Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • BEATific October Again

    Keroauc barIt's October again, my favorite month, and Kerouac month in my personal literary liturgy.  And no better way to kick off Kerouac month than with 'sweet gone Jack'  reading from "October in Railroad Earth" from Lonesome Traveler, 1960.  Steve Allen provides the wonderful piano accompaniment.  I have the Grove Press Black Cat 1970 paperback edition. I bought it on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on 12 April 1973. I was travelling East by thumb to check out East Coast graduate schools where I had been accepted, but mostly  I 'rode the dog' (Greyhound bus), a mode of transport I wouldn't put up with today: two guys behind me chain-smoked  and talked all the way from Los Angeles to Phoenix.  New Orleans proved to be memorable, including the flophouse on Carondelet I stayed in for $2.  It was there that Lonesome  Traveler joined On the Road in my rucksack. 

    I never before had seen Tabasco bottles so big as on the tables of the Bourbon Street bars and eateries.  Exulting in the beat quiddity of the scene, I couldn't help but share my enthusiasm for Nawlins with a lady of the evening, not sampling her wares, but just talking to her on the street, she thinking me naive, and I was. 

    Here is a long  excerpt (7:10), which contains the whole of the first two sections of "October in Railroad Earth," pp. 37-40, of the Black Cat edition.

    You don't know jack about Jack if you don't know that he was deeply conservative despite his excesses.  The aficionados will enjoy The Conservative Kerouac.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Is She Believable?

    It depends on what 'believable' means. 

    Many find Christine Blasey Ford 'credible' or 'believable.'  But there is a tendency among the commentariat to conflate her believability with the believability of the content of her allegation against Judge Kavanaugh. Those of us who want to think clearly about this SCOTUS confirmation business need to keep some distinctions in mind.

    There are two main senses of 'credible/believable' in the vicinity and they need to be distinguished. There is the credibility of persons and the credibility of propositions. 

    Credibility of Persons

    Within the credibility of persons we should further distinguish sincerity from trustworthiness.  Does Dr. Ford sincerely believe what she alleges against Judge Kavanaugh?  I think so. So I find her credible in that sense. I don't think she is trying to deceive us. She seems to be saying what she sincerely believes is the truth. One can say what is false without lying.  So even if what she is saying is false, she can sincerely assert it. Bret Stephens says he "found her wholly believable. If she’s lying, she will face social and professional ruin." She is believable in the sense that she seems not to be lying. So that is one sense of personal believability.

    But is she a trustworthy witness? That is a more difficult question. Even if she is a trustworthy witness in general, was she one that night when she was drinking? I don't know. A person can be believable in the sense of apparently sincere and apparently truth-telling without being  trustworthy because, perhaps, she has a tendency to confabulate.  So we should distinguish believability as sincerity from believability as trustworthiness.  

    Credibility of Propositions

    But Ford's personal credibility is not really the issue. The issue is whether the content of her allegation is credible. The alleging is one thing, the content another. Part of that content is the proposition that Brett Kavanaugh sexually molested her.  That proposition could have been alleged by people other than Ford. Is the proposition itself credible?

    But what does credible mean? It means believable. But the '___able' suffix is ambiguous. Is the proposition such that some people have the ability to believe it? Yes, of course, but that is not the relevant sense of 'believable.'  People believe the damndest things and thus many false and absurd propositions are believable. They are believable because they are believed.

    The relevant sense of 'believable' is normative: Is the proposition alleged worthy of belief? Is it a proposition that ought to be believed by a rational person, or may be believed by a rational person?  Is it epistemically permissible to believe that Brett Kavanaugh sexually molested Ford?

    It is only if there is sufficient evidence. How much evidence is needed? Well, it has to be more than her say-so even if it  is a sincere say-so.  Suppose Ford sincerely states what she sincerely believes is the truth. That is not sufficient evidence that Kavanaugh in fact molested her.  But no other evidence has turned up: there are no corroborating witnesses, for example.

    I conclude that Ford is not believable in the only sense that matters: the content of her allegation is not supported by enough evidence to make it worthy of belief.  Her testimony should be dismissed and Kavanaugh should be confirmed.

    Related: Sex-Crimes Prosecutor Details 12 Massive Inconsistencies in Kavanaugh Accuser's Story

    Bill Vallicella

  • Half-Way Fregeanism About Existence: Questions for Van Inwagen

     In section 53 of The Foundations of Arithmetic, Gottlob Frege famously maintains that

    . . . existence is analogous to number.  Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought.  Because existence is a property of concepts the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down. (65)

    Frege is here advancing a double-barreled thesis that splits into two sub-theses.

    ST1. Existence is analogous to number.

    ST2. Existence is a property (Eigenschaft) of concepts and not of objects.

    FregeIn the background is the sharp distinction between property (Eigenschaft) and mark (Merkmal).  Three-sided is a mark of the concept triangle, but not a property of this concept; being instantiated is a property of this concept but not a mark of it.  The Cartesian-Kantian ontological argument "from mere concepts" (aus lauter Begriffen), according to Frege, runs aground because existence cannot be a mark of any concept, but only a property of some concepts.  And so one cannot validly argue from the concept of God to the existence of God.

    Existence as a property of concepts is the property of being instantiated.  We can therefore call the Fregean account of existence an instantiation account.  A concept is instantiated just in case it has one or more instances.  So on a Fregean reading, 'Cats exist' says that the concept cat is instantiated.  This seems to imply, and was taken by Frege and Russell to imply that 'Cats exist' is not about cats, but about a non-cat, a concept or propositional function, and what it says about this concept or propositional function is not that it (singularly) exists, but that it is instantiated!  (Frege: "has something falling under it"; Russell: "is sometimes true.") A whiff of paradox? Or more than just a whiff?

    The paradox, in brief, is that 'Cats exist' which one might naively take to be about cats, is in reality about a non-cat, a concept or propositional function. 

    Accordingly, as Russell in effect states, 'Cats exist' is in the same logical boat with 'Cats are numerous.' Now Mungojerrie is a cat; but no one will infer that Mungojerrie is numerous. That would be the fallacy of division. On the Fressellian view, one who infers that Mungojerrie exists commits the same fallacy.  'Exist(s)' is not an admissible first-level predicate.

    My concern in this entry is the logical relation between the above two sub-theses.  Does the first entail the second or are they logically independent?  There is a clear sense in which (ST1) is true. 

    Necessarily, if horses exist, then the number of horses is not zero, and vice versa.  So 'Horses exist' is logically equivalent to 'The number of horses is not zero.'  This is wholly unproblematic for those of us who agree that there are no Meinongian nonexistent objects.  But note that, in general, equivalences, even logical equivalences, do not sanction reductions or identifications.  So it remains an open question whether one can take the further step of reducing existence to instantiation, or of identifying existence with instantiation, or even of eliminating existence in favor of instantiation. Equivalence, reduction, elimination: those are all different.  But I make this point only to move on.

    (ST1), then, is unproblematically true if understood as expressing the following logical equivalence: 'Necessarily Fs exist iff the number of Fs is not zero.'  My question is whether (ST1) entails (ST2).  Peter van Inwagen in effect denies the entailment by denying that the 'the number of . . . is not zero' is a predicate of concepts:

    I would say that, on a given occasion of its use, it predicates of certain things that they number more than zero.  Thus, if one says, 'The number of horses is not zero,' one predicates of horses that they number more than zero.  'The number of . . . is not zero' is thus what some philosophers have called a 'variably polyadic' predicate.  But so are many predicates that can hardly be regarded as predicates of concepts.  The predicates 'are ungulates' and 'have an interesting evolutionary history,' for example, are variably polyadic predicates.  When one says, 'Horses are ungulates' or 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history' one is obviously making a statement about horses and not about the concept horse.  ("Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment," pp. 483-484)

    Van Inwagen 2It is this passage that I am having a hard time understanding.   It is of course clear what van Inwagen is trying to show, namely, that the Fregean sub-theses are logically independent and that one can affirm the first without being committed to the second.  One can hold that existence is denial of the number zero without  holding that existence is a property of concepts.  One can go half-way with Frege without going  all the way.

    But I am having trouble with the claim that the predicate 'the number of . . . is not zero' is  'variably polyadic' and the examples van Inwagen employs.  'Robbed a bank together' is an example of a variably polyadic predicate.  It is polyadic because it expresses a relation, that of robbing,  and it is variably polyadic because it expresses a family of relations having different numbers of arguments.  For example, Bonnie and Clyde robbed a bank together, but so did Ma Barker and her two boys, Patti Hearst and three members of the ill-starred Symbionese Liberation Army, and so on.  (Example from Chris Swoyer and Francesco Orilia.) 

    Now when I say that the number of horses is not zero, what am I talking about? It is plausible to say that I am talking about horses, not about the concept horse. (Recall the whiff of paradox, supra.)  What I don't understand are van Inwagen's examples of variably polyadic predicates.  Consider 'are ungulates.'  If an ungulate is just a mammal with hooves, then I fail to see how 'are ungulates' is polyadic, let alone variably polyadic.  I do understand that some hooved animals have one hoof per foot, some two hooves per foot, and so on, which implies variability in the number of hooves that hooved animals have. What I don't understand is the polyadicity. It seems to me that 'Are hooved mammals' is monadic.

    The other example is 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history.'  This sentence is clearly not about the concept horse. But it is not about any individual horse either.  Consider Harry the horse.  Harry has a history.  He was born in a certain place, grew up, was bought and sold, etc. and then died at a certain age.  He went through all sorts of changes.  But Harry didn't evolve, and so he had no evolutionary history.  No individual evolves; populations evolve:

    Evolutionary change is based on changes in the genetic makeup of populations over time. Populations, not individual organisms, evolve. Changes in an individual over the course of its lifetime may be developmental(e.g., a male bird growing more colorful plumage as it reaches sexual maturity) or may be caused by how the environment affects an organism (e.g., a bird losing feathers because it is infected with many parasites); however, these shifts are not caused by changes in its genes. While it would be handy if there were a way for environmental changes to cause adaptive changes in our genes — who wouldn't want a gene for malaria resistance to come along with a vacation to Mozambique? — evolution just doesn't work that way. New gene variants (i.e., alleles) are produced by random mutation, and over the course of many generations, natural selection may favor advantageous variants, causing them to become more common in the population.

    'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history,' then, is neither about the concept horse nor about any individual horse.  The predicate in this sentence appears to be non-distributive or collective.  It is like the predicate in 'Horses have been domesticated for millenia.'  That is certainly not about the concept horse.  No concept can be ridden or made to carry a load.  But it is also not about any individual horse.  Not even the Methuselah of horses, whoever he might be, has been around for millenia.

    As I understand it,  predicate F is distributive just in case it is analytic that whenever some things are F, then each is F.  Thus a distributive predicate is one the very meaning of which dictates that if it applies to some things, then it applies to each of them.  'Blue' is an example.  If some things are blue, then each of them is blue.

    If a predicate is not distributive, then it is non-distributive (collective).  If some Occupy-X nimrods or Antifa thugs have the building surrounded, it does not follow that each such nimrod or thug has the building surrounded.  If some students moved a grand piano into my living room, it does not follow that each student did.  If bald eagles are becoming extinct, it does not follow that each bald eagle is becoming extinct.  Individual animals die, but no individual animal ever becomes extinct. If the students come from many different countries, it does not follow that each comes from many different countries.  If horses have an interesting evolutionary history, it does not follow that each horse has an interesting evolutionary history.

    My problem is that I don't understand why van Inwagen gives the 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history' example — which is a collective predication — when he is committed to saying that each horse exists.  His view , I take it, is that 'exist(s)' is a first-level distributive predicate.  'Has an interesting evolutionary history,' however, is a first-level non-distributive predicate.  Or is it PvI's view that 'exist(s)' is a first-level non-distributive predicate?

    Either I don't understand van Inwagen's position due to some defect in me, or it is incoherent.  I incline toward the latter.  He is trying to show that (ST1) does not entail (ST2).  He does this by giving examples of predicates that are first-level, i.e., apply to objects, but are variably polyadic as he claims 'the number of . . . is not zero' is variably polyadic.  But the only clear example he gives is a predicate that is non-distributive, namely 'has an interesting evolutionary history.'  'Horses exist,' however, cannot be non-distributive.  If some horses exist, then each of them exists.  And if each of them exists, then 'exists' is monadic, not polyadic, let alone variably polyadic.

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Left’s Attack on Merit

    I regularly speak of the destructive Left. There is no exaggeration in that.  Whether they intend it or not, leftists promote policies that are destructive.  They attack merit, for example, bizarrely considering it to be 'racist.' 

    For example, there is the case of New York Mayor, Bill de Blasio, who has proposed to do away with Stuyvesant High School's entrance exam. Why is it 'racist'?  Well, Asians do better than anyone else, better than whites who do better that Hispanics, who do better than blacks.  Here is the composition of the incoming class:

    Asian — 613
    White — 151
    Hispanic — 27
    Black — 10

    There is no proportional representation! A lack of diversity! And therefore it's 'racist'!

    But seriously now, how can it be racist if it is true? Answer me that one.

    Full Disclosure: I am not now and never have been Asian. (And I am on record as denying the possibility of race change.) If Asians are better at math than whites, that's just the way it is.  We conservatives respect reality, a reality that is no social construction but lies beyond all of our talk with its mewling and pining, wishing and whining.  We conservatives stand our ground, that ground being the terra firma of antecedent reality, to cop a beautiful line from Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963):

    It is my contention that a conservative is a realist, who believes that there is a structure of reality independent of his own will and desire. He believes that there is a creation which was here before him, which exists now not just by his sufferance, and which will be here after he is gone. This structure consists not merely of the great physical world but also of many laws, principles, and regulations which control human behavior. Though this reality is independent of the individual, it is not hostile to him. It is in fact amenable by him in many ways, but it cannot be changed radically and arbitrarily. This is the cardinal point. The conservative holds that man in this world cannot make his will his law without any regard to limits and to the fixed nature of things . . . . The conservative I therefore see as standing on the terra firma of antecedent reality; having accepted some things as given, lasting and good, he is in a position to use his effort where effort will produce solid results. (Quoted from Fred Douglas Young, Richard M. Weaver 1910-1963, University of Missouri Press, 1995, pp. 144-145.)

    It ought to be self-evident that we ought to promote excellence, but it is not self-evident to destructive leftists. I do not say that diversity is no value at all. But in this case it ought to be obvious that merit trumps diversity. 

    I want you people to realize that if you vote for Democrats you are voting for this sort of Bozo de Blasio insanity, and a lot of other insanity to boot.  But is it really insanity? Or is it worse?

    I am toying with what I will call the Leftist Trilemma: leftists are either stupid/insane or ignorant/uneducated or willfully evil.

    But I may be missing a fourth possibility. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: September Songs

    But first the absolute best version of Dylan's From a Buick Six just to get your blood up. But now that Gary U. S. Bond is in the house, here is Twist, Twist, Senora with a trio of 1940s dancing girls. New Orleans, live, with Jeff Beck.

    …………………..

    September ends.  A transitional month leading from hot August to glorious October, Kerouac month in the MavPhil 'liturgy.'

    Dinah Washington, September in the Rain

    Rod Stewart, Maggie May. "Wake up Maggie, I think I got something to say to you/It's late September and I really should be back at school."

    Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September

    Frank Sinatra, September of My Years

    George Shearing, September in the Rain

    Walter Huston, September Song 

    This from a London reader:

    Thanks for linking to the George Shearing ‘September’. I had forgotten he grew up in London (in Battersea, just down the road from me). I love the Bird-like flights on the piano. Indeed I think he wrote ‘Lullaby of Birdland’. Another Londoner is Helen Shapiro who does a great version of ‘It might as well rain until September’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De0_zZ7qQDA. Great alto voice, never made it in the US as far as I know. 

    I was first hipped to Shearing by Kerouac who referred to him in On the Road.  I too love the 'Bird'-like flights on the piano. The allusion is to Charley 'Bird' Parker, also beloved of Kerouac.  (Kerouac month hereabouts starts Monday.) Helen Shapiro is new to me, thanks. She does a great job with the Carole King composition.  Believe it or not, King's version is a demo. That's one hell of a demo. A YouTuber points out that Shapiro was not part of the 1964 'British Invasion.'  I wonder why.

    UPDATE (9/30).

    Jim Soriano recommends Try to Remember — which I had forgotten.

    UPDATE (10/2)

    Mark Anderson introduces me to Big Star, September Gurls. Nice clangy, jangling guitar work reminiscent of the Byrds and some Beatle cuts.  Wikipedia article.  Which Beatle cuts?

    Well, Rain is one, And Your Bird Can Sing is another.  Wow! I forgot how good these songs are.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Dennis Prager: The Charges Against Kavanaugh Should be Ignored

    This piece by Dennis Prager is sure to outrage the Left.  Prager takes a step back and uncovers an assumption that almost everyone else is making. The assumption is that IF the young Kavanaugh had groped Dr. Ford in the manner she describes, THEN that would be good grounds for non-confirmation.

    But is the assumption true?

    Suppose it could be shown that Brett Kavanaugh, 36 years ago, did to Christine Blasey Ford what she claims he did. That cannot be shown, of course, due to a lack of evidence, but just suppose.  (And if there is no evidence, then it is absurd to call for an FBI investigation. What would they investigate?) How does a youthful peccadillo nullify the rest of an impeccable life and distinguished career?  To believe that it does one would have to assume the following:

    a) What a middle-age adult did in high school is all we need to need to know to evaluate an individual’s character — even when his entire adult life has been impeccable.

    b) No matter how good and moral a life one has led for ten, 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years, it is nullified by a sin committed as teenager.

    No decent — or rational — society has ever believed such nihilistic nonsense.

    Now let ME take a further step back. 

    What is this whole controversy really and fundamentally about? Is it about Kavanaugh's moral fitness to serve on the Supreme Court?

    Obviously not. It is not about his moral fitness, but about his failure to meet an ideological litmus test.  The Left cannot abide the thought of an originalist/textualist taking over the Justice Anthony Kennedy SCOTUS swing slot. For with Kavanaugh the conservatives would have the upper hand. This also explains why Gorsuch, the Scalia replacement, was confirmed with relative ease.

    Suppose Kavanaugh were a leftist who believed in an 'open' or 'living' constitution. Would the DEMS be troubled by the baseless allegation, 36 years after the alleged 'fact,' of a youthful bit of bad behavior?  Of course not! They would be protesting with the same sorts of arguments now being used by Republicans.

    So let's all try to be honest for a change. What is really going here is an important  battle in the war for the soul of America. Will we allow her to be "fundamentally transformed" by the Left or will we preserve her as she was founded to be?

    To achieve the latter, the Constitution must be honored and applied in its original meaning.  Kavanaugh's is not the originalism of original intent of the Founders, but the originalism of original public meaning. 

    As for Christine Blasey Ford, she is being used as tool by the Dems for their ideological purpose.  

    Bill Vallicella

  • My Opinion of Lindsey Graham Up a Notch!

    Here is something I wrote about Senator Graham on 31 March 2016:

    To understand liberals you must understand that theirs is a mind-set according to which a  conservative is a bigot, one who reflexively and irrationally hates anyone different than he is.  This is why conservatives who insist on securing the borders are routinely labelled 'xenophobes' by liberals and by some stupid 'conservatives' as well, an example being that  foolish RINO Lindsey Graham who applied the epithet to Donald Trump when the latter quite reasonably proposed a moratorium on Muslim immigration into the U.S. 

    And here is what I wrote on 30 June 2016:

    If you refuse to vote for Donald Trump because he is in several ways a loathsome individual, then I pronounce you a fool in point of the political.  You don't understand that politics is a practical struggle, not a gentlemanly conversation.  It is not about perfection or ideological purity or choosing the Good over the Bad.  It's about better or worse in the ugly concrete circumstances in which we presently find ourselves.

    The argument of George Will and others of the 'bow-tie brigade' is patently lame, as lame as can be.  They will do what they can to stop Trump the vulgarian know-nothing.   In so doing they support Hillary.  When this is pointed out, the response is that  after four years of Hillary, we will elect a 'true' conservative to the White House.

    This ignores the fact that after four years of Hillary it may be too late.  Four more years of illegal immigration from the south; four more years of largely unvetted Muslim immigration, including Syrian refugees; four more years of erosion of First and Second Amendment rights; four years in which Hillary can make 2-5 Supreme Court appointments; four more years of attacks on civil society, the buffer space between the individual and the state apparatus;  four more years of sanctuary cities and the flouting of the rule of law; four more years of assaults on the likes of the Little Sisters of the Poor and others who stand in the way of the pro-abortion agenda; and more.

    Here is another question for George and Bill Kristol and the rest of the bow-tie boys: who will be your candidate? David French? Lindsey Graham?  Jeb!?

    But Senator Graham has found his cojones!  His performance yesterday in defense of Judge Kavanaugh was magnificent. He is coming to learn that politics in the age of post-consensus politics is not a gentlemanly debate conducted under an umbrella of shared principles according to the Marquess of Queensberry rules, but a bare-knuckled slug fest against vicious and destructive swine who are out to subvert the Constitution, upend the rule of law and violate every norm of decency and common sense. 

    No quarter to them!

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Enmity Potential of Thought

    A meditation on Carl Schmitt. 

    Bill Vallicella

  • Carl Schmitt on Compassion

    Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

    Bill Vallicella

  • Democrats as Tribal Termites

    Mendocino Joe writes,

    Wow, I cannot believe what I am seeing in our country these days.
     
    I think your blog post about the Left hating because they need a bogey man after winning the civil rights battle is way too kind. I think we are seeing, in the Left these days, radical Evil from the pit.  We are watching people who are unmoored from any traditional religion or morality, completely unmoored. It is very scary to me. 
     
    A lot will depend on what happens today and the days following. If the Republicans cave, and Kavanaugh is quashed, then all hell might break loose.
     
    The Democrats are now undeniably a hard-Left party. And as my old friend says, they are "unmoored from any traditional religion or morality."  To change the metaphor, they are termites working to undermine the foundations of our magnificent Anglo-American system of law.
     
    A bedrock principle thereof is the presumption of innocence.  One is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The presumption of innocence puts the burden of proof where it belongs, on the accuser, not the accused. Contrary to what some leftist senators are now saying, this is a principle of morality that is antecedent to the positive law. Its application extends therefore beyond the positive law, criminal and civil.
     
    But the Dems are leftists out for power any way they can get it. For them the end justifies the means no matter how shabby or absurd.  They ought to be denounced for the termites they are, or, to change the metaphor once more, the scum that they are. 
     
    They are termites because they undermine the foundations of American greatness. But why tribal?  Because they vote as a bloc, walking the walking and talking the talk that their tribal leaders have drilled into them. Like good successor-commies, they toe the Party line and submit to Party discipline. There is not a maverick among them. They all will vote to oppose Kavanaugh's nomination.
     
    Additional commentary. (HT: Bill Keezer)
     
     
     
     
     
     
    There follows an excerpt from the fourth hyperlinked item supra.  Would it not be great if there were Republicans who had the civil courage to say the following? (Emphases in original)
     

    Let me be clear on this — if you're bitter that there was no President Pantsuit that's fine.  Losses can be bitter, especially when you really think you should have won.  But no matter what you think by the rules of the contest Hillary lost to Trump — period.

    But if you go beyond being bitter, start up hashtags like "#Resist" and then put that into action both inside and outside the government to disregard and disrupt the results of a valid electoral process you are not only violating the law you are inciting a shooting civil war.

    This sort of activity by people inside the government is treading right to if not over the line of insurrection.  The use of government force for unlawful purpose, intentionally, meets the definition; it is an attempt to overthrow the law of the United States by corrupting the monopoly on deadly force that the government has and directing it unlawfully against certain people for political purposes.  This is not a "petty offense"; it is a direct assault on and attempt to overthrow the result of a lawful elective process and according to the above link it's still going on today.

    If you're aggrieved by an election's results you have every right to print up a sign and go picket on a public street or other public place.  You can take out all the political advertisements you wish and make your best effort to get a different result the next time around.  But you do not have the right to enter into a restaurant where someone is eating dinner, which is private property, and assault said person because they happen to be a member of that political party.  That is a violation of the law in that it constitutes assault and is begging for an immediate outbreak of violence in response.

    Read the whole thing. It's very good.

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Ramsey Problem and the Problem of the Intrinsically Unpropertied Particular

    Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

    Bill Vallicella

  • The Parable of the Tree and the House: A Warning Against the Folly of Envy

    Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

    Bill Vallicella

  • More on the Hate-Filled Left

    Jacques comments on yesterday's Shelby Steele entry:

    Shelby Steele is clearly right about the Left's need for hate objects (as a source of power) but I think he is wrong to say this is "a death rattle".  Or at least I'm skeptical.  We've already been through so many phases of this same dynamic, and it hasn't yet killed the Left or even slowed it down.  On the contrary, it seems to me that as their stories of evil Republicans and evil white men (etc) become ever more absurd the fanaticism and power of Leftists grows.  For example, the Tawana Brawley story was utterly absurd even at the time.  Any reasonable person would have regarded the story as highly dubious, even before all the decisive evidence of lies was available.  And yet the absurdity of the story–even its demonstrable falsity–didn't do anything to convince Leftists that their campaign against "white supremacists" was mistaken.  As far as I can tell the absurdity of the story did nothing to harm Al Sharpton's career.  Similarly, it was obviously absurd to believe that Trayvon Martin was a victim of white racism, or a white supremacist, or whatever.  There was, at the very least, enough evidence from the very beginning for any reasonable person to suspend judgment–to doubt that Trayvon was just an innocent little child victim, to doubt that George Zimmerman had any racial motivation, etc.  But that also did nothing to stop the Left, and seems on the contrary to have emboldened them in their endless campaign against "racism" and "racists". 

    I agree. Trayvon Martin was no victim of white racism. He was no Emmett Till. The boy brought about his own death. If Martin had been taught, or rather had learned, to control himself he would most likely be alive today.  But he wasn't or didn't.  He blew his cool when questioned about his trespassing in a gated community on a rainy night.  He was no child on the way to the candy store. By all appearances he was up to no good. He punched a man in the face and broke his nose, then jumped on him, pinned him down, did the 'ground and pound' and told him that he was going to die that night.  So, naturally, the man defended himself against the deadly attack with deadly force.  What Zimmerman did was both morally and legally permissible.  If some strapping youth is pounding your head into the pavement, you are about to suffer "grave bodily harm" if not death.  What we have here is clearly a case of self-defense. The verdict of acquittal for Zimmerman was clearly correct.  Only a blind ideologue could fail to understand this. 

    Does race enter into this?  In one way it does. But not in the way leftists think say. Blacks as a group have a rather more emotional nature than whites as a group.  (If you deny this, you have never lived in a black neighborhood or worked with blacks, as I have.)  Martin's lack of self-control got him killed.  He couldn't keep a lid on his mindless hatred of the "creepy-assed cracker." White-on-black racism did not enter into it at all. So, while self-control is important for all, the early inculcation of self-control is even more important for blacks. I suspect Shelby Steele would agree.

    And I think this is true of almost all their hate objects.  Remember when Ronald Reagan was supposed to be a neo-Nazi, a right-wing dictator, a woman-hater…?  Wasn't it obvious in the '80s that these ideas were false, indeed preposterous?  Or the idea that Richard Nixon was some kind of uniquely vile criminal–as opposed to Ted Kennedy, for example, or JFK or Bill Clinton?  Or the idea that Mitt Romney–Mitt Romney, that pathetic liberal squish–was some kind of hard-right authoritarian bent on destroying women and minorities?  Or what about the utterly absurd idea of "white privilege" or "microaggression" or "transgenderism"?  These things are demonstrably false or simply incoherent, but it only took a few years for all of them to be nailed down as the central principles of a new moral code that no one in human history had ever even imagined.  

    Of course you are right about all of this.

    In all of these cases, and a zillion others, the Left's hatred was totally divorced from any kind of realistic adult assessment of reality.  And yet it has never made any difference.  It's never set them back significantly, and instead what generally happens is that their deranged absurd demonstrably false narrative ends up being entrenched as the only mainstream reasonable opinion within a few years at most. 

     So I'd propose an additional hypothesis to explain this phenomenon:

    The absurdity of the story is part of its appeal.  Leftists derive self-esteem from their (supposed) ability to understand problems that regular people can't understand, and their (supposed) deep concern for victims.  It makes them feel intellectually and morally superior to regular people, and they are addicted to that high.  The more seemingly absurd the theory, the more brilliant and sensitive and complicated you must be in order to really 'get' it–and, of course, the more it will repel the dumb rednecks and normies, who don't get it and can't be in the club.  And this in turn strengthens them as a mass movement.  They control the institutions and media, so they're able to reach an ever-growing audience of new people who also want to feel good about themselves, superior to the hated white male conservative Other.  By contrast, a more rational and realistic assessment of the world offers little to these people–no special social status and opportunities for preening and validation, no sense of being exalted above the dumb masses.

    What needs explaining is the uncontrolled, largely inarticulate, animal rage of the Left. (e.g., Robert de Niro: Fuck Trump!) Steele's hypothesis is that the Left is raging because it is losing its power and moral authority due to  the drying up of sources of legitimate moral indignation. The civil wrongs were righted. And so leftists have traded in righteous anger for mindless hatred. In order to hold on to its power the Left is inventing bogus sources of moral outrage.

    Jacques speak of an "additional hypothesis," but is he trying to explain the same phenomenon, the Left's hyperbolic rage?  Or a different phenomenon, the need leftists have to feel superior to Hillary's "deplorables"?

    It looks like the explananda are different and so are the explanantia.  The rage and the need to feel superior, on the one hand, and the the lust for power and the concoction of pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook, on the other.

    Finally, if this line of thought is reasonable, it makes me wonder whether Steele is perhaps being a bit naive about the Left's track record.  Did the Left really "rescue America" from "the great menace of racism"?  Is the story since the 60s really one of "the greatest moral evolutions ever"?  I suspect that this whole hallowed narrative might be not so different, ultimately, from the Left's current stories about Trayvon and Michael Brown "the gentle giant", or this ridiculous thing about Judge Kavanaugh's high school sins.  Maybe they've been telling absurd lies all along–just as they lied about the USSR, for example.  Maybe "racism" in the past was a far more ambiguous phenomenon–not something that needed to be simply eradicated using essentially totalitarian methods, but something that needed to be moderated, understood in its context and judged more realistically.  Take lynching, for example, one of their favorite mythologies.  Who was being lynched, and why?  Lots of blacks, but lots of whites too.  Maybe the reason was mainly that blacks were committing a disproportionate number of murders and rapes.  Maybe the reality of lynching was about as complex and ambiguous as the reality of so-called "racial profiling".  And the same goes for their other narratives–about women, immigrants, sex and so on.  I would expect that in 50 years people will have been trained to believe in the "great menace" of "heterosexism" or "microaggressions" or "hate speech" on the internet.  Maybe they've always been crazy.

    "Lots of blacks, but lots of whites too."  Here I need some references.  Lot of whites were lynched? By whom?

    It is true that blacks are disproportionately more criminally prone than whites. (And since it is true, this statement cannot be dismissed as racist.  A statement whose subject matter is race is not eo ipso a racist statement.)  I hope Jacques is not suggesting that the extra-judicial lynching of blacks was justified by their disproportionate engaging in rape and murder.

    I differ from Jacques in that I hold that the original Civil Rights movement was basically on the right track, and that Steele, while he exaggerates, is right to point this out. We should not conflate that movement with the insane leftism of the present day.

    Bill Vallicella

    16 responses to “More on the Hate-Filled Left”

  • Why the Left is Consumed with Hate

    Shelby Steele offers a compelling explanation.

    In the '60s, the Left acquired its power and moral authority when it fought the good fight against racism and segregation and for civil rights.  Those battles were fought and they were won. But power is intoxicating and those who came into it in those years of ferment desired to hold on to it and expand it.  The power proved to be not only intoxicating but corrupting.  Nothing new, of course: power tends to corrupt, absolute power . . . . You know the Lord Acton riff.

    To maintain their power, leftists needed to find additional sources of menace to the nation's moral legitimacy.  Steele (emphases added):

    The greater the menace to the nation’s moral legitimacy, the more power redounded to the left. And the ’60s handed the left a laundry list of menaces to be defeated. If racism was necessarily at the top of the list, it was quickly followed by a litany of bigotries ending in “ism” and “phobia.”

    The left had important achievements. It did rescue America from an unsustainable moral illegitimacy. It also established the great menace of racism as America’s most intolerable disgrace. But the left’s success has plunged it into its greatest crisis since the ’60s. The Achilles’ heel of the left has been its dependence on menace for power. Think of all the things it can ask for in the name of fighting menaces like “systemic racism” and “structural inequality.” But what happens when the evils that menace us begin to fade, and then keep fading?

    It is undeniable that America has achieved since the ’60s one of the greatest moral evolutions ever. That is a profound problem for the left, whose existence is threatened by the diminishment of racial oppression. The left’s unspoken terror is that racism is no longer menacing enough to support its own power. The great crisis for the left today—the source of its angst and hatefulness—is its own encroaching obsolescence. Today the left looks to be slowly dying from lack of racial menace. 

    [. . .]

    Today’s left lacks worthy menaces to fight. It is driven to find a replacement for racism, some sweeping historical wrongdoing that morally empowers those who oppose it. (Climate change?) Failing this, only hatred is left.

    Hatred is a transformative power. It can make the innocuous into the menacing. So it has become a weapon of choice. The left has used hate to transform President Trump into a symbol of the new racism, not a flawed president but a systemic evil. And he must be opposed as one opposes racism, with a scorched-earth absolutism.

    [. . .]

    Yet the left is still stalked by obsolescence. There is simply not enough menace to service its demands for power. The voices that speak for the left have never been less convincing. It is hard for people to see the menace that drives millionaire football players to kneel before the flag. And then there is the failure of virtually every program the left has ever espoused—welfare, public housing, school busing, affirmative action, diversity programs, and so on.

    For the American left today, the indulgence in hate is a death rattle.

    Bill Vallicella

  • It’s Rich

    The National Review has an editorial in support of Judge Kavanaugh. What's rich, however, is that the same cruise-ship conservatives refused their support to Donald Trump the conditio sine qua non of both the Gorsuch and the Kavanaugh nominations. Jeb! would not  have beaten Hillary. 

    Bill Vallicella

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  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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