My friend Mike Valle will be able to relate to Hugh Hewitt's comparison for reasons I won't relate. Hewitt's column is entitled It's time to relax about Trump. Read it you hyperventilating libruls and cool your jets. The stroke you avoid may be your own.
Two George Molnars
Here:
Meet George Molnar. Not the witty cartoonist, but the other one: a thwarted philosopher whose wild life finally found some meaning after his death.
Did you think there was only one George Molnar – the witty and urbane Hungarian whose cartoons graced the pages of the Herald for many years? Well, think again. To many Sydneysiders, the truly famous George Molnar, famous to the point of notoriety, was someone else altogether. He was George Molnar, libertarian philosopher, left-wing radical and one of the sharpest minds the city's intellectual circles had known.
Less Than One Day to Go . . .
What a wonderful legacy! Some people have a negative net worth. Can one speak of a negative legacy? In these waning hours of his (mis)administration, let us reflect on the foolish and destructive things Obama has said and done the better to savor the change and hope that tomorrow will usher in. Remember Arizona Senate Bill 1070 from 2010 and the lawsuit former Attorney General Eric Holder brought against the State of Arizona? Here are my posts from that time in case you want to refresh your memory over that outrage. Image credit: Lisa Benson.
Why Did Trump Get the Religious Vote?
After all, no one would confuse Trump with a religious man. Robert Tracinski's explanation strikes me as correct:
The strength of the religious vote for Trump initially mystified me, until I remembered the ferocity of the Left’s assault on religious believers in the past few years—the way they were hounded and vilified for continuing to hold traditional beliefs about marriage that were suddenly deemed backward and unacceptable (at least since 2012, when President Obama stopped pretending to share them). What else do you think drove all those religious voters to support a dissolute heathen?
Ironically, a pragmatic, Jacksonian populist worldling such as Donald J. Trump will probably do more for religion and religious liberty in the long run than a pious leftist such as Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Carter famously confessed the lust in his heart in an interview in — wait for it — Playboy magazine. We should all do likewise, though in private, not in Playboy. While it is presumptuous to attempt to peer into another's soul, I would bet that Mr. Trump is not much bothered by the lust in his heart, and I don't expect to hear any public confessions from his direction.
But what profiteth it to confess one's lust when one supports the destructive Dems, the abortion party, a party the members of which are so morally obtuse that they cannot even see the issue of the morality of abortion, dismissing it as a health issue or an issue of women's reproductive rights?
Related articles
The Liberal ‘Deep State’
And Trump's threat to it.
On Possibility
David Brightly comments:
The view I've arrived at is that sentences involving 'possibility' can be re-written into sentences involving just 'possibly', and that our modal notions arise from our encounter with inference. I'm happy to say, There is the possibility that the bulb will shatter — we say things like that all the time — provided it's understood to mean, Possibly, the bulb will shatter. I certainly don't want to commit myself to things called possibilities, unless they can be seen as constructions out of sentences, roughly, Possibly, S ≡ The truth value of sentence S cannot be determined from what we currently know together with deduction from known principles.
Can you persuade me otherwise? A 'big topic' I would imagine!
Let B be an ordinary light bulb. Light bulbs are typically fragile: they are disposed to shatter if suitably struck or dropped from a sufficient height onto a hard surface. I take Brightly to be saying two things. He is maintaining, first, that there is no more to the possibility of B's shattering in circumstances C than the truth of the sentence, 'Possibly, B will shatter in C.' Second, he is offering an analysis of 'possibly' in such sentences.
First Claim
I take Brightly to be saying that there is nothing in B, and thus nothing in reality, that could be called B's disposition to shatter. In general, unrealized possibilities have no ontological status. But then what makes the sentence 'Possibly, B shatters in C' true? Presumably, Brightly will say that nothing makes it true: it is just true. He would not, I take it, say the same about 'B exists.' He would not say that nothing makes 'B exists' true, that the sentence is just true. I would guess that he would say that it is B itself, or perhaps the existence of B, that makes 'B exists' true. So there is something in reality that 'B' names, and this item is, or is part of, the truth-maker of 'B exists.'
But if he says this, should he not also admit that there is something in reality that make 'B is disposed to shatter in C' true?
To appreciate the point one must see that a disposition and its manifestation are different. B is disposed to shatter at every time at which it exists. But it needn't ever shatter. It might remain intact throughout its career. Therefore, the reality of a disposition cannot be identified with its actual manifestation. The same goes for powers and potentialities. If a man has a power he never exercises, it does not follow that he does not have the power. The potentiality of a seed to sprout in the right conditions is something real even if the seed remains on a shelf and its potentiality is never actualized.
