I was a little unfair to Elizabeth Harman the day before yesterday. I said she has "presented perhaps the most lame abortion argument ever made public." As knuckleheaded as her argument is, there is one that is worse.
Frequently Misused Expressions
This is an updated version of a language rant first published in October 2013.
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You've heard of the Soup Nazi. I'm the Language Nazi. And that's my cat, Heinrich.
1. Toe the line, not: tow the line.
2. Tough row to hoe, not: tough road to hoe.
3. Rack one's brains, not: wrack one's brains.
4. Wrack and ruin, not: rack and ruin.
5. Flout the law, not: flaunt the law.
6. Give advice, not: give advise. "He advised her to take his advice cum grano salis."
7. Cum grano salis, not: cum grano Sallust. (This one's a joke; I just made it up.)
8. One and the same; not: one in the same.
9. Same thing, not: same difference. One of those moronic expressions that is so bad it's good. Tom: "That's a firefly!" Dick: "Its a glowbug!" Jethro: "Same difference!" This is not to suggest that there aren't correct uses of 'same difference.'
10. Regardless, not: irregardless. Say 'irregardless' and you probably chew tobacco.
11. I couldn't care less, not: I could care less. Almost as moronic as (9).
Yahoos seem naturally to gravitate toward double negative constructions which they use as intensifiers. For example, 'I can't get no satisfaction' to mean can't get any. 'No' here is an intensifier not a negator. "Nothing ain't worth nothing, but it's free." (Kris Kristofferson) This double negation as intensification is probably what is going on in (9) and (10) as well.
In each case, though, the speaker conveys his meaning. So does it matter whether one speaks and writes correctly? Does it matter whether one walks down the street with one's pants half-way down one's butt?
In the Italian language, the double negative construction is not only not incorrect, but mandatory. That ain't no shit. Italians are famously good at doing nothing. La dolce vita and all that. Dolce far niente (sweet to do nothing) is a favorite Italian saying. My paternal grandfather Alfonso had it emblazoned on his pergola; me, I've been meaning to do the same for my stoa. I just haven't gotten around to it.
'We do nothing' in grammatically correct Italian is: Noi non facciamo niente. Literally: we don't do nothing.
Related: Quantificational Uses of 'Crap'
Theme music: Too Much of Nothing
Addenda
12. Tenter hooks, not: tender hooks. (Via Monterey Tom)
13. Old fashioned, not: old fashion.
14. Ceteris paribus, not: ceterus paribus, which confuses the ‘-ibus’ ending with nominative. It is an ablative absolute construction ‘with all else equal’. (Via London Ed. Latin: Don't throw it if you don't know it.)
Saturday Night at the Oldies: So Long, Glen Campbell
Glen Campbell dead at 81.
Gentle on My Mind. Impressive guitar solo. I didn't realize what a good guitar player he was.
Wichita Lineman. A great song penned by Jimmy Webb. Country music meets existentialism.
Galveston. Another great Jimmy Webb composition.
Arguments Don’t Have Testicles!
Prepared lines come in handy in many of life's situations. They are useful for getting points across in a memorable way and they make for effective on-the-spot rebuttals.
A mind well-stocked with prepared lines is a mind less likely to suffer l'esprit d'escalier.
Suppose a feminist argues that men have no right to an opinion about the morality of abortion. Without a moment's hesitation, retort: Arguments don't have testicles!
In Case You Missed It
Can One Change One's Race? A critique of Rebecca Tuvel's notorious article. Written sine ira et studio. Just a calm refutation.
Elizabeth Harman’s Abortion Argument
A curious new abortion argument by Princeton's Elizabeth Harman is making the rounds. (A tip of the hat to Malcolm Pollack for bringing it to my attention.) It is not clear just what Harman's argument is, but it looks to be something along the following lines:
1) "Among early fetuses there are two very different kinds of beings . . . ."
2) One kind of early fetus has "moral status."
3) The other kind of early fetus does not have "moral status."
