If you fancy yourself clear-thinking, then you ought to be very careful with the word 'over-represent' and its opposite. These words are ambiguous as between normative and non-normative readings. It is just a fact that there are proportionately more Asians than blacks in the elite high schools of New York City. But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not be, or that it would be better if there were proportional representation. So don't say that the Asians are 'over-represented.' For then you are trading in confusion. You are blurring the distinction between the statement of a fact and the expression of a value judgment.
Consider the sports analogy. Asians are 'under-represented' on basketball teams. That is a fact. But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not be, or that it would be better if there were proportional representation. Enforced proportional representation would adversely affect the quality of basketball games.
Women are 'over-represented' among massage therapists and realtors in that there are more of them than men in those professions. Is that bad? Of course not. It is just a fact. And one easily explained. Women are better than men at the sorts of negotiations that real estate transactions involve. For an excellent discussion of such generic statements see my cleverly named Generic Statements. It has been my experience that liberals have a heard time wrapping their heads around generic statements. They also have a hard time grasping the logic of stereotypes.
As for the massage therapists, it is easy to understand why most of them are women. Men love to have their naked bodies rubbed in dark rooms by women. Women do not love to have their naked bodies rubbed in dark rooms by men. Capisce? By the way, both of the preceding statements are themselves generic.
If you say that women are 'under-represented' in philosophy, are you reporting a fact or reporting a fact plus bemoaning said fact? It is true that there are fewer women than men in philosophy. But it doesn't follow that this is a state of affairs that needs correction. There are perfectly non-nefarious explanations of the fact.
'Over-represent' and 'under-represent' are words best avoided because they paper over illicit inferential slides from the factual to the normative/evaluative. Is that why liberals like them?
He is doing pretty well, according to Hugh Hewitt. Surprisingly well, I would add, if you consider the formidable factions arrayed against him: the Democrat Party; the liberal media; knuckleheaded Never-Trumpers; Deep State operatives; Ryan, McConnell, McCain and the rest of the milque-toast, go-along-to-get-along, appease-the-Left careerists among the Republicans.
This is the second in a series of entries on Benatar's new book. The entries are collected here. Herewith, some notes on pp. 13-34. Summary does not constitute endorsement. Note also that my summary involves interpretation and extension and embellishments: I take the ball and run with it on occasion.
The sense that one's life is insignificant or pointless has several sources. There is the brevity of life, its insecurity and contingency, and its apparent absurdity.
Our lives are short and they transpire on a tiny planet in a huge universe that doesn't care about us. Add to this the extreme unlikelihood of any particular biological individual's coming into existence in the first place. Had my father been killed in the War, I wouldn't exist. Had my parents never met, I wouldn't exist. Had my parents not had sex in the month in which I was conceived, I wouldn't exist. (Benatar endorses as I do Kripke's Essentiality of Origin thesis.) I could not have sprung from any pair of gametes other than the exact pair from which I did spring. Iterate these considerations back though my lineage. Had my paternal grandfather died while playing with dynamite as a boy, then my father wouldn't have existed. And so on.
But while my coming to be was exceedingly unlikely, my ceasing to exist is dead certain. "We are doomed from the start." (14) The probability that I should have come to be at all was vanishingly small; I am (metaphysically) contingent at every moment of my existence; my death is (nomologically) necessary.
And then there is the sense of absurdity that can arise when we step back and observe our doings and those of others from outside. We take ourselves with great seriousness. Injustices, slights, accomplishments, projects seem so real to us if they involve us. But how real can they be when we will all soon be dead?
Suppose I recall some bitter conflict between long dead relatives. Who cares about that any more? It was intensely real to the parties involved, it consumed them at the time, but now I alone remember it, without affect, and when I am gone no one will remember it. How significant was it if it will soon be encairned in oblivion? The rich personal pasts of trillions who have gone before are as nothing now. They are now nothing to anybody. All those complicated inner tapestries of longing and fear and memory — all now nothing to anybody.