There is an epistemological question that I want to set aside lest it muddy the waters. The question is: How does one know de re, of a particular light bulb, that it is disposed to shatter if it never does? I am not concerned here with the epistemology of modal knowledge, but with the ontology of the merely possible, which includes the ontology of unmanifested dispositions.
A disposition, then, is real whether or not it is ever manifested. But doesn't this just beg the question against Brightly? I maintain that unmanifested dispositions are real. Brightly denies this. If I understand him, he is eliminating unmanifested dispositions in favor of the truth of possibility sentences.
My objection to this invokes the Truth-Maker Principle: truths need truth-makers. Or at least many classes of truths need truth-makers, one of these being the class of truths about the powers, potentialities, dispositions, and the like of concrete individuals. (I am not a truth-maker maximalist.) My point against Brightly is that the sentence, 'Possibly, B shatters in C,' if true, is true in virtue of or because of something external to this sentence, namely, the unmanifested disposition in B to shatter.
My view is consistent with the view that unmanifested dispositions reduce to the so-called 'categorical' features of things like light bulbs. Unmanifested dispositions can be real without being irreducibly real. What I have said above does not commit me to irreducibly real dispositions. It commits me only to the reality of unmanifested dispositions, whether reducible or not.
Second Claim
" Possibly, S ≡ The truth value of sentence S cannot be determined from what we currently know together with deduction from known principles."
S in Brightly's example is 'The bulb will shatter.' True or false? I grant that the truth value cannot be known from what we currently know together with what we can deduce from known principles. But this cannot be what the possibility that the glass will shatter consists in. Brightly is making the very real possibility that the glass shatter, the bomb explode, the round fire, the cat scratch, Hillary throw a lamp at Bill, etc., depend on our ignorance. But then real possibility is eliminated in favor of epistemic possibility.
Suppose Sally knows that Tom is in Boston now and believes falsely that Scollay Square still exists. I ask Sally: is it possible that Tom is in Scollay Square now? She replies, "Yes, it is possible." But of course this is a mere epistemic possibility sired by Sally's ignorance. It is possible for all Sally knows. It is not really possible that Tom is in Scollay Square now given that the place no longer exists.
I don't think we should say that the possibility of the bulb's shattering consists in our igntrance as to whether or not 'The bulb will shatter' is true or false. Consider also that long before minded organisms arose in our evolutionary history, and thus long before there was knowledge or ignorance, there we seeds and such with real potencies some of which were actualized and some of which were not.
Colonel Jeff Cooper’s Situational Awareness Color Codes
Here is a good article on the topic addressed to law enforcement officers, but useful for the ordinary citizen.
Under ORANGE below read 'if possible' for 'if necessary.'
Condition White is fine while in your house, assuming your house is well-secured. The minute you step out your door you should move to Condition Yellow, whether you are carrying or not. Train yourself to stay in Yellow as long as you are out and about.
I came close to being mugged in New Orleans' French Quarter in '90 or '91. I was there to read a paper at an A. P. A. meeting. Early one morning I left the hotel to sample the local color and grab some breakfast. Striding along Bourbon street, I noticed a couple of black dudes on the other side of the street. I was wearing a beret, which may have suggested to the loiterers that I was a foreigner and an easy mark. One dude approached and commented on my shoes in an obvious attempt ti distract me and throw me off my guard. My situational awareness saved me. That, my stern mien, height, leather jacket and purposeful stride. I gave the punk a hard look, increased my pace, and blew him off.
Profiling is part of situational awareness. Profiling is just common sense, which is why liberal fools oppose it. A couple of black youths loitering in a touristy area are probably up to no good. If common sense makes me a racist, then we should all be racists, including decent black folk.
Chess is Racist!
Not only is chess racist, it is also sexist and patriarchal. The fact that the Queen is the most powerful piece on the board proves nothing to the contrary. The powers allowed to the Queen are in truth nothing more than so many sops thrown to the feminists to keep them quiet.
The sexism and patriarchalism of chess is proven by the dignity afforded to the King.
Wherein resides the dignity of the King? At every time in every possible game, the King is on the board. He cannot be captured: he never leaves the board while the game is on. He may be checked and checkmated; he is never captured. His royal consort, however, must submit to sacrifice, and is sacrificed gladly in the most beautiful of games. She has no dignity unto herself; she is but a means, nothing more than an overgrown pawn, and in some cases an ambitious upstart who has clawed her way to the eighth rank with the determination of a Hillary. She must die, when called upon, for the glory of His Majesty.
Another proof that chess is racist and oppressive and ought to be banned is that blacks are woefully under-represented among its players. This evil can have only one explanation: racist suppression of black players. For everyone knows that blacks as a group are the equals of whites as a group in respect of intelligence, interest in chess, and the sorts of virtues needed to play the undemocratic and reactionary 'Royal Game.' Among these are the ability to study hard, defer gratification, and keep calm in trying situations.
For these and many other reasons, we must DEMAND that chess be banned.
We must manifest solidarity with our oppressed Taliban brothers who have maintained, truly, that chess is an evil game of chance.
It is therefore most heartening to read that chess has been banned in some places in America. May this trend continue as we march forward, ever stronger, together to the land of social justice where there are no winners and no losers.
Race Libel
Know Your Internet History!
Origins of the Drudge Report. There are thinkers and there are linkers. Matt Drudge linked his way to fame and fortune.
Schall on Obama
I am surprised at how hard-hitting this is. But the punches land right on target.
58 Most Commonly Misused Words and Phrases
A list by Steven Pinker. Refreshingly prescriptivist. I agree with every example. For instance,
• Begs the question means assumes what it should be proving and does not mean raises the question.
Correct: "When I asked the dealer why I should pay more for the German car, he said I would be getting 'German quality,' but that just begs the question."
The MavPhil trinity of editors, me, myself, and I heartily agree. But if you disagree with me or the trinity I won't draw my weapon. I won't even give you a lecture or refer you to one of my erudite entries on the topic. Meaning is tied to use. So if enough people come to use 'begs the question' to mean raises the question, then that is what it will mean. The meaning of a word or phrase is not an intrinsic property of it. If you want to communicate using the phrase in question after the ignorant have their way with it, then you will have to acquiesce in the semantic corruption.
But why call it corruption? Because of the destruction of a very useful phrase with a specific meaning. We already have 'raises the question.'
When Trump was asked by Hugh Hewitt whether the former meant it literally when he called Obama the founder of ISIS, the Orange Man said yes, literally. Now there are degrees of descriptivism. Will you take it to the mad dog extreme of tolerating this use of 'literally'? Or will you dig in your heels? Not every prescriptivism is schoolmarmish. I have been known to split an infinite when the cadence of a well-crafted sentence dictated it. (Memo to self: write an entire entry on 'literally.')
The fact that we have the leisure to ponder these bagatelles is testimony to how good we have it. So be grateful for what you have while you have it.
Numerical and Qualitative Identity and Radical Flux
Philosophers often use 'numerically' in contrast with 'qualitatively' when speaking of identity or sameness. If I tell you that I drive the same car as Jane, that is ambiguous: it could mean that Jane and I drive one and the same car, or it could mean that Jane and I drive the same make and model of car, but not one and the same car. To take a second example, six bottles of beer in a typical six-pack are numerically distinct but qualitatively identical. Suppose you want a beer from the six-pack. It won't matter which bottle of the six I hand you since they are all qualitatively the same (qualitatively identical) in respect of both bottle and contents, at least with regard to the properties that you would find relevant such as quantity, taste, inebriatory potential, etc. If I hand you a beer and you say you want a different beer from the same six-pack, you mean a numerically different one. If I reply by saying that they are all the same, I mean they are all qualitatively the same.
If A and B are numerically identical, it follows that they are one and the same. A and B are one, not two. If A and B are qualitatively identical, it does not follow that they are one and the same. But they might be. For if A and B are numerically identical, then they share all properties, in which case they are qualitatively identical. Furthermore, if A and B are qualitatively identical, it does not follow that they share every property: it suffices that they share some properties.
To see this, suppose that you and I both order the 'monster chimichanga' at the local Mexican eatery. We have ordered the same item, qualitatively speaking. But it turns out that the one served to you is slightly more 'monstrous' (a wee bit bigger) than mine. That doesn't change the fact that they are qualitatively the same or qualitatively identical as I use these phrases. The chimis are two, not one, hence numerically different. They are the same in that they share most properties.
I suppose we could nuance this by distinguishing strict from loose qualitative identity. Strict implies indiscernibility; loose does not.
Can One Step Twice into the Same River?
Stephen Law (HT: Sed Contra) thinks one can make short work of a Heraclitean puzzle if one observes the numerical-qualitative distinction:
If you jump into a river and then jump in again, the river will have changed in the interim. So it won't be the same. But if it's not the same river, then the number of rivers that you jump into is two, not one. It seems we're forced to accept the paradoxical – indeed, absurd – conclusion that you can't jump into one and the same river twice. Being forced into such a paradox by a seemingly cogent argument is a common philosophical predicament.
This particular puzzle is fairly easily solved: the paradoxical conclusion that the number of rivers jumped into is two not one is generated by a faulty inference. Philosophers distinguish at least two kinds of identity or sameness. Numerical identity holds where the number of objects is one, not two (as when we discover that Hesperus, the evening star, is identical with Phosphorus, the morning star). Qualitative identity holds where two objects share the same qualities (e.g. two billiard balls that are molecule-for molecule duplicates of each other, for example). We use the expression 'the same' to refer to both sorts of identity. Having made this conceptual clarification, we can now see that the argument that generates our paradox trades on an ambiguity. It involves a slide from the true premise that the river jumped in the second time isn't qualitatively 'the same' to the conclusion that it is not numerically 'the same'. We fail to spot the flaw in the reasoning because the words 'the same' are used in each case. But now the paradox is resolved: we don't have to accept that absurd conclusion. Here's an example of how, by unpacking and clarifying concepts, it is possible to solve a classical philosophical puzzle. Perhaps not all philosophical puzzles can be solved by such means, but at least one can.
Problem Solved?
Not so fast. Although superficially plausible, the above solution/dissolution of the puzzle begs the question against the doctrine of Heraclitean flux. Law goes at Heraclitus with the numerical-qualitative identity distinction. But this distinction presupposes a distinction between individuals and qualities. Given this distinction one can say that one and the same individual has different qualities at different times. Thus one and the same river is stepped into at different times. But on a doctrine of Heraclitean flux, there are no individuals that remain self-same over time. There is no substrate of change. Change cuts so deep that it cannot be confined to the properties of a thing leaving the thing, as the substrate of change, relatively unchanged. For Heracliteans as for Buddhists, it's flux all the way down.
Law taxes Heraclitus with an illicit inferential slide from
The river jumped into the second time is not qualitatively the same
to
The river jumped into the second time is not numerically the same.
But there is no equivocation on 'same' unless we can sustain a distinction between the thing and its properties. Is this distinction unproblematic? Of course not. It reeks with problems. Just what is a thing in distinction from its properties? A Bergmannian bare particular? An Armstrongian thin particular? An Aristotelian primary substance? There are problems galore with these conceptions. Has anyone ever really clarified the notion of prote ousia in Aristotle? Nope. Is a thing a bundle of its properties? More problems. And what is a property? An abstract object? In what sense of 'abstract'? A universal? A trope? Will you say that there are no properties at all, only predicates? And what about the thing's HAVING of properties? What is that? Instantiation? Is instantiation a relation? If yes, does it sire Bradley's Regress? Are properties/concepts perhaps unsaturated in Frege's sense? Can sense be made of that? Is HAVING some sort of containment relation? Are the properties of a thing ontological constituents of it? And what could that mean? And so it goes.
We are presented with a puzzle and a seeming absurdity: There is no stepping twice into the same river. The Moorean rebuttal comes quickly: Of course, there is! Common sense, convinced that it is right, attempts to dissolve the puzzle by making a simple distinction between numerical and qualitative identity. The dissolution seems to work — but only if we remain on the surface of the troubled waters. Think a little more and you realize that the distinction presupposes a deeper distinction between thing and properties. But now we are launched into a labyrinth of ontological problems for which there is no accepted solution. The unclarity of the individual-property distinction percolates back upwards to disturb the numerical-qualitative distinction.
Law has not definitively solved the Heraclitean puzzle.
The Numerical-Qualitative Distinction is Valid at the Level of Ordinary Language
We need to make the distinction, of course: it is fallout from, and exegesis of, ordinary usage. 'Same' is indeed ambiguous in ordinary English. The distinction does useful work at the level of ordinary language. The Heraclitean, however, need not be taken as contesting, at that level, the truth that one can step twice into the same river. He is making a metaphysical claim: there is in reality, below the level of conventional talk and understanding, radical flux. If so, there is nothing that remains self-same over time, such as a river, into which one can step twice.