4) The fetuses possessing moral status have it in virtue of their futures, in virtue of the fact that they are the beginning stages of future persons.
5) The fetuses lacking moral status lack it in virtue of their not having futures, in virtue of their not being the beginning stages of future persons.
Therefore
6) If a fetus is prevented from having a future, either by miscarriage or abortion, then the fetus does not have moral status at the time of its miscarriage or abortion. "That's something that doesn't have a future as a person and it doesn't have moral status." (From 5)
7) If a fetus lacks moral status, then aborting it is not morally impermissible.
Therefore
8) " . . . there is nothing morally bad about early abortion."
Some will say that this argument is so bad that it is 'beneath refutation.' When a philosopher uses this phrase what he means is that an argument so tagged is so obviously defective as not to be worth refuting. There is also the concomitant suggestion that one who refutes that which is 'beneath refutation' is a foolish fellow, and perhaps even a (slightly) morally dubious character when the subject matter is moral inasmuch as he undermines the healthy conviction that certain ideas are so morally abhorrent that they shouldn't be discussed publicly at all lest the naive and uncritical be led astray.
But to quote my sparring partner London Ed, in a moment when the muse had him in her grip: "In philosophy there is a ‘quodlibet’ principle that you are absolutely free to discuss anything you like." That's right. The Quodlibet Principle is one of the defining rules of the philosophical 'game.' There is nothing, nothing at all, that may not be hauled before the bench of reason, there to be rudely interrogated. (And that, paradoxically, includes the Quodlibet Principle!)
I hereby invoke that noble and indeed Socratic principle in justification of my attention to Harman's argument.
What's wrong with it? She is maintaining in effect that the moral status of a biological individual depends on how long it lasts. Accordingly, moral status is not intrinsic to the early fetus but depends on some contingent future development that may or may not occur. So the early fetus that developed into Elizabeth Harman has moral status at every time in its development, because it developed into what we all recognize as a person and rights-possessor, while an aborted early fetus has moral status at no time in its development because it will not develop into a person and rights-possessor.
This issues in the absurd consequence that one can morally justify an abortion just by having one. For if you kill your fetus (or have your fetus killed), then you guarantee that it has no future. If it has no future, then it has no moral status. And if it has no moral status, then killing it is not morally impermissible, and is therefore morally justified.
Is it ever morally right and reasonable to question or impugn motives or character in a debate?
I have just demolished Harman's argument. She has given no good reasons for her thesis. Quite the contrary. She has presented perhaps the most lame abortion argument ever made public. But what really interests me is the bolded question. And I mean it in general. It is not about Harman except per accidens.
Is it ever morally right and reasonable in a debate to question motives and character? I didn't get a straight answer from London Ed in an earlier discussion. So I press him again.
We agree, of course, that arguments stand and fall on their own merits in sublime independence of their producers and consumers. I have hammered on this theme dozens of times in these pages. One may not substitute motive imputation and character analysis for argument evaluation.
But once I have refuted an argument or series of arguments, am I not perfectly morally justified in calling into the question the motives and character of the producers of those arguments? I say yes.
I have a theory about what really drives the innumerable bad pro-abortion/pro-choice arguments abroad in this decadent culture, but I leave that theory for later. Here I pose the bolded question quite generally and apart from the abortion question.
Do you now see my point, Ed? And what do you say?
Harmon's argument is here.
Why is Friendship So Fragile Among Intellectuals?
A certain commie and I were were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas. They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter. He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas. So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.
Why? Because ideas matter to the intellectual. They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists. If one's eternal happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church. It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'
The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates. It is called political correctness.
And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P.
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The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.
I’m not Totally Opposed to Open Borders
I'm for half-open borders, borders open in the outbound direction. Anyone who wants to emigrate should be allowed to do so.
Communists need walls to keep people in, we need walls to keep them out. Hence the rank absurdity of the comparison of a wall on our southern border to the Berlin Wall. Now the mendacious leftists who make this comparison cannot be so historically uninformed as not to see its rank absurdity. But they make it anyway because they will say or do anything to win. They are out for power any way they can get it.