You say the past WAS and always will have been? I'm enough of a realist to grant that. But a past beyond all memory is next to nothing.
An old tombstone depicts dates of birth and death with a dash separating them. That bare dash represents the details of a life that is now nothing to anybody. (15, n.3) I would add that the 'proper' name on the tombstone, 'Patrick J. McNally,' say, is as common as can be. Every tombstone soon comes to memorialize no one in his ownmost particular particularity.
Understanding the Question
What exactly are we asking about when we ask about the meaning of human life? For some the question is the same as the question whether life is absurd. But what is it for life to be absurd? On Thomas Nagel's famous account, absurdity arises from "the collision between the seriousness with which we take our lives and the perpetual possibility of regarding everything about which we are serious as arbitrary, or open to doubt." (Nagel as quoted by Benatar, p. 20)
Nagel's account of absurdity implies that the life of a mouse cannot be absurd because mice are incapable of adopting an external perspective on their lives. But it also implies that the life of a human who contingently fails ever to take up the external perspective cannot be absurd either. Benatar, however, maintains that a man's life can be absurd even if he does not recognize it as such. He has us imagine a mindless bureaucratic paper shuffler whose life is arguably absurd even though he never adopts Nagel's external perspective in a way to induce a collision between the seriousness with which he takes his job and its arbitrarity and dubiousness.
Benatar's point is in part terminological. He proposes to use 'absurd' and 'meaningless' interchangeably. On such a use of terms, a man's life can be Benatar-absurd without being Nagel-absurd. Your life can be absurd or meaningless whether you know it or not. There is a fact of the matter; it does not depend on what view you take. You cannot avoid meaninglessness by sticking to (what I call) short views and avoiding (what I call) long ones. (See Long Views and Short Views: Is Shorter Better?) Many people are better off not taking long views and thinking heavy thoughts. It would be too depressing for them. But philosophers want to know. For them, sticking to short views is a miserable evasion.
But what is a meaningful life? It is a life that has "impact." (23) Benatar seems to use this terms as synonymous with "purpose" and "significance." (23) "A meaningful life is one that transcends one's own limits and significantly impacts others or serves purposes beyond oneself." (18) Question for Benatar: must the impact on others be of positive value? Caligula's impact on others was considerable but of overall negative value. Can a theory of existential meaning be axiologically neutral? Or must we say that an objectively meaningful life must be one whose influence on others is positive?
Impact is a matter of degree and so meaning is a matter of degree (23). But there are also levels to consider. We need to distinguish cosmic meaning from terrestrial meaning. Your life may have no cosmic meaning but possess some terrestrial meaning. Benatar is not a total meaning nihilist. Cosmic meaning is meaning from the point of view of the whole universe. Terrestrial meaning is either meaning from the point of view of humanity, or meaning from the point of view of some human grouping such as nation, tribe, community or family, or meaning from the point of view of the individual.
Subjective and Objective Meaning
This is an important distinction. If your life feels meaningful to you, i. e., if it is subjectively meaningful, it may or may not be objectively meaningful. One could of course refuse to make this distinction. One could hold that the only (existential as opposed to linguistic) meaning there is is subjective meaning. If your life seems meaningful, then it is, and there is no sense in asking about some supposed objective meaning. Benatar, however, thinks that subjective and objective meaning can come apart.
He invokes Richard Taylor's example of a Sisyphus-like character, call him Sisyphus II, in whom the gods have mercifully implanted an irrational impulse to roll stones. (25) Sisphyus II finds it immensely meaningful to roll a heavy rock to the top of a hill, let it roll down again, and then repeat the performance ad infinitum. Benatar's intution, and mine as well, is that such a life, while subjectively satisfying, is objectively meaningless. And the same goes for the beer can collectors and all who devote their lives to trivial pursuits. A subjectively meaningful life can be objectively meaningless.
