Maverick Philosopher – Page 325 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Were Trump Voters Irrational? Instrumental and Epistemic Rationality; Truth and Accuracy

A very good article. I agree that the answer to the title question is in the negative. But I have a couple of questions about the following:

Cognitive scientists recognize two types of rationality: instrumental and epistemic. Instrumental rationality is achieved when we act with optimal efficiency to achieve our goals. Epistemic rationality concerns how well beliefs map onto the actual structure of the world—that is, whether our beliefs are accurate, or true. A quick and memorable way to differentiate the two is to say that they concern what to do (instrumental rationality) and what is true (epistemic rationality). Of course, the two are related. In order to take actions that fulfill our goals, we need to base those actions on beliefs that are properly calibrated to the world. In order to understand the rationality (or irrationality) of the Trump voters, I will focus first on instrumental rationality and then turn to epistemic rationality.

The definition of instrumental rationality is perfect.

The definition of epistemic rationality, however, leaves something to be desired. And I should think truth and accuracy ought not be conflated.

Epistemic Rationality

It seems we we are being told that a belief is epistemically rational if and only if it is true. But that cannot be right. Epistemic, or better, doxastic, rationality is a relative property while truth is absolute. What it is rational to believe at one time might not be rational to believe at another time. But if a proposition is true it is true independently of time, place, and the vagaries of belief and desire. For example, it was doxastically rational for the ancient Greeks to think of water as an element even though we now know that to be false. The history of science is littered with beliefs that were at one time rationally accepted but are now rightly rejected as false.

So what it is rational to believe needn't be true. On the other hand, a proposition can be true but not rational to believe. It is easy to imagine situations in which a person speaks the truth but it would not be rational for his audience to believe him because of circumstances or his low credibility or the high antecedent improbability of the proposition asserted.

Truth and Accuracy

The author conflates these two; this strikes me as a mistake.

What is the difference between truth and accuracy as properties of statements and such cognate items as declarative sentences, propositions, beliefs, judgments, etc.?

It seems obvious that 'false' and 'inaccurate' do not have the same meaning as is indicated by their differential usage by competent speakers of English. To say that John F. Kennedy finished his first term in office in good health is to say something false, not inaccurate, while to say that he was assassinated on 23 November 1963 is to say something inaccurate (and also false). He was assassinated on 22 November 1963.

Suppose someone says that there are people now living on the Moon. No one competent in English would say, 'That's inaccurate!'

Intuitively, an inaccurate statement is near the truth. Kennedy was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald on the 22nd of November, 1963. If I state that, then I make a statement that is both true and accurate. If I say he was shot on the 23rd, then I say something very near the truth but inaccurate. Similarly if I said that he was shot on the 22nd in Fort Worth rather than in Dallas. Inaccurate but near the truth.

If I simply say that Kennedy was assassinated, then I say something true. But is it also accurate? If every inaccurate statement is false, then, by contraposition, every true statement is accurate.

If I say that Kennedy was not assassinated, then I say something false. But is it also inaccurate?

Perhaps we should say the following. While every statement is either true or false, only some statements are either accurate or inaccurate. Which statements? Those that feature terms that admit of degrees or somehow imply numerical values. 'Tom is a smoker' would then be either true or false but not either accurate or inaccurate. But 'Tom is a pack-a-day smoker' would be either true or false and either accurate or inaccurate. Of course, if it is accurate, then it is true, and if it is inaccurate, then it is false.

It is plausible to maintain, though not self-evident, that while accuracy admits of degrees, truth does not. A statement is either true or not true. If bivalence holds and there are only two truth values, then, if a statement is not true, it is false. It does not seem to make sense to say that one statement is truer than another. But it does make sense to say that one statement is more accurate than another. 'The value of $π$ is 3.14159' is more accurate than 'the value of $π$ is 3.1415.' Neither statement is entirely accurate, and indeed no such statement is entirely accurate given the irrationality of $π$ . But I suggest that the following is both entirely true and entirely accurate: ' $π$ is the mathematical constant whose value is equal to the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter.'