Summary
To think clearly and avoid confusion one must observe the distinction between numerical and qualitative identity. But this distinction, which is serviceable enough for ordinary purposes, rests on a distinction, that of individual and property, which is metaphysically murky. Therefore, the common sense distinction cannot be used to dispatch the Heracliteans' metaphysical claim.
The deep metaphilosophical issue here concerns the role and status of Moorean rebuttals to seemingly crazy metaphysical claims. The illustrious Peter van Inwagen famously denies the existence of artifacts. But he is not crazy, and you won't be able to blow him out of the water with some simple-minded distinction.
Plagiarism
How could you, Monica Crowley? Well, at least you are in good company. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized portions of his Boston University dissertation:
A committee of scholars appointed by Boston University concluded today [10 October 1991] that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized passages in his dissertation for a doctoral degree at the university 36 years ago.
[. . .]
"There is no question," the committee said in a report to the university's provost, "but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation by appropriating material from sources not explicitly credited in notes, or mistakenly credited, or credited generally and at some distance in the text from a close paraphrase or verbatim quotation."
[. . .]
The dissertation at issue is "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman." Dr. King wrote it in 1955 as part of his requirements for a doctor of philosophy degree, which he subsequently received from the university's Division of Religious and Theological Studies.
Does King's plagiarism disqualify him from being honored? No. He was a great civil rights leader and he died in the service of his cause.
Crowley's plagiarism appears to have been much worse than King's.
Every man has his 'wobble' as I like to say, and every woman too. If we honored only those who are in all respects honorable we would honor no mortal.
If truth be told, no one of us is all that admirable, although some of us are more admirable than others.
The Urbanites and the Rustics
Here is Victor Davis Hanson in yet another penetrating column, Trump and the American Divide:
Is there something about the land itself that promotes conservatism? The answer is as old as Western civilization. For the classical Greeks, the asteios (“astute”; astu: city) was the sophisticated “city-like” man, while the agroikos(“agrarian”; agros: farm/field) was synonymous with roughness. And yet there was ambiguity as well in the Greek city/country dichotomy: city folk were also laughed at in the comedies of Aristophanes as too impractical and too clever for their own good, while the unpolished often displayed a more grounded sensibility. In the Roman world, the urbanus (“urbane”; urbs: city) was sometimes too sophisticated, while the rusticus (“rustic”; rus: countryside) was often balanced and pragmatic.
The maverick ideal as I envisage it is to be able to relate both to the urbanites and to the 'deplorable' rustics, rough, blunt, and practical among the latter, sophisticated and refined among the former. Among the urbanites, but not among the rustics, I might justify the maverick ideal by invoking Terence. Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. "I am a man: I consider nothing human foreign to me."
Among the rusticos and urban blue-collar types any show of learning will often be taken as 'putting on airs.' And any display of refinement will often be read as preciosity, not that the workers will know this word. The word has an interesting property: it often applies to those who know it. A good maxim is to tailor one's discourse and comportment to one's audience, being vulgar among the vulgar and refined among the refined.
Hanson's piece is just jam-packed with insight:
Language is also different in the countryside. Rural speech serves, by its very brevity and directness, as an enhancement to action. Verbosity and rhetoric, associated with urbanites, were always rural targets in classical literature, precisely because they were seen as ways to disguise reality so as to advance impractical or subversive political agendas. Thucydides, nearly 2,500 years before George Orwell’s warnings about linguistic distortion, feared how, in times of strife, words changed their meanings, with the more polished and urbane subverting the truth by masking it in rhetoric that didn’t reflect reality. In the countryside, by contrast, crops either grow or wither; olive trees either yield or remain barren; rain either arrives or is scarce. Words can’t change these existential facts, upon which living even one more day often depends. For the rural mind, language must convey what is seen and heard; it is less likely to indulge adornment.
Things haven't changed. Leftists are masters of linguistic distortion as I have been pointing out since 2004 in these pages.
To the rural mind, verbal gymnastics reveal dishonest politicians, biased journalists, and conniving bureaucrats, who must hide what they really do and who they really are. Think of the arrogant condescension of Jonathan Gruber, one of the architects of the disastrous Obamacare law, who admitted that the bill was written deliberately in a “tortured way” to mislead the “stupid” American voter. To paraphrase Cicero on his preference for the direct Plato over the obscure Pythagoreans, rural Americans would have preferred to be wrong with the blunt-talking Trump than to be right with the mush-mouthed Hillary Clinton. One reason that Trump may have outperformed both McCain and Romney with minority voters was that they appreciated how much the way he spoke rankled condescending white urban liberals.