Maverick Philosopher – Page 377 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Another Round With the Opponent on the Necessity of Identity

The Opponent writes,

The Maverick Philosopher has a comment on my earlier question about the necessity of identity. Can we get from ‘a=b’ to ‘necessarily a=b’ in a simple step? He thinks we can.

Now if ‘H’ and ‘P’ designate one and the same entity, then what appears to be of the form a = b, reduces to the form a = a. Clearly, if a = a, then necessarily, a = a. The assumption that the identity of H with P is contingent entails the absurdity that a thing is distinct from itself. Therefore the relation denoted by ‘=’ holds necessarily in every case in which it holds. Q. E. D.

The problem is the claim that ‘H’ (‘Hesperus’) and ‘P’ (‘Phosphorus’) designate one and the same entity. How do we get there, given only that H is the same object as P? Suppose we grant that H and P are this ‘one and the same entity’. We are saying that there is some entity, call it ‘V’ (i.e. Venus), such that H is identical with V and P is identical with V. Fair enough. But how do we get from there to the claim that the names designate this one and the same entity, i.e. that ‘H’ designates V and ‘P’ designates V? I.e. what validates the move from 2 to 3 in the following argument?

1. H=V
2. ‘H’ designates H
3. Therefore ‘H’ designates V.

You need the principle of substitutivity, the principle that if a=b and Fa, then infer Fb. For example, let F be the function ‘‘H’ designates –’. Then we agree that F(H), because we assumed that ‘H’ designates H. And we posit that H=V. Given substitutivity, it follow that F(V). But only given that substitutivity is valid in this case, which is not at all obvious, at least to me.

RESPONSE

I am afraid I just don't understand what the Opponent's problem is. He writes, "The problem is the claim that ‘H’ (‘Hesperus’) and ‘P’ (‘Phosphorus’) designate one and the same entity. How do we get there, given only that H is the same object as P?" Apparently, the Opponent wants to know what validates the inference from

Hesperus is the same entity as Phosphorus

'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus' designate the same entity.

What validates the inference is the principle that if two putatively distinct entities are in fact numerically the same entity, then the names for these putatively distinct entities are co-referential: they designate one and the same entity.

I don't see the need to invoke a principle of substitutivity. In the above inference there was no substitution of a name for a name.

Hamilton on Immigration

Excerpt:

The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family.

This goes beyond, but is in line with, my aphorism:

No comity without commonality.

The Necessity of Identity: A Puzzle and a Challenge

The Opponent comments in black; my responses are in blue:

Here is the puzzle: how can we establish the necessity of identity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient, or which are not universally valid? The principle of identity (necessarily, a = a) is not sufficient. We agree that necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Hesperus. That planet could not be numerically different from itself in any circumstance. But the question is whether necessarily, Hesperus is identical with Phosphorus. You will object that if H = P, then necessarily, H = P, because necessarily, H = H. is H. I reply: this begs the question. Under what law of logic or reasoning does nec (H = H) imply nec (H = P)? The principle of identity is insufficient on its own to establish necessity of identity.

BV: This seems correct. There is no immediate valid inference from the principle of identity to the necessity of identity. The inference would seem to be valid only in the presence of auxiliary 'mediating' premises.

But let me play the role of advocatus diaboli. We know empirically that H = P. And we know a priori about the identity relation. We know that it is an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetric, transitive). We also know that it is governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals (InId) which states that for any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and vice versa. InId is not a principle external to the notion of (numerical) identity, but part of what we mean by 'identity.' Obviously, if two putatively distinct items are one item, i.e., are identical, then whatever is true of the one is true of the other, and vice versa. We would never apply the concept of identity to any thing or thing that violated InId.

So if we know that H = P, then we know that in reality (i.e., extralinguistically, and extramentally) there is just one thing where H and P are. Call this one thing 'V.' We know from the principle of identity that necessarily, V = V. Now suppose, for reductio, that it is not the case that necessarily, H = P. Suppose, in other words that possibly, ~(H = P). One would then be supposing that the identity of H and P is contingent. But that is to suppose that the identity of V with itself is contingent, which is absurd. Therefore, the necessity of identity holds.

So it appears that I have validated the inference from the the principle of identity to the necessity of identity by adducing premises that are well-nigh self-evident. One of my supplementary premises is that we know some such truths as that H = P. I also assumed that if x = y, then there are not two things denoted by 'x' and 'y,' but one thing. I also assumed that when we use terms like 'H' and 'P' we are referring to things in reality with all their properties and relations and not to items like sense data or Husserlian noemata or Castanedan guises or any sort of incomplete object or epistemic deputy. I am assuming that our thought and talk about planets and such reaches right up to the thing itself and does not stop short at some epistemic/doxastic intermediary.