Here is something bordering on a paradox. Given its irrationality, $π$ is such that every statement that can be made in a finite time about its value is inaccurate. But if every inaccurate statement is false, then every statement that can be made in a finite time about the value of pi is false.

The blood libel is an outright lie perpetrated by many Muslims. It would be absurd to speak of it as 'inaccurate.'

How Can a Simple God Know Contingent Truths?

Chris M writes,

If God simply is his act of existence, and if his existence is necessary, how can God have knowledge of contingent truths? What I mean is that it is possible for God to do other than he does (say not create, or create different things.) If he did differently – say, if the world didn't exist – his knowledge would be different in content. Yet God is supposed to be a single act of being, purely simple and identical across all possible worlds. God's essence just is his act of necessary existence, knowing and willing. It seems God's knowledge of contingents thus is an accident in him. But God can have no accidents. How then can he, as actus purus and necessary existence, have properties (such as knowing x or willing x) which he may not have had ?

That is a clear statement of the difficulty. As I see it, the problem is essentially one of solving the following aporetic tetrad:

1) God is simple: there is nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God.

2) God knows some contingent truths.

3) Necessarily, if God knows some truth t, then (i) there an item intrinsic to God such as a mental act or a belief state (ii) whereby God knows t.

4) God exists necessarily.

The classical theist, Aquinas for example, is surely committed to (1), (2), and (4). The third limb of the tetrad, however, is extremely plausible. And yet the four propositions are collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true.

For example, it is contingently true that Socrates published nothing and contingently true that God knows this truth. He presumably knows it in virtue of being in some internal mental state such as a belief state or some state analogous to it. But this state, while contingent, is intrinsic to God. The divine simplicity, however, requires that there be nothing intrinsic to God that is distinct from God. Since God exists necessarily, as per (4), the belief state exists necessarily, which contradicts the fact that it must exist contingently.

I discuss this problem here, and in nearby posts in the Divine Simplicity category.

Is It ‘Racist’ to Hose Dog Droppings off Sidewalk?

Thanks to 'liberals,' we live in an age of race obsession. Almost everyone and everything is 'racist' these days.

Story here (and it is no joke):

According to the [Seattle] Times, Councilmember Larry Gossett “said he didn’t like the idea of power-washing the sidewalks because it brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists.”

The article did not reveal Gossett's race. It turns out he's black.

Isn't it profoundly racist for the the author not to mention Gossett's race so that blacks can get the credit they deserve for having among them a man of his great sensitivity and compassion?

Come and Take Them, Bret Stephens

David Harsanyi's refutation of Bret Stephens' call to repeal the Second Amendment begins like this:

The idea that gun-control advocates don’t want to confiscate your weapons is, of course, laughable. They can’t confiscate your weapons, so they support whatever feasible incremental steps inch further towards that goal. Some folks are more considerate and get right to the point.

Exactly right. Never underestimate the mendacity of a leftist.

You will have noticed that the Left is now opposing free speech. Time then to repeat: It is the Second Amendment that provides the concrete back-up to the First.

A few days before the Las Vegas massacre I penned an entry that refutes Stephens' optimism about disagreement. He naively thinks that mutually respectful conversations on hot-button issues will converge on agreement. Well, events have borne me out.

Can anyone in his right mind think that 'conversations' about the Second Amendment will converge on agreement?

You see, when a leftist speaks of 'conversations,' what he means is that the right-minded need to shut up and acquiesce in what the loons say.

To which the only rational and appropriate response is of the middle-fingered sort.

Bourgeois Norms and Race

This from an alt-right correspondent. My responses in blue. For the record, I am not alt-right, neo-reactionary, or dissident right (except for my contempt for the yap-and-scribble, do-nothing, anti-Trump, elitist, bow-tie brigade).

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As part of my ongoing attempt to nudge you further to the right . . . consider these "life-enhancing bourgeois values preached by Amy Wax". In your earlier entry on this topic you say:

Now let me see if I understand this. The bourgeois values and norms are 'racist' because blacks are incapable of studying, working hard, deferring gratification, controlling their exuberance, respecting legitimate authority and the like? But surely blacks are capable of these things. So who are the 'racists' here? The conservatives who want to help blacks by teaching them values that are not specifically white, but universal in their usefulness, or the leftists who think blacks incapable of assimilating such values?

I'm sure that almost all blacks are capable of deferred gratification and hard work (etc.) to some degree. And I'm sure that many are capable of being 'bourgeois' to pretty much the same degree as typical white people. But is it sure that blacks as a group, on the whole, are capable of exhibiting these virtues and being inspired by these bourgeois values to the same degree as whites, on the whole?

BV: But I didn't say that blacks as a group are equally as capable as whites as a group at deferring gratification, saving and investing, avoiding drugs and crime, etc. I don't believe that this is the case as a matter of empirical fact at the present time. I merely said that they are capable of these things, and in fairly large numbers. So I'd say you are attacking a straw man here. My present view is that blacks as a group are capable of deferring gratification, etc. but not to the same degree as whites, and that for this very reason it is important to preach the values that Amy Wax and her colleague preach.

I assume that people of good will want every group to do as well as it can.

My question is why leftists object so ferociously to Wax and Co. What explains this? My reader has an explanation. He begins with the fact that blacks are not as good as whites at implementing the bourgeois values that make for success. Given this fact,

. . . it might also be 'racist' in a sense to demand that all groups embrace these bourgeois values. Maybe it just doesn't come naturally, or as naturally, to all of these groups. It's not 'racist' in the idiotic SJW sense, of course. But maybe a proper respect for distinct varieties of human nature does require us to let different groups live in the ways that they find natural and comfortable and reasonable. An analogy with sex differences might help. It's not 'sexist' to have different expectations for men and women in many areas of life. Just because we expect men to support themselves and protect their families, and we tend to look down on men who won't or can't do these things, it doesn't follow that we should have the same expectations of women–or that we should never tell men to 'be a man about it' or 'man up' (or whatever) just because we don't talk that way to women. Just because we expect women to be nurturing and empathetic, and we frown on women who don't want to spend lots of time with their young children, it doesn't follow that we should have exactly the same expectations of men. Since they tend to have different abilities and interests, a reasonable society allows for some differences in expectations and norms appropriate to their different strengths and weaknesses.

BV: The idea that my correspondent is floating seems to be that it is 'racist' to demand or even suggest to a racial group that it behave in ways that don't come all that naturally to it even if those ways of behaving would benefit them enormously. My suggestion, above, was the opposite, namely, that it is 'racist' not to suggest that they behave in these 'bourgeois' ways. For then you are falsely denying, on racial grounds, that they can improve their lot by implementing life-enhancing values.

This brings me back to one of my standard complaints: people sling the world 'racism' around with no preliminary clarification as to what it is supposed to mean.

Still it's true that if people are going to live in a bourgeois society where these particular virtues and values are pretty important, and often necessary for having a decent life, then everyone will have to act like a typical bourgeois white European. And yet, if my hypothesis about group differences is true, this would be especially hard for some groups–a problem or obstacle that only some groups have to deal with. Maybe a more humane and sustainable policy would be to let these groups live differently, let them have their own societies, where different norms are accepted. These societies wouldn't have to be purely race- or ethnic-based. You could have an explicitly bourgeois society, where it's understood that people who just won't or can't live by these particular values are not wanted; you could have some other, non-bourgeois society with a different understanding. But inevitably the first one would be predominantly white (with some north Asians). Is this a rejection of 'universal values' in your view? I'm not sure. In a sense, yes it is–but then rejection of 'universal values' in that sense seems reasonable, or just as reasonable as rejection of 'universal values' with respect to the sexes. What do you think?