It is interesting that even hate-America leftists do not want to leave the United States. They talk about it, but few do it. And where do they say they will go? Canada is high on the list. Why not Mexico? Are they perhaps racists?
Is It Epistemically Certain that Whatever Begins to Exist is Caused?
I wrote that
1) Whatever begins to exist is caused
is not epistemically certain. I don't deny that (1) is true; I deny that it can be known with certainty. (As I explained earlier, truth and certainty are different properties.) And then I wrote that
If an argument is presented for (1), then I will show that the premises of that argument are not, all of them, certain.
That is to say: if you try to show that (1) is certain by producing a valid deductive argument all of the premises of which are certain, an argument that transmits the certainty of its premises to its conclusion, then I will show that the premises of that argument are not, all of them, certain. I am using 'certain' as short for 'epistemically certain.'
Lukas Novak responded:
Let us play that game. I believe I have an argument to prove (1) that can be reduced exclusively to obvious conceptual truths. Let's go step by step; you say which premise you doubt and I will produce an argument for it.
My kick-off:
(1.1) Whatever does not have a cause and yet exists, exists necessarily.
(1.2) Whatever begins to exist never exists necessarily.
Ergo etc.Which one do you doubt?
I have no problem with (1.2). I would say, however, that (1.1) is not certain. The negation of (1.1) is: Something exists contingently without cause. This is not a formally self-contradictory proposition. So we cannot rule it out on formal-logical grounds alone the way we can rule out Something exists that does not exist. It is therefore logically possible (narrowly logically possible) that (1.1) be false.
Is (1.1) a conceptual truth as Lukas appears to be maintaining? Well, can we know it to be true by sheer analysis of the concept uncaused existent? Not as far as I can see. Analyzing that concept, all I get is: existent that is not the effect of any cause or causes. That every EFFECT has a cause is a conceptual truth, but not that every EVENT has a cause, or that every EXISTENT has a cause.
If Lukas is right, then it is epistemically certain that the physical universe, which is modally contingent (i.e., not necessary and not impossible) cannot be a brute fact. So if Lukas is right, then it is epistemically certain that the physical universe cannot exist both contingently and without a cause.
Here is where I disagree. I believe that the physical universe (together with finite minds) exists, exists contingently, and is caused. But I don't believe that we can know this to be the case with certainty.
It may be that Lukas is thinking along the lines of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange.
Garrigou-Lagrange thinks that one violates the Law of Non-Contradiction if one says of a contingent thing that it is both contingent and uncaused. He thinks this is equivalent to saying:
A thing may exist of itself and simultaneously not exist of itself. Existence of itself would belong to it, both necessarily and impossibly. Existence would be an inseparable predicate of a being which can be separated from existence. All this is absurd, unintelligible. (Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, tr. Patrick Cummins, O. S. B., Ex Fontibus 2012, p. 65)
Suppose that a contingent existent is one that is caused to exist by a self-existent existent. If one then went on to say that such an existent is both contingent and uncaused, then one would embrace a logical contradiction. But this presupposes that contingency implies causal dependency.
And therein lies the rub. That the universe is contingent I grant. But how does one get from modal contingency to the universe's causal dependence on a causa prima? If one simply packs dependency into contingency then one begs the question. What is contingent needn't be contingent upon anything.
A Real Red Scare This Time
The so-called Red Scare of the '50s and '60s was not a scare but a genuine threat. For a real red scare see my man Hanson, Why Does the Left Suddenly Hate Russia?
The piece concludes:
So what drives this about-face?
Not the fact that Russia tried to cause chaos in 2016, as it has for many years with all Western democracies. Perhaps it is only because a supposedly unbeatable Hillary inexplicably lost to the unlikely Donald Trump — thanks to her own campaign’s incompetence rather than Russian collusion.
Had Hillary Clinton just campaigned in Wisconsin once, and more in Pennsylvania and Michigan (and less in Georgia and Arizona), President Hillary Clinton might now be lecturing us about her reset 2.0 outreach to Vladimir Putin.
