raises a question. Is presupposition primarily something that people do, or is it primarily a relation between propositions?

    Bill Vallicella

    9 responses to “Is Assertion Closed Under Entailment? Assertion and Presupposition”

  • Facebook

    I'm on a roll over there.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Polemics

    It cannot be avoided in politics, but must be avoided in philosophy.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Leonine Wisdom

    The wise lion sometimes plays the chicken.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Wall (of Sound)

    There is a lot of talk of walls these days. I need a break. Here are some of my favorite Phil Spector productions.  It wouldn't have been the 'sixties without him. I avert my eyes from his later misadventures and remember him for his contributions to the Boomer soundtrack.

    Crystals, Uptown, 1962.

    Crystals, He's a Rebel

    Ronettes, Be My Baby

    Crystals, Da Doo Ron Ron

    Curtis Lee, Pretty Little Angel Eyes.

    Great dance video. Curtis Edwin Lee, one-hit wonder, hailed from Yuma, Arizona.  He died at 75 years of age on 8 January 2015.  Obituary here. His signature number became a hit in 1961, reaching the #7 slot on the Billboard Hot 100. When I discovered that the record was produced by the legendary Phil Spector, I understood why it is so good.  After the limelight, Lee returned to Yuma for a normal life. This tune goes out to wifey, with love.  When I first espied those angel eyes back in '82, I had the thought, "Here she is, man, the one for you. Go for it!" And I did, and its been very good indeed.

    Ben E. King, Spanish Harlem, 1960.

    Crystals, Then He Kissed Me

    Beach Boys, Then I Kissed Her. With a tribute to Marilyn M.

    Paris Sisters, I Love How You Love Me, 1961.

    Ronettes, Walkin' in the Rain

    Bill Vallicella

  • Possible Worlds Again: Thomist versus ‘Analyst’

    Fr. Matthew Kirby by e-mail:

    By the way, in thinking about my comments on the [your] SEP entry I realised that I had used the term "possible worlds" in an idiosyncratic way, one non-standard within the analytical school, applying a Thomist twist to it. Unlike standard usage, I do not include a hypothetical transcendent First Cause as an element within any "possible world", but instead define possible worlds in that context as potential concrete totalities that may result from God's choice with respect to creation. Thus God Himself is not an element of any possible world (though His supernatural actions ad extra can be) on this construal, as possible worlds are each a sum of finitised, dependent, created being/s considered across their development.

     

    What Fr. Kirby says certainly make sense.  Talk of God existing in every possible world comes naturally to analytical theists who are concerned to affirm the divine necessity. Such talk, however, is bound to sound strange to those of a traditional bent who quite naturally think of God as the transcendent creator of the world, a creator who could have created some other world or no world at all, and its therefore 'outside of' every possible world.

     

    Herewith, some comments in clarification.

     

    Let's start with the obvious point that 'world' supports a multitude of meanings. (I once cataloged a dozen or so distinct uses of the term.)  If we use 'world' to refer to the totality of what exists, then, if God exists, he is in the world: he is a member of that all-inclusive totality of entities.  If, on the other hand, we use 'world' to refer to the totality of creatures, where a creature is anything at all that is created by God, then God is not in the world.  God, after all, does not create himself: he is the uncreated creator of everything distinct from himself.  So God does not count as a creature.

     

    So far, then, two senses of 'world.' World as totality of entities and world as totality of creatures. God is in the first totality, but not in the second. But a Thomistic theist such as Fr. Kirby might balk at my placing God in the totality of entities.  If God exists or is, however, then God is an entity.  (I define an entity as anything that is or exists.)  To put it in Latin, even if God is esse, he is nevertheless ens, something that is.  God is at once both Being (esse) and ens (being).  Note my careful distinction between the majuscule and miniscule  'B/b.'  In fact, if God is ipsum esse subsistens, self-subsistent Being, then he can't be other than every being; he must be both Being and being.  God is Being in its prime instance, which is to say: God is both esse and ens, Being and being. More on this later, since Fr. Kirby seems to disagree.

     

    Unless one is treading the via negativa with Dionysius the Areopagite and Co., one must admit that God is. 

     

    I hasten to add that, while God is both esse and ens, and therefore is, he is not an ens among entia, a being among beings. So I grant that God fits somewhat uneasily within the totality of entities. For while he is an entity, he is the one being that is also identical to Being. (How is this possible? Well, that is the problem  or perhaps mystery of divine simplicity.) Still, God is.

     

    I have distinguished two senses of 'world.'  World as totality of entities and world as totality of creatures. But there is a third sense: world as a maximal state of affairs.  "The world is all that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things." (These are the first two propositions of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)  This is pretty close to the main (not the only) analytic understanding of 'world' in talk of possible worlds.

     

    Here, then, is one  'analytic' approach. The actual world is the total way things are. A merely possible world is a total way things could have been or could be. The actual world is the total way things are, but not the things that are that way. Thus the actual world is not the same as the universe, whether physical or physical plus any nonphysical items there  are.  Why not? 

     

    The plausible line to take is abstractist. Worlds are maximal (Fregean) propositions and thus abstract entities or maximal (abstract) states of affairs, as on A. Plantinga's scheme in The Nature of Necessity.  They are not maximal mereological sums of concreta, pace that mad dog extreme modal realist, David Lewis, may his atheist bones rest in peace.  If worlds are propositions, then actuality is truth. That is one interesting consequence. Another is that worlds are abstract objects which implies that the actual world must not be confused either with the physical universe (the space-time-matter system) or with that plus whatever nonphysical concreta (minds) that there might be. And if worlds are abstract objects then they are necessary beings.  So every possible world exists in every possible world.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Does Everyone Have a Religion? Even Atheists?

    Andrew Sullivan opines,

    Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. [. . .]

    By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning, a meaning that cannot really be defended without recourse to some transcendent value, undying “Truth” or God (or gods).

    Which is to say, even today’s atheists are expressing an attenuated form of religion.

    Sully is not being specific enough. Consider Communist ideology. It is a practice, not just a theory. It is a way of life that gives meaning. It appeals to values that transcend the current situation such as the value of a classless society free of exploitation and alienation, a society with no need of the illusory consolations of religion, a society in which that opiate will not be needed because each will realize himself to the fullest in the here and now. Pie here below will obviate the hankering for pie in the sky. It is easy to see how so many millions in the 20th century could be recruited to the Communist cause. 

    On Sully's definition, godless communism is a religion that rejects religion, which is to say: it is not a religion on any appropriate understanding of that term. Sully's definition is not specific enough, sullied as it is by being too broad.

    Sullivan ought to say something sensible. I suggest the following. Human beings have very strong worldview needs.  Doxastic security needs, I call them. It is impossible not to have some worldview or other, tacit or explicit, unexamined or examined, uncritically imbibed from one's social environment or worked out for oneself. No human being lives, or can live, adoxastos, without beliefs, and in particular without action-guiding beliefs, beliefs that direct, as well as overarching beliefs that orient us in the scheme of things. Not even the Pyrrhonian can pull it off.

    Now, in the genus worldview, distinguish two species: religious and non-religious.  Communism, being militantly atheistic and anti-religious, is a non-religious worldview. By contrast, Catholicism is a religious worldview.

    At this point you ought to ask me for the specific difference.  If rationality is what distinguishes human from non-human animals,  what property or set of properties distinguishes religious from non-religious worldviews?  My answer in The Essence of Religion.

    No good purpose is served by calling atheism a religion. It is a cheap piece of journalistic sloppiness too often maintained, too infrequently reflected upon.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Love Untranslated

    Love untranslated into action remains an emotion and in many cases a mere self-indulgence. One enjoys the warm feeling of benevolence and risks succumbing to the illusion that it suffices.  Benevolent sentiments are no doubt better than malevolent ones, but an affectless helping of a neighbor who needs help, if that is possible, is better than cultivating warm feelings toward him without lifting a finger.  We ought to be detached not only from the outcome of the deed, but also detached from its emotional concomitants.

    I occurs to me that what I just wrote has a Kantian flavor: one acts from duty, not inclination. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) held that the moral worth of an action accrues from its being done from duty, whether or not inclination is along for the ride. It is a mistake to read him as saying that only acts done from duty alone, with no admixture of inclination, have moral worth.  Doing from duty what one is disinclined to do has no more moral worth than doing from duty what one is inclined to do.

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Erasure of History

    The Left's assault on collective memory via the redacting and outright erasure of the historical record is quite convenient for them: it ensures that the memory of its iniquities will be kept hidden.

    Bill Vallicella

  • “And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us” (John 1:14)

    Let us meditate this Christmas morning on the sheer audacity of the idea that God would not only enter this world of time and misery, but come into it in the most humble manner possible . . . . Read the rest here.

    It is a 'sermon' you will not likely hear in any Catholic Church.  What you will hear in the decadent Catholic churches of the present day is all manner of diversionary pablum as if designed to keep one from confronting the Christian narrative in its full strength. The few exceptions will prove the rule.

     

    Bill Vallicella

Latest Comments

  3. 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

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

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