And now back to the Opponent:

What if ‘Hesperus’ means exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? This is the principle of Semantic Identity. Then it certainly follows that nec (H = H) implies nec(H = P), because both statements mean exactly the same thing. But does ‘Hesperus’ mean exactly the same thing as ‘Phosphorus’? Surely not. When the names were given, when those planets were dubbed, people understood the meaning of both names perfectly. But while they understood that H=H, they did not understand that H=P. The names cannot have meant the same. So the assumption of semantic identity does not hold.

BV: That's right. The names do not have the same Fregean sense (Sinn). This is why 'H = H' and 'H = P' do not have the same Fregean cognitive value (Erkenntniswert). To know one is to know an instance of the principle of identity. It is to know a logical truth. To know the other is to know a non-logical truth, one that is synthetic a posteriori in Kant's sense.

Finally, let’s try the principle of substitutivity, which states that Fa and a = b implies that Fb. Then let F be ‘nec (a = –)’. The principle of identity says that nec(a = a), i.e. Fa. Then if a = b, the principle of substitutivity says that Fb, i.e. nec(a = b). This is valid, but is the principle of substitutivity valid? There are many counterexamples to this, so we cannot assume it is valid. You will object that the principle of substitutivity may be invalid for a type of necessity known as ‘epistemic necessity’, but valid for a type of necessity known as ‘metaphysical necessity’. I reply: under what assumption or principle can you justify that substitutivity is valid for metaphysical necessity, when it is clearly not valid for other types of necessity. You object: we shall define metaphysical necessity as that type of necessity for which substitutivity is valid. I reply: how do you know that anything whatsoever fits that definition? You need to establish that the principle of substitutivity holds for some kind of necessity, without assuming the principle of substitutivity itself. But of course you can’t. If this were possible, Marcus and Quine would have been able to prove the necessity of identity without having to assume substitutivity. But they couldn’t.

BV: it is true that there are counterexamples to the principle of substitutivity in the 'wide open' formulation that the Opponent provides. Sam can believe that Hesperus is a planet, not a star, without believing that Phosphorus is a planet, not a star, despite the fact that Hesperus = Phosphorus. So the following is a non sequitur:

Hesperus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.
Hesperus = Phosphorus.
Ergo
Phosphorus has the property of being believed by Sam to be a planet.

This example is also a counterexample to the Indiscernibility of Identicals which is presumably equivalent to the substitutivity principle. I think that should worry us a bit.

To appreciate the dialectical lay of the land it may help to set forth the problem as an aporetic tetrad:

A. InId: For any x, y, if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y and conversely.
B. Hesperus = Phosphorus.
C. It is true of Hesperus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.
D. It is not true of Phosphorus that it is believed by Sam to be a planet.

The tetrad is inconsistent: any three limbs entail the negation of the fourth. One could solve the problem by rejecting InId in its wide-open or unrestricted formulation. What speaks against this solution is that InId in its unrestricted formulation is part and parcel of what we mean by '=.' If you were trying to explain to a student what relation '=' stands for, you couldn't just say that it stands for an equivalence relation since not every such relation is picked out by '=.' You would have to bring in InId.

A second way to solve the tetrad is by denying (B). It can be true that H is the same as P without it being the case that H = P. Note that '=' is not a bit of ordinary language; it is a terminus technicus. One can't just assume that the only type of sameness is the sameness denoted by '=.' Suppose we distinguish between formal identity statements of the form a = a and material identity statements of the form a =* b. While both are equivalence relations, the former are necessary while the latter are contingent. We can then say that H and P are materially identical and thus contingently the same. Because they are contingently the same, they are not one and the same. H and P are together in reality but are nonetheless distinct items. If so, (C) and (D) can both be true in the presence of InId/Substitutivity.

At this point I ask the Opponent whether his denial of the necessity of identity amounts to an affirmation of the contingency of the relation picked out by '=,' or whether it amounts to a rejection of the relation picked out by '=.' It seems to me that if you admit that there is a relation picked out by '=,' then you must also admit that it holds noncontingently in every case in which it holds.

One could hold the following view. There is a relation picked out by '=.' Call it formal identity. It holds of everything. But no synthetic identity statement is noncontingently true if true. No such statement is reducible to the form a = a. All are contingently true if true. So 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' is contingently true, and what the names refer to are distinct items. They refer directly to these items. But these items are something like Castaneda's ontological guises or Butchvarov's objects.