BV: I stick to my assertion that bourgeois virtues and values are universal in the sense that all people of whatever race can profit by their acquisition and implementation. But it doesn't follow that all groups are equally good at their acquisition and implementation. What I oppose is the notion that these virtues and values are inherently white, whatever that might mean. Do whites own them? Does 'whitey' own them such that if a black studies, improves himself, works hard, saves, invests, buys a house, etc. then he is guilty of 'cultural appropriation' in some pejorative sense?

I say the virtues and values in question are no more white than the theorem of Pythagoras of Samos is 'Samosian.'

The True and the Good are universal.

The Unserious ‘Serious’ Discussion About Guns

George Neumayr is one of the few who is talking sense on the issue. What follows is a fine complement to what I say in The Problem: Gun Culture or Liberal Culture?

I have bolded some passages.

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The philosophy underlying liberalism is at once totalitarian and relativistic. It proposes more government and less morality. It laughs at the mustiness of the Ten Commandments, then demands respect for a flurry of new laws. It scoffs at old codes of self-control, then presses for “gun control” and greater state controls on this or that freedom.

From this ethos, regnant for decades in elite circles, has come an out-of-control society in which pols reflexively respond to unspeakable tragedy by advocating more and more laws for a people whose gradual loss of virtue guarantees that they will violate them. The terminus of this toxic admixture of totalitarianism and relativism is the transformation of society into a kind of prison: an endless number of laws and deprivation of freedoms imposed on an increasingly soulless citizenry. Of course, the people running such a system, the totalitarian elite, make sure to exempt themselves from the confines of the prison even as they boast of its glorious benefits. Recall the Soviet thugs who would impress Western visitors with stats proving the Soviet Union’s “low crime rate,” or Fidel Castro showing visiting dignitaries “how safe Havana is.”

That is the utopia to which gun-control liberals hope to lead America. They clamor for a tragedy-proof America in which “nothing bad ever happens to anyone,” except the massive loss of their freedom. The gun control lobby’s “solution” to crime isn’t the recovery of a civil society that teaches virtue but the granting of more and more power to a state that treats everyone like a criminal.

Conspicuously absent from all the sanctimonious lectures on gun control this week was any grappling with America’s cultural meltdown, which is the most comprehensible explanation for a spike in mass shootings even as laws and restrictions multiply. Indeed, the loudest voices for gun control come from the degenerate cultural forces most responsible for that meltdown. They demand that America “get serious about gun control,” even as they get less and less serious about the values and institutions most essential to the preservation of civilization. Educrats who have decimated America’s public schools profess shock at an increase in “school shootings”; late-night hosts who roll out the red carpet for blood-and-gore stars wonder at the “glamour of violence”; an elite that prides itself on destroying the traditional family is aghast at the rise of so many mass-shooting misfits who come from broken families.”

All of the hasty calls for more gun control from these preening frauds conveniently ignored that the Las Vegas shooter used illegal guns. If anything, the tragedy is an indictment of their exclusive focus upon legislation as a solution to criminal pathology. That they would politicize it so quickly, without bothering to engage any of the facts of the tragedy, underscores the opportunistic totalitarianism always lurking beneath their demagoguery. They never let a crisis or a mass shooting go to waste.

According to the media, late-night comedy talk show hosts now serve as the “conscience of the nation” at these fraught moments, which sounds about right for a democracy as fatuous as ours. In between showing clips from the latest demented, violence-drenched Hollywood movie, they are going to lead the nation towards “sensible gun control,” apparently. “Sensible gun control” is the elite’s euphemism for making sure that everyone except their bodyguards is deprived of guns.

Beware of the word “sensible” in the mouth of statists. It is what they say right before they violate a right. Obama’s call for “sensible conscience protections” foreshadowed his fiat violating the consciences of all employers by forcing them to cover the abortifacients and contraceptives of their employees. “Sensible gun control” foreshadows the destruction of the Second Amendment.

The left is neither sensible nor serious about controlling wicked behavior. If it were, it would seek to shore up the foundations of civilization, without which the multiplication of laws is useless, to which the tragedy in Las Vegas attests. It is insensible to think that good laws can protect the innocent without a functioning civil society that reinforces them. It is precisely the fruit of that civil society, a culture of self-control, that the liberal elite has done the most to poison. Liberals favor “gun control” without self-control. In the end, this just means more and more government control — an endless cycle of relativism leading to totalitarianism.

Camille Paglia on Hugh Hefner

Here:

Hugh Hefner absolutely revolutionized the persona of the American male. In the post-World War II era, men's magazines were about hunting and fishing or the military, or they were like Esquire, erotic magazines with a kind of European flair.

Hefner reimagined the American male as a connoisseur in the continental manner, a man who enjoyed all the fine pleasures of life, including sex. Hefner brilliantly put sex into a continuum of appreciative response to jazz, to art, to ideas, to fine food. This was something brand new. Enjoying fine cuisine had always been considered unmanly in America. Hefner updated and revitalized the image of the British gentleman, a man of leisure who is deft at conversation — in which American men have never distinguished themselves — and the art of seduction, which was a sport refined by the French.

Camille Paglia does not merit the plenary MavPhil endorsement, but C. P. is a good partial antidote to P. C. , and she never fails to entertain.

You may enjoy this critical piece: Camille Paglia on Philosophy and Women in Philosophy.

You Shouldn’t Trust Liberal Journalists

Here.

A Cold One

Larry Correia on Suppressors

On guns, Correia knows whereof he speaks.

First read this 'viral' post written in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. He lists his credentials.

Then this on suppressors.

If there is any need for suppressors, they need to take the form of muzzles for Hillary, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of that pack of know-nothings who ought to be made to keep their traps shut about matters about which they know nothing.

Alberto Brandolini’s Bullshit Asymmetry Principle and Vallicella’s First and Second Corollaries

Here:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

The pseudo-precision of 'energy' and 'order of magnitude' aside — in what units is this 'energy' measured ? — the idea is a good one.

Vallicella's First Corollary:

The amount of effort needed to grade and correct and annotate a lousy term paper is much greater than the effort needed to produce it.

Vallicella's Second Corollary:

The amount of effort needed to referee a journal submission and justify one's evaluation is inversely related to the quality of the submission.

Las Vegas Rampage: The Existential Lesson

"Impermanence is swift." (Dogen) Alive in the morning, dead at night. Heute rot, morgen tot.

The Problem: Gun Culture or Liberal Culture?

This is a repost, slightly redacted, from 2012 to help stem the tsunami of folderol washing over us from the orifices of the mindless gun-grabbing Left in the wake of the Las Vegas rampage. 'Liberal' is elliptical for 'contemporary liberal.' I am not speaking of classical, 19th century liberals or JFK-liberals. It is not 1960 anymore.

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Without wanting to deny that there is a 'gun culture' in the USA, especially in the so-called red states, I would insist that the real problem is our liberal culture. Here are four characteristics of liberal culture that contribute to violence of all kinds, including gun violence. So if you want to do something, work against each of the following. But first look in the mirror to see if you are part of the problem.

1. Liberals tend to have a casual attitude toward crime.

This is well-documented by Theodore Dalrymple. No Contrition, No Penalty is a short piece by him. See also my Crime and Punishment category.

It is interesting to note that Connecticut, the state in which the Newtown massacre occurred, has recently repealed the death penalty, and this after the unspeakably brutal Hayes-Komisarjevsky home invasion in the same state.

One of the strongest voices against repealing the death penalty has been Dr. William Petit Jr., the lone survivor of a 2007 Cheshire home invasion that resulted in the murders of his wife and two daughters.

The wife was raped and strangled, one of the daughters was molested and both girls were left tied to their beds as the house was set on fire.

The two men convicted of the crime, Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, are currently on death row.

Anyone who cannot appreciate that a crime like this deserves the death penalty is morally obtuse. But not only are liberals morally obtuse, they are intellectually obtuse in failing to understand that one of the main reasons people buy guns is to protect themselves from the criminal element, the criminal element that liberals coddle. If liberals were serious about wanting to reduce the numbers of guns in civilian hands, they would insist on swift and sure punishment in accordance with the self-evident moral principle, "The punishment must fit the crime," which is of course not to be confused with lex talionis, "an eye for an eye." Many guns are purchased not for hunting or sport shooting but for protection against criminals. Keeping and bearing arms carries with it a grave responsibility and many if not most gun owners would rather not be so burdened. Gun ownership among women is on the upswing, and it is a safe bet that they don't want guns to shoot Bambi.

2. Liberals tend to undermine morality with their opposition to religion.

Many of us internalized the ethical norms that guide our lives via our childhood religious training. We were taught the Ten Commandments, for example. We were not just taught about them, we were taught them. We learned them by heart, and we took them to heart. This early training, far from being the child abuse that A. C. Grayling and other militant atheists think it is, had a very positive effect on us in forming our consciences and making us the basically decent human beings we are. I am not saying that moral formation is possible only within a religion; I am saying that some religions do an excellent job of transmitting and inculcating life-guiding and life-enhancing ethical standards, that moral formation outside of a religion is unlikely for the average person, and that it is nearly impossible if children are simply handed over to the pernicious influences of secular society as these influences are transmitted through television, Internet, video games, and other media. Anyone with moral sense can see that the mass media have become an open sewer in which every manner of cultural polluter is not only tolerated but promoted. Those of use who were properly educated way back when can dip into this cesspool without too much moral damage. But to deliver our children over to it is the real child abuse, pace the benighted Professor Grayling.

The shysters of the American Civil Liberties Union, to take one particularly egregious bunch of destructive leftists, seek to remove every vestige of our Judeo-Christian ethical tradition from the public square. I can't begin to catalog all of their antics. But recently there was the Mojave Memorial Cross incident. It is absurd that there has been any fight at all over it. The ACLU, whose radical lawyers brought the original law suit, deserve contempt and resolute opposition. Of course, I wholeheartedly endorse the initial clause of the First Amendment, to wit, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ." But it is hate-America leftist extremism on stilts to think that the presence of that very old memorial cross on a hill in the middle of nowhere does anything to establish Christianity as the state religion. I consider anyone who believes that to be intellectually obtuse and morally repellent. One has to be highly unbalanced in his thinking to torture such extremist nonsense out of the First Amendment, while missing the plain sense of the Second Amendment, one that even SCOTUS eventually got right, namely, the the right to keep and bear arms is an individual, not a collective, right.

And then there was the business of the tiny cross on the city seal of Los Angeles, a symbol that the ACLU agitated to have removed. I could continue with the examples, and you hope I won't.

3. Liberals tend to have low standards, glorify the worthless, and fail to present exemplary human types.

Our contemporary media dreckmeisters apparently think that the purpose of art is to degrade sensibility, impede critical thinking, glorify scumbags, and rub our noses ever deeper into sex and violence. It seems obvious that the liberal fetishization of freedom of expression without constraint or sense of responsibility is part of the problem. But I can't let a certain sort of libertarian or economic conservative off the hook. Their lust for profit is also involved.

What is is that characterizes contemporary media dreck? Among other things, the incessant presentation of defective human beings as if there are more of them than there are, and as if there is nothing at all wrong with their way of life. Deviant behavior is presented as if it is mainstream and acceptable, if not desirable. And then lame justifications are provided for the presentation: 'this is what life is like now; we are simply telling it like it is.' It doesn't occur to the dreckmeisters that art might have an ennobling function.

The tendency of liberals and leftists is to think that any presentation of choice-worthy goals or admirable styles of life could only be hypocritical preaching. And to libs and lefties, nothing is worse than hypocrisy. Indeed, a good indicator of whether someone belongs to this class of the terminally benighted is whether the person obsesses over hypocrisy and thinks it the very worst thing in the world. See my category Hypocrisy for elaboration of this theme.

4. Liberals tend to deny or downplay free will, individual responsibility, and the reality of evil.

This is connected with point (2) above, leftist hostility to religion. Key to our Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Central to this image is that mysterious power in us called free will. The secular extremist assault on religion is at the same time an assault on this mysterious power, through which evil comes into the world.

This is a large topic. Suffice it to say for now that one clear indication of this denial is the bizarre liberal displacement of responsibility for crime onto inanimate objects, guns, as if the weapon, not the wielder, is the source of the evil for which the weapon can be only the instrument.

Hillary’s Gun Tweets in the Aftermath of the Las Vegas Shooting

1) "Our grief isn't enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again."

Note first Hillary's hypocrisy. She preaches that we must put politics aside, and then goes on to politicize the shooting. Or perhaps she has a curious notion of politics as that which 'deplorables' engage in while she is above that sort of thing. Besides, to stand up to the NRA is a political act inasmuch as the NRA is in part a political outfit that lobbies Congress in support of Second Amendment rights.

One understands Hillary's animus against the NRA since this organization played an important role in getting Trump elected.

Note second Hillary's thoughtless repetition of the vacuous boilerplate of career politicians: "to stop this from ever happening again." This is the emptiest of empty rhetoric. Everyone knows that these sorts of awful events will continue to occur and that they cannot be stopped. The most that can be done is to take certain steps to reduce their likelihood. For example, baggage checks at the Mandalay would probably have prevented this particular event. It took numerous trips for the shooter to stock his hotel room with guns and ammo.

2) "Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get."

Another reason why Hillary, Dianne Feinstein, and the rest of the liberal gun-grabbers enjoy no credibility with the sane is that they are know-nothings. A so-called 'silencer' does not make gun shots inaudible. It merely suppresses the report somewhat. This is why the correct term is 'suppressor.' But Hillary and her ilk cannot be bothered to learn basic gun terminology such as the distinction between semi-auto and full-auto long guns. On top of that, they always reach for emotive terminology. They don't use descriptive terms like 'semi-automatic long gun' but emotive terms like 'assault weapon.'

There is a technical, non-emotive use for 'assault rifle.' See here. Selective fire is part of the definition. "Selective fire means the capability of a weapon to be adjusted to fire in semi-automatic, multi-shot burst, and/or fully automatic firing mode.^[1]" By this technical definition, however, semi-automatic long guns available for civilian purchase without special permits such as as the AR-15, which Hillary and Feinstein would count as 'assault rifles,' are not, technically, assault rifles.

So we have to distinguish between the emotive and the technical use of 'assault rifle.' It is plain that leftists such as Hillary and her ilk use the term emotively.

You would think that philosophers would avoid emotive language. You would be wrong. A reader sends me to Brian Leiter's academic gossip site where he opines that ". . . adult, civilized societies do not allow private citizens to own assault rifles." Leiter is clearly using the term in the emotive sense.

Question for 'liberals': If an AR-15 is used by a citizen to defend his home, his family, and/or his livelihood, is he assaulting or defending?

Are semi-automatic long guns intrinsically assaultive? Is any gun intrinsically assaultive? Or does it depend on how the weapon is used? Obviously, the latter. Are the police armed so that they can assault the citizenry? Think about it, 'liberals.'

Hillary's tweets here.

Camille Paglia in Conversation with Jordan Peterson

Long but good. HT: Paul Craddick.