The scrupulous examination and correction of minor faults can subserve the evasion of major ones.
A School Shooting?
Suppose a man commits suicide using a handgun while seated in a car parked on the premises of a former school. Would you call that a school shooting? A 'liberal' would.
Man’s Second Oldest Faith
It [Communism] is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.
It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in his image, but because man's mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals. Copernicus and his successors displaced man as the central fact of the universe by proving that the earth was not the central star of the universe. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God.
Related: Reading about Commies
On Verbal Aggression
Verbal aggression, speaking generally, is a good thing, especially as an alternative to physical aggression. The general rule about verbal aggression – satire, snark, ridicule, obscenity – is: punch up, not down.
A rule is one thing, its application another. How apply the Stoned Philosopher's rule? Suppose I ridicule Nancy Pelosi. Am I punching up or down? Arguably down inasmuch as she is an obviously stupid woman who is also vile. She is my intellectual and moral inferior. So I am punching down.
I will be told that I am punching up inasmuch as she has wealth and power far in excess of mine, and that therefore my verbal aggression is justified.
Whatever you say. The main thing is to keep up the verbal punching against our domestic enemies.
The 2016 Election and the Demise of Journalistic Standards
AR-15 Sales Up
Way to go, liberals! You've done it again. You've driven up gun sales and shot yourself in the foot to boot. You can talk about gun confiscation all you want, but it is not going to happen. There are just too many armed, liberty-loving Americans. You only galvanize the opposition with your emotion-driven tirades. Argumentatively, you don't have a leg to stand on, if I may be permitted to extend my shot-to-the-foot metaphor.
And then there is that pesky Second Amendment concerning which even SCOTUS finally saw the light:
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554U.S.570 (2008), is a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held, in a 5–4 decision, that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, and that Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban and requirement that lawfully-owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee. (Wikipedia)
You will note that the Second Amendment "protects" the individual's right. It does not confer it. That's very important. I invite you to think about it.
Please also note how idiotic, how 'Pelosian' if you will, was the D. C. requirement that firearms be kept disassembled (sic!). I'd better stop. I feel a rant coming on.
Sales are up! Reuters. Gateway Pundit.
Benatar on Suicide: Is Suicide Murder?
This is the eleventh entry in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). I have decided to skip ahead to Chapter 7, "Suicide," and leave Chapter 6, "Immortality," for later. This episode discusses pp. 163-172.
We have seen that for Benatar death, being a part of the human predicament, contra Epicurus, is no solution to it. Suicide is no escape. Mortality is a "brute and ugly feature of the human predicament" (161), but death "does not solve the problem of one's mortality." (163) Nor does death, which includes death by one's own hand, solve the problem of meaninglessness. At most it eliminates the felt meaninglessness of a particular person's life. The only way to avoid the human predicament is by not being born.
Nevertheless, suicide is a reasonable response to one's condition if it has become bad enough. This raises the question whether suicide is ever morally acceptable. Benatar argues that there are cases in which suicide is both reasonable and morally acceptable.
He makes an important linguistic point. To say that one 'commits' suicide "presupposes the wrongfulness of suicide." (168). So he prefers the verb 'carry out' instead.
Is Suicide Murder?
One who understands the concept of murder understands that while killing a human being may or may not be wrong, murdering a human being is always and indeed necessarily wrong inasmuch as murder, by definition, is wrongful killing. But what makes murder wrong? One answer is that it is wrong because it violates the victim's right to life. So one might argue as follows (my formulation, not Benatar's):
If a person has a right to life, then it is morally wrong for anyone to violate it.
The suicide, by killing himself, violates his own right to life.
Ergo
The suicide does something morally wrong.
The argument is not compelling inasmuch as the correlativity of rights and duties can be upheld while denying that one has duties toward oneself:
On this view my having a negative right to life implies that others have correlative duties not to kill me. It does not imply that I have a duty not to kill myself. Thus, when a person rationally kills himself, he has not violated his own rights. (170)
Waiving the Right to Life
But suppose I do bear duties to myself, duties entailed by the rights I possess. Benatar maintains that, even so, "a competent right-bearer has the moral power either to assert or waive a right' (170) For example, I waive my right to bodily integrity when I grant a surgeon permission to operate on me. Why then can't I waive my right to life? If do, then, by the same stroke, I nullify my duty not to kill myself.
Reflexive duties are different from non-reflexive ones. As a rights-bearer with the power to waive my rights, I may release myself from my reflexive duties.
One naturally wonders, however, how a right so fundamental as the right to life itself could be waived. If any right is inalienable, it is the right to life, I should think.
Is the Right to Life Inalienable?
Some will indeed maintain that a basic negative right such as the right to life is inalienable. If my right to life is inalienable, then I cannot waive it. Nevertheless, Benatar maintains that one can hold both that suicide is sometimes morally permissible and that rights are inalienable. How? By distinguishing between "the inalienability of a right and its waivability." (171) Waivability, unlike alienability, is typically limited. If I waive my right to bodily integrity and give a surgeon permission to cut into me, the waiver is for a limited period of time, for a specific purpose, and is granted to a specific person and no one else. So far, so good.
But how does this show that the inalienable right to life can be waived for a time by the person whose life it is is so as to permit the person to kill himself during that time? If my right to life is inalienable, then no one may kill me at any time. From this it follows that I may not kill myself at any time. Either I do not understand what Benatar is saying on p. 172, or he has fallen into confusion.
Contra Benatar
Benatar maintains that suicide is sometimes morally permissible. The follow argument, however, sees to show that it is never morally permissible:
1) The right to life is inalienable.
2) An inalienable right is one that it is morally impermissible for anyone at any time to violate.
Therefore
3) It is morally impermissible for any one at any time to violate his own right to life.
Therefore
4) Suicide is always morally impermissible.
We shall have to return to the aporetics of the situation. For the argument just given either proves too much in that it could be modified to show that killing in just war, self-defense, and in capital punishment are morally impermissible, or else shows in effect that there are no inalienable rights.
Beauty Unblotted
As dark as the world has become, there is yet beauty in nature, in music, in the souls of a few mortals, and in the depths of a quiet mind embraced by solitude.
Should Gun Manufacturers be Sued for Gun Crimes?
Suppose I sell you my car, transferring title to you in a manner that accords with all the relevant statutes. It is a good-faith transaction and I have no reason to suspect you of harboring any criminal intent. But later you use the car I sold you to mow down children on a school yard, or to violate the Mann Act, or to commit some other crime. Would it be right to hold me morally responsible for your wrongdoing? Of course not. No doubt, had I not sold you that particular car, that particular criminal event would not have occurred: as a philosopher might put it, the event is individuated by its constituents, one of them being the car I sold you. That very event could not have occurred without that very car. But that does not show that I am responsible for your crime. I am no more responsible than the owner of the gas station who sold you the fuel that you used for your spree.
Suppose I open a cheesecake emporium, and you decide to make cheesecake your main dietary item. Am I responsible for your ensuing health difficulties? Of course not. Being a nice guy, I will most likely warn you that a diet consisting chiefly of cheesecake is contraindicated. But in the end, the responsibility for your ill health lies with you.
The same goes for tobacco products, cheeseburgers, and so on down the line. The responsibility for your drunk driving resides with you, not with auto manufacturers or distilleries. Is this hard to understand? Not unless you are morally obtuse or a liberal, terms that in the end may be coextensive.
The principle extends to gun manufacturers and retailers. They have their legal responsibilities, of course. They are sometimes the legitimate targets of product liability suits. But once a weapon has been legally purchased or otherwise acquired, the owner alone is responsible for any crimes he commits using it.
But many liberals don't see it this way. What they cannot achieve through gun control legislation, they hope to achieve through frivolous lawsuits. The haven't had much success recently. Good. But the fact that they try shows how bereft of common sense and basic decency they are.
Don't expect them to give up. Hillary was in full-fury mode on this one. According to the BBC, "She proposes abolishing legislation that protects gun makers and dealers from being sued by shooting victims."
Aren't you glad that Hillary was sent packing? You should be.
There is no wisdom on the Left. The very fact that there is any discussion at all of what ought to be a non-issue shows how far we've sunk in this country.
When Physicists Get Physical: A Tale of Sex and Scientism
Allegedly, Lawrence Krauss is a sexual predator. I'll leave it to you to decide which is worse, his philosophical incompetence or his sexual predation. Both are forms of seduction, one cerebral, the other carnal.
Virtue and Opportunity
A man ought not plume himself on his virtues if his opportunities to go astray have been few or nonexistent. Virtue untested is virtue in doubt.
Better Latte . . .
. . . than nero.
(Is this racist code? A 'dog whistle'? Or is it just a bad pun consequent upon a deployment in an e-mail of the phrase, 'better late than never'?)
Voting and the Stupidity of Liberals
Michelle Malkin:
Two adult men, occupying lofty perches as law professors, argued this week that the voting age in the U.S. should be lowered to 16 because some high school survivors of the Parkland, Florida, shooting who want gun control "are proving how important it is to include young people's voices in political debate."
There is really nothing so idiotic that it won't be embraced by some destructive leftist. And you are still a member of the Democrat Party?
If breathing is a sufficient condition for voting, then cats and dogs should have the vote. So I should have three votes, my own and two cat proxies. The cat lady down the street, who is reputed to have nine cats, should be allowed ten votes. After all, cats and dogs and children and illegal aliens and felons have an interest in clean air and clean water and other things affected by political arrangements. So why shouldn't they have a vote?
If I have to explain to you why, then you are too obtuse, morally or intellectually or both, to profit from any explanation. Do you remember that race-hustler Jesse Jackson? He wanted felons to have the vote. He wanted people who lack the sense to order their own lives to have a say in how a society, or rather our lives, should be ordered. But of course the destructive leftist is not interested in right ordering, but in any ordering that grants him and his ilk maximum power. So it is no surprise that leftists never miss an opportunity to assault our Constitutional rights.
Vile, mendacious, and stupid. In that order.
The House Mate from Hell
The moral of the story: never let anyone into your life whom you haven't vetted. It seems that all the people Jamison Bachmann tormented were liberal do-gooders. So a little blaming of the victim is in order here.
I can't expect a liberal to understand it, but one has a moral obligation, to oneself and to others, to do one's level best to not allow oneself to be anyone's victim.
More on this topic to tee off liberal knuckleheads in On Blaming the Victim.
Once More on Whether Consciousness Could be an Illusion
The following just in from a Scandinavian reader:
Thank you for your great blog, I’ve been a regular reader for some time!
You have often made the point, that it is incoherent to say that consciousness in an illusion, because it is a presupposition to the distinction between appearance and reality. In an interesting article defending the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion, Keith Frankish has a response to this. (“Illusionism as a Theory of Consciousness”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 23, 11-12, 2016, pp. 11-39.) I’m not convinced, but I have the feeling that I don’t even understand what Frankish is saying here. (Well, if Frankish is right, this feeling is an illusion, so I should be alright.)
Here is a recent version of my argument in which I have that brilliant sophist, Daniel Dennett, in my sights:
Consciousness cannot be an illusion for the simple reason that we presuppose it when we distinguish between reality and illusion. An illusion is an illusion to consciousness, so that if there were no consciousness there would be no illusions either.
This is because illusions have a sort of parasitic status. They are ontological parasites, if you will, whose being is fed by a host organism. But let's not push the parasitological comparison too far. The point is that, while there are illusions, they do not exist on their own. The coyote I wrongly take to be a domestic dog exists in reality, but the domestic dog does not. But while the latter does not exist in reality, it is not nothing either. The dog is not something in reality, but it is something for consciousness. If in the twilight I jump back from a twisted root on the trail, mis-taking it for a rattlesnake, the visual datum cannot possibly be regarded as nothing since it is involved in the explanation of why I jumped. I jumped because I saw (in the phenomenological sense of 'see') a rattlesnake. Outright hallucinations such as the proverbial pink rat of the drunkard are even clearer examples. In dreams I see and touch beautiful women. Do old men have nocturnal emissions over nothing?
Not existing in reality, illusions of all sorts, not just perceptual illusions, exist for consciousness. But then consciousness cannot be an illusion. Consciousness is a presupposition of the distinction between reality and illusion. As such, it cannot be an illusion. It must be real.
Back to my reader:
Frankish says that this ”no appearance-reality gap” objection to illusionism is ”far from compelling”. His reason seems to be something like this: According to illusionism, when we are having, say, a greenish experience, we introspectively represent ourselves as having a greenish experience, and this can be done without having a greenish experience. This is because “the content of introspective representations is determined by non-phenomenal, causal or functional factors”. So when one sees green, and there something it is like to see green for that person, he is in fact mistaken; there is nothing it is like to see green. The mistake is generated by a non-veridical introspective representation. The “feelyness” of this is an illusion. But the illusion itself is not a case of phenomenal consciousness, because it is possible to represent oneself as having a state of phenomenal consciousness, without actually having such a state. And thus the “no appearance-reality gap” objection to illusionism fails.
Is must confess that I don’t understand this point. Even if phenomenal consciousness is an illusion generated by non-veridical representations, there is still this illusion of seeming left, and thus the “no appearance-reality gap” objection is not refuted. Am I missing something?
I haven't read the article in question so I will have to go by the reader's report. From what he says, the account sounds like question-begging gibberish: "when we are having, say, a greenish experience, we introspectively represent ourselves as having a greenish experience, and this can be done without having a greenish experience." Unsinn!
Here is a Killer Quote from Thomas Nagel directed against Dennett that sums things up nicely:
I am reminded of the Marx Brothers line: “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” Dennett asks us to turn our backs on what is glaringly obvious—that in consciousness we are immediately aware of real subjective experiences of color, flavor, sound, touch, etc. that cannot be fully described in neural terms even though they have a neural cause (or perhaps have neural as well as experiential aspects). And he asks us to do this because the reality of such phenomena is incompatible with the scientific materialism that in his view sets the outer bounds of reality. He is, in Aristotle’s words, “maintaining a thesis at all costs.”
That's right. When a line of reasoning issues in an absurdity such as the absurdity that consciousness and its deliverances are illusions, then what you have is a reductio ad absurdum of one or more of the premises with which the reasoning began. Dennett assumes physicalism and that everything can be explained in physical terms. This leads to absurdity. But Dennett, blinded by his own brilliance — don't forget, he counts himself one of the 'brights' – bites the bullet. He'd rather break his teeth than examine his assumptions.
Another thing strikes me. Dennett makes much of Wilfrid Sellars' distinction between the manifest and scientific images. 'Image' is not quite the right word. An image is someone's image. But whose image is the scientific image? Who is its subject? It is arguably our image no less than the manifest image. Nagel quotes Dennett as saying of the manifest image: "It’s the world according to us." But the same, or something very similar, is true of the scientific image: it's the world in itself according to us. Talk of molecules, atoms, electrons, quarks, and strings is our talk just as much as talk of colors and plants and animals and haircuts and home runs.
The world of physics is the world as it is in itself according to us. Arguably, the 'according to us' gets the upper hand over the 'in itself,' relativizing what comes within the former's scope much like Kant's transcendental prefix, Ich denke relativizes what comes within its scope. Das 'ich denke' muss alle meine Vorstellungen begleiten koennen . . . . "The ''I think' must be able to accompany all my representations." (KdrV, B 131-2)
Arguably, the world of physics is a mind-involving construct arrived at by excluding the mental and abstracting away from the first-person point of view and the life world it reveals. I am alluding to an phenomenological-idealist approach to the problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view. It has its own problems. But why is it inferior to a view like Dennett's which eliminates as illusory obvious data that are plainly not illusory?
No philosophy is worth anything that gets the phenomenology wrong, or simply ignores the phenomenology. For that is where we must start if we are responsible philosophers, as opposed to apologist for theories we accept without critical examination.
Time was when absolute idealism was the default position in philosophy. Think back to the days of Bradley and Bosanquet. But reaction set in, times have changed, and the Zeitgeist is now against the privileging of Mind and for the apotheosis of Matter. (But again, matter as construed by us. Arguably, the scientific realist reifies theoretical constructs that we create and employ to make sense of experience.) Because idealism is out of vogue, the best and brightest are not drawn to its defense, and the brilliant few it attracts are too few to make much headway against the prevailing winds.
Now I'll tell you what I really think. The problem of integrating the first- and third-person points of view is genuine and perhaps the deepest of all philosophical problems. But it is insoluble by us. If it does have a solution, however, it certainly won't be anything like Dennett's.
Although Dennett's positive theory is worthless, his excesses are extremely useful in helping us see just how deep and many-sided and intractable the problem is.