My problem is therefore that we cannot establish the identity of necessity without appealing to principles which are either insufficient (the principle of identity) or which are not universally valid (the principles of semantic identity and substitutivity). We could of course assume it as a sort of bedrock, a truth which is obviously true in its own right, a per se nota principle which requires no further demonstration. But I am not sure it is such a truth. It’s not obvious to me, for a start.

So my challenge to Bill and others is to demonstrate necessity of identity by appeal to principles of reasoning which are stronger than the ones given above, or by demonstrating its self-evidence. Neither will work, in my view.

BV: It seems to me I gave a reductio-type demonstration in my first comment. The paradigm cases of the relation picked out by '=' are the cases of the form a = a. Now if 'H' and 'P' designate one and the same entity, then what appears to be of the form a = b, reduces to the form a = a. Clearly, if a = a, then necessarily a = a. The assumption that the identity of H and P is contingent entails the absurdity that a thing is distinct from itself. Therefore the relation denoted by '=' holds necessarily in every case in which it holds. Q. E. D.

Note that I didn't use Substitutivity/Inid or Semantic Identity in this reductio. But I did assume that there is a relation picked out by '=' — which is not obvious! — and that it is this relation that the 'is' expresses in the synthetic truth 'H is P.' Which is also not obvious!

Obama’s Failed Presidency

Conrad Black

Election Hacking?

Today's Arizona Republic sported a headline containing the phrase 'election hacking.'

How about a distinction? It is one thing to hack into DNC servers and John Podesta's e-mail. It is another thing to hack into a voting machine. So I ask: what is the justification for talk of election hacking?

Let's assume that, contra Julian Assange's asseveration to the contrary, the Russians did the hacking into the DNC servers. Let's also assume that Vladimir Putin was aware of this and approved of it. What might his motive have been? The going 'wisdom' before November 8th was that Hillary was a shoo-in. That was the opinion of all the top commentators. It is therefore reasonable to assume that Putin's motive was to get some dirt on Hillary to use against her when she became president.

So it is far from obvious that the Russkis were trying to influence the U. S. election, let alone tilt it in Trump's favor. Why would they want Trump in office, an alpha male they could reasonably expect to put someone like 'Mad Dog' Mattis in charge of the Department of Defense?

And then there is the utter hypocrisy of the Dems and some Republicans who are suddenly horrified at our lack of cyber-security when they didn't seem much exercised over far, far worse such breaches over the last eight years.

Let's see this 'election hacking' nonsense for what it is. It is nothing but a shabby attempt by sore losers to delegitimize and obstruct the incoming president.

UPDATE (1/7). Here:

Also, some blame for the hack must be laid at the feet of the DNC and Democratic officials such as Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta for their wanton disregard for securing their own email system.

NOTE TO MR. PODESTA: Using “P@ssw0rd” for your password is not really a password. It is more like a “welcome” sign.

Yet, somehow, it was President-elect Donald Trump who seemed to be on trial during Thursday’s Senate hearings.

[. . .]

Chief among the intel honchos is bald and bespectacled Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. This most highly trusted top spook can be trusted to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — except when he is lying.

Most famously, The Clapper was asked during a 2013 hearing by Sen. Ron Wyden: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

“No, sir,” The Clapper responded, only to be exposed as a complete liar within months.

Is Marriage a Long Conversation?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All-Too-Human (tr. W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, p. 59):

Marriage as a long conversation. When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but the most time during the association belongs to conversation.

Fairly good advice, but how would old bachelor Fritz know about this, he who in another place recommends taking a whip along on a date? (To be accurate, Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part I, Portable Nietzsche, p. 179, puts in the mouth of an old woman the saying, "You are going to women? Do not forget the whip! Du gehst zu Frauen? Vergiß die Peitsche nicht!")

In my experience, marriage is not a long conversation so much as it is a long and deep and wordless understanding. A good marriage is a relation deeper than words.

What Explains Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Glenn Reynolds points to status anxiety:

Our privileged, college-educated left — what Joel Kotkin calls the gentry liberals — feels that its preeminent position in American society is under threat. And people care a lot about status.

What’s more, the people who seem to be lashing out the most are, in fact, just those gentry liberals: academics, entertainers, pundits, low-level tech types, and so on. As journalism professor Mark Grabowski reported, another academic texted him on election night: "Oh my God! We will be the ones ostracized if he wins."

Maybe we shouldn’t “ostracize” people based on whether their candidate wins, but in a way this professor was right: A Trump victory is a blow to the status of the people who thought Hillary Clinton was their candidate — one that they feel even more deeply because gentry liberals, having been raised on the principle that the personal is political, seem to take politics pretty personally.