On a hybrid theory of existential meaning, a life is meaningful only if it is both subjectively and objectively meaningful. Benatar denies, however, that subjective meaningfulness is a necessary condition of a meaningful life. Franz Kafka's life was objectively meaningful, due to his literary and cultural influence or "impact," but apparently not subjectively meaningful to Kafka who had ordered that his writings be burned at his death, an order that was fortunately not carried out. Benatar holds that Kafka's life was, on balance meaningful, contra the hybrid theory.
Benatar's primary interest is in objective meaning (27). Given the cosmological and the three terrestrial perspectives, in which of these is human life objectively meaningful?
In the following chapter, Benatar develops his thesis that cosmically our lives are objectively meaningless. But he generously allows us some terrestrial objective meaning.
For an individual x to have objective meaning is suffices for this individual to have a "positive impact" (27) on some other individual y. From the individual perspective of y, x's life has individual meaning. Except for a few radically isolated individuals, the lives of all have an "impact" on others. What is troubling here is the slide from "positive impact" to "impact." Presumably a positive impact is a good impact or influence. Do only good impacts confer meaning, or will any old impact do? I am not clear as to what Benatar's view is here.
Moving up a level to that of the group or community, Benatar has no trouble showing that many individuals' lives are meaningful from from the perspective of a group such as the family. The highest terrestrial level is that of humanity in general. Here too the lives of a number of individuals enjoy objective meaning. Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, William Shakespeare, Florence Nightingale, Jonas Salk and many others are individuals whose lives enjoy objective meaning from the perspective of humanity at large.
The good news, then, is that at the three terrestrial levels, many human lives possess objective meaning. The bad news is that no one's life has cosmic meaning.
The Left's destructiveness extends even unto language. Shoot back against the linguistic hijackers. Here's some ammo from Peter Kreeft's Socratic Logic, 3rd ed., p. 36, n. 1:
The use of the traditional inclusive generic pronoun "he" is a decision of language, not of gender justice. There are only six alternatives. (1) We could use the grammatically misleading and numerically incorrect "they." But when we say "one baby was healthier than the others because they didn't drink that milk," we do not know whether the antecedent of "they" is "one" or "others," so we don't know whether to give or take away the milk. Such language codes could be dangerous to baby's health. (2) Another alternative is the politically intrusive "in-your-face" generic "she," which I would probably use if I were an angry, politically intrusive, in-your-face woman, but I am not any of those things. (3) Changing "he" to "he or she" refutes itself in such comically clumsy and ugly revisions as the following: "What does it profit a man or woman if he or she gains the whole world but loses his or her own soul? Or what shall a man or woman give in exchange for his or her soul?" The answer is: he or she will give up his or her linguistic sanity. (4) We could also be both intrusive and clumsy by saying "she or he." (5) Or we could use the neuter "it," which is both dehumanizing and inaccurate. (6) Or we could combine all the linguistic garbage together and use "she or he or it," which, abbreviated, would sound like "sh . . . it." I believe in the equal intelligence and value of women, but not in the intelligence or value of "political correctness," linguistic ugliness, grammatical inaccuracy, conceptual confusion, or dehumanizing pronouns.
What a sexist Neanderthal this Kreeft fellow is! Send him to a re-education camp!
Apparently, such norms are white-supremacist, misogynistic, and homophobic. And what norms might these be? Why, "hard work, self-discipline, marriage and respect for authority."
Apparently you are a 'racist' if you advise blacks to "Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. . . . Eschew substance abuse and crime."
As stupid as this is, it perhaps gives us a clue as to the 'liberal' criterion of racism: Something is racist if it is something blacks can't do. So deferring gratification, working hard, saving and investing, refraining from looting, showing respect for legitimate authority are all racist because blacks as a group have a hard time doing these things.
To promote and recommend these life-enhancing values and norms is to 'dis' their 'culture.' After all, all cultures are equally good, equally conducive to human flourishing, right?
Are these the implications here? I'm just asking. I am trying to understand. I am trying to get into the liberal head. So far it seems like diving into a bucket of shit. Or am I being unfair? Am I missing something?
Was the British Empire a good or bad thing for the world? To put it another way, is freedom a good or bad thing for the world? Historian and author H.W. Crocker III explains why we may want to rethink the British Empire's bad rap.
Just over the transom by someone in the trenches of academe:
I wonder if it's true as you say that "the authorities abdicate." When I read things like this — they seem to come up about once a week now, or once a day — I don't think there are authorities just abdicating. No, it looks much more like the authorities are fully on board with whatever new moronic and evil thing the leftists want to do. They seem to be using their authority to legitimate and promote everything sick and evil, from transgenderist ideology to open violent hatred of white people. They stop just short of explicitly saying that these things are true and mandatory, because (I assume) they want some veil of plausible deniability. But I don't think they're abdicating anything. I think the situation is even worse than you think it is. If only they were just lazy or incompetent or weak.
It may well be worse than I think it is. You are closer to the action than I am.
First the word. Apart from monarchical applications, to abdicate is to fail to fulfill a responsibility or duty.
My line has been the following. The university administrators and faculty who tolerate the shouting down of conservative speakers, the rescinding of invitations to speak, attacks on people and property, and the rest of Antifa-type barbarism, are essentially cowards who love their high salaries, perquisites, and privileges. They are mostly unprincipled careerists who bend whichever way the wind blows. They are not, in the main, out to destroy the universities; they simply lack the courage to take a stand in defense of the traditional values of the university and accept the consequences of so doing. They fear being called 'racists' and the rest of the names. They are squishy liberals who hope the storm passes leaving them well-ensconced in their capacious and well-appointed offices. They understand that the Left eats its own and that if they make common cause with the destructive elements, they too may be destroyed in good old commie fashion.
To sum up your view: What is going on is not abdication of authority, but misuse of authority. I am willing to change my view, but I will need some solid evidence. You need to name names.
The authorities abdicate and the collapse of the universities continues apace. Another example:
At Boise State University, in deep-red Idaho, a group of students is demanding that the university fire political scientist Scott Yenor for his scholarship on the intellectual history of feminism and the transgender movement. Even worse, some administrators are piling on.
Judy Collins, Cravings: How I Conquered Food, Doubleday 2017, pp. 112-113:
. . . and writing Albert Grossmann that no, I did not want to join a trio of women he was bent on calling the Brown-Eyed Girls. He had put Peter, Paul and Mary together, telling me that I was the fallback choice if Mary hadn't worked out. Albert saw how I was struggling and didn't think I could make it on my own, hence the trio idea. It was to be me, Judy Henske and Jo Mapes. He told me he would get me brown contacts, his idea of a joke — Henske had brown eyes and Mapes and I would have to get brown contacts. I had agreed hastily — after all, he had made Peter, Paul and Mary into an international franchise. Now I changed my yes to a no. I would go it on my own, no matter what. I was going to do it my way or die trying.
Way to go, Judy. You pulled it off and beat your addictions as well.
Judy Collins, Both Sides Now. Wonderful. My favorite version, however, is that of Dave van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters.
Beverly Maher and Gordon Jenkins, Crescent City Blues. Does this 1953 tune remind you of something? How about Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues? 1955 version. Live San Quentin 1969 version.
The secular nail their colors to the mast of scientism. Or most of them do. Their attitude is an amalgam of underbelief and overbelief. Their underbelief is their belief that science alone is genuine knowledge. Their overbelief is that this is so – – when it is plain that it is not something known scientifically.
There is so much that we know that we do not know by means of the natural sciences. Some examples for you to think about.
There is logical knowledge. How do you know that the A and O forms of the traditional square of opposition are convertible while the E and O forms are not? By empirical observation and experiment?