Instead, a moment after her electoral demise, “the Russians did it” trope bloomed, the disseminated Steele–Fusion GPS file resurfaced to become the buzz of the properly toadyish media, and “collusion” was born — a charge that so far has not proven true, even though it has consumed thousands of hours of investigations, and millions of hours of media hysteria.
As a result of a McCarthy-like Russian-under-every-American-bed hysteria, we now have all became far less safe in an already very, very dangerous world.
Is the Death Penalty Ever Moral?
A Prager U video by the man himself. About five minutes in length. Please take a few minutes to improve your thinking on this topic.
See the Crime and Punishment category for my thoughts on the topic.
Not Plausibly Deniable
This ephemeral world is not plausibly deniable like God and the soul. Paradoxical! The more real appears less real and the less real more real.
Here is a good animated introduction to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. About eight minutes in length.
Higher Remediation
My friends in the teaching trenches tell stories that lead me to believe that so-called 'higher education' is now little more than 'higher remediation.'
Faith, Reason, and Edith Stein
Today, August 9th, is the feast day of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross in the Catholic liturgy. She is better known to philosophers as the Edith Stein (1891-1942), brilliant Jewish student of and assistant to Edmund Husserl, philosopher, Roman Catholic convert, Carmelite nun, victim of the Holocaust at Auschwitz, and saint of the Roman Catholic church. One best honors a philosopher by re-enacting his thoughts, sympathetically but critically. Herewith, a bit of critical re-enactment.
In the 1920s Stein composed an imaginary dialogue between her two philosophical masters, Husserl and Aquinas. Part of what she has them discussing is the nature of faith.
One issue is whether faith gives us access to truth. Stein has Thomas say:
. . . faith is a way to truth. Indeed, in the first place it is a way to truths — plural — which would otherwise be closed to us, and in the second place it is the surest way to truth. For there is no greater certainty than that of faith . . . . (Edith Stein, Knowledge and Faith, tr. Redmond, ICS Publications 2000, pp. 16-17)
Now comes an important question. What is it that we as philosophers want? We want the ultimate truths about the ultimate matters. If so, it is arguable that we should take these truths from whatever source offers them to us even if the source is not narrowly philosophical. We should not say: I will accept only those truths that can be certified by (natural) reason, but rather all truths whether certified by reason or 'certified' by faith. Thus Stein has Aquinas say:
If faith makes accessible truths unattainable by any other means, philosophy, for one thing, cannot forego them without renouncing its universal claim to truth. [. . .] One consequence, then, is a material dependence of philosophy on faith.
Then too, if faith affords the highest certainty attainable by the human mind, and if philosophy claims to bestow the highest certainty, then philosophy must make the certainty of faith its own. It does so first by absorbing the truths of faith, and further by using them as the final criterion by which to gauge all other truths. Hence, a second consequence is a formal dependence of philosophy on faith. (17-18)
But of course this cannot go unchallenged by Husserl. So Stein has him say:
. . . if faith is the final criterion of all other truth, what is the criterion of faith itself? What guarantees that the certainty of my faith is genuine? (20)
Or in terms of of the distinction between subjective (psychological) and objective (epistemic) certainty: what guarantees that the certainty of faith is objective and not merely subjective? The faiths of Jew, Christian, and Muslim are all different. How can the Christian be sure that the revelation he takes on faith has not been superseded by the revelation the Muslim takes on faith? And what about contradictory faith-contents? God cannot be both triune (as the normative Christian believes) and not triune (as the normative Muslim believes). So Christian and Muslim cannot both be objectively certain about their characteristic beliefs; at most they can be subjectively certain. Subjective certainty, however, has no epistemic value.
Stein's Thomas replies to Husserl as follows:
Probably my best answer is that faith is its own guarantee. I could also say that God, who has given us the revelation, vouches for its truth. But this would only be the other side of the same coin. For if we took the two as separate facts, we would fall into a circulus vitiosus [vicious circle], since God is after all what we become certain about in faith.
[. . .]
All we can do is point out that for the believer such is the certainty of faith that it relativizes all other certainty, and that he can but give up any supposed knowledge which contradicts his faith. The unique certitude of faith is a gift of grace. It is up to the understanding and will to draw the practical consequences therefrom. Constructing a philosophy on faith belongs to the theoretical consequences. (20-22)
For Thomas and Stein, the certainty of faith is a gift of God. As such, it cannot be merely subjective. It is at once both subjective and objective, subjective as an inner certitude, objective as an effect of divine grace. Husserl, however, will ask how the claim that the certainty of faith is a divine gift can be validated. It is after all, a contestable and contested claim. How does one know that it is true? For Husserl, the claims that God exists and that the Christian revelation is his revelation are but dogmatic presuppositions. They need validation because of the existence of competing claims such as those made by Jews and Muslims and atheists.
If, as Stein says, "faith is its own guarantee," then, since the faith of the Christian and the faith of the Muslim are contradictory with respect to certain key propositions, it follows that one of these faiths offers a false guarantee. You can see from this that the Thomas-Stein stance leaves something to be desired. But Husserl's approach has problems of its own. Closed up within the sphere of his subjectivity, man cannot reach the truly Transcendent, which must irrupt into this sphere and cannot be constituted (Husserl's term) within it. The truly Transcendent is not a transcendence-in-immanence. It cannot be a constituted transcendence.
If man is indeed a creature, there is something absurd about measly man hauling the Creator before the bench of finite reason there to be rudely interrogated about his credentials. On the other hand, the claim that man is a creature is a claim like any other, and man must satisfy his intellectual conscience with respect to this claim. It is precisely his freedom, responsibility and love of truth that drive him to ask: But is it true? And how do we know? And isn't it morally shabby to fool oneself and seek consolation in a fairy tale?
Paradoxically, God creates man in his image and likeness, and thus as free, responsible, and truth-loving; characteristics that then motivate man to put God in the dock.
So there you have it. There are two opposing conceptions of philosophy, one based on the autonomy of reason, the other willing to sacrifice the autonomy of reason for the sake of truths which cannot be certified by reason but which are provided by faith in revelation, a revelation that must simply be accepted in humility and obedience. It looks as if one must simply decide which of these two conceptions to adopt, and that the decision cannot be justified by (natural) reason.
My task, in this and in related posts, is first and foremost to set forth the problems as clearly as I can. Anyone who thinks this problem has an easy solution does not understand it. It is part of the tension between Athens and Jerusalem.
Even Misfits Find Their ‘Fit’
I have a longstanding interest in 'marginal types': the characters, oddballs, misfits, Thoreauvian different-drummers, wildmen, mavericks, weirdos, those who find an adjustment to life, if they find it at all, at the margins, on the fringes of respectability, near the edge of things. Those who were not stamped out as by a cookie cutter, but put their own inimitable stamp on themselves. The creatively maladjusted and marginal who do duty as warnings more often than as exemplars.
Joe Gould, Greenwich Village bohemian, is an example. His story has been told by that master of prose, Joseph Mitchell.
Gould found his fit and 'made it' as a bum. He was a 'successful' bum. Some aren't cut out for the bum life: they can't 'cut it.' These are the bums manqué. Gould stuck with it till he died of it. He found his own peculiar adjustment to life, his purpose and place, albeit one based on deceiving himself and others about his "Oral History of Our Time," the magnum opus that never existed.
Gould got through life in his own way. If success is living life in your own way, then Gould was a success.
You say he never amounted to anything? Then why am I writing about him now? Why did Joseph Mitchell devote two long pieces to him? Why was a movie made about him?
You really should read Joseph Mitchell. As someone who knows what good writing is, I can tell you that he is a master of American English. Get yourself a copy of Up in the Old Hotel and Other Stories, Vintage 1993, and enjoy. Why read the contemporary stuff in The New Yorker when you can read Mitchell?