Another example that’s been circulating on the Internet comes from YouTube sex-talker Laci Green. When the election was still uncertain, she tweeted: “Regardless of the outcome, we are clearly a *deeply* divided and broken country. So much work ahead to mend, heal, and restore the U in USA.” Just a few hours later, when it became clear that Hillary had lost, she changed her tune: “We are now under total Republican rule. Textbook fascism. F____ you, white America. F___ you, you racist, misogynist pieces of s___. G'night.”

Reynolds' is part of the explanation. Another part is that Hillarians and lefties generally are, most of them, secularists. Religion and its promises are for them purest buncombe. This is it, baby, and this is all she wrote. This is as real as it gets. And yet they are not content to be smiley-faced nihilists with their little pleasure for the day and their little pleasure for the night, to paraphrase Nietzsche's Last Man riff. They want Deep Meaning that transcends the petty particulars of quotidian life. So they seek it in the Political. Not being able to worship something worship-worthy, they succumb to the Idolatry of the Political. They don't realize that the Meaning they seek cannot be found where they seek it.

It is their inordinate and idolatrous commitment to the Political that explains, in part, why lefties 'lose it' when their candidates lose.

TDS really is an amazing syndrome. There is no counterpart of it on the Right.

Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?

An article by David J. Chalmers. (HT: Dave Lull) I read nine pages into it before I got bored. And this despite my fascination with metaphilosophy. So I went back to reading Klavan's memoir. I am now on p. 173 of this 'page-turner.' I am marking it up something fierce. Damn if it isn't good! Scroll down for a couple of Klavan entries.

I spent the afternoon out back in T-shirt and shorts, drinking chai and enjoying a cheap cigar, on this, the fifth day of January, anno domini 2017. It was nippy during my pre-dawn hike, though, circa 50 on the Fahrenheit scale. I had to don a long-sleeved shirt. Life is tough.

A view from my stoa (click to enlarge, and again to enlarge):

Hodges on Islam as Religious-Political Ideology

Horace Jeffery Hodges is the oldest of my cyber-friends dating back to the '90s. He writes:

In a recent post on Islam – how to conceive of it and how to deal with it – my cyber-friend Bill Vallicella notes that some who undertake this task mistakenly assume:

that Islam is a religion like any other. Not so. It is a hybrid religious-political ideology that promotes values inimical to the West and . . . [the West's] flourishing. Sharia and the West do not mix.

Bill emphasizes that Islam is not a religion like any other, that it's a hybrid religious-political ideology. My view differs little from Bill's view, though I would add a point.

Not only do I find Islam a hybrid religious-political ideology, I would describe it as a throw-back to an earlier stage of religious development, the religion of the priest-king, a figure with both a religious role and a political role to fill. Think of the Caliph, who fills both of these roles, and recall the recent Caliphate, which attempted to install shariah as the law of the land that it occupied.

In Islam, there is no separation of mosque and state. The mosque is, in fact, an extension of the state, which clarifies why Islam restricts all other religions wherever it gains political power, for other religions are suspect, potentially, as extensions of some other state's power, and the adherents of other religions are, technically, considered to be foreigners.

Just some things to consider in considering Islam . . .

__________________________

Jeff has a deeper knowledge of these matters than I do, so it is gratifying to receive his endorsement. What he adds to my post is also correct as far as I am able to judge.

Jeff rightly points out that under Islam there is no separation of mosque and state. This is one of the reasons why Islam is incompatible with the values of the West.

The threat of Islam in this regard is actually two-fold. There is the general threat to the separation of church/mosque/synagogue and state. And there is the more specific threat posed by Islam's being the worst of the great religions. Suppose the USA were ruled by a Christian theocracy. That would not be good, but it would be far better than if it were ruled by a Muslim theocracy.

As for immigration, one point that needs to be made over and over in the teeth of retromingent leftist incomprehension is that immigration is justified only if it benefits the host country. Trump understands this; Hillary and her ilk do not. This is another reason why his defeat of Hillary is cause for jubilation. No doubt it is good for Muslims that they be allowed to flood into Germany; but what the Germans need to ask is whether there is any net benefit to them of this in-flooding. And the same for every country.

This is just common sense, a commodity in short supply among lefties whom I call retromingents because of their tendency to piss on the past and its wisdom.

UPDATE : Claude Boisson (France) sends the following:

I think Horace Jeffery Hodges is absolutely correct.

Islam is in many ways a total system that is not unlike what anthropologists describe as "culture" in the case of traditional (olim primitive) societies. The various strands that we would call economy, politics, science, philosophy, religion, law, custom, etiquette, personal hygiene, etc. are closely interwoven.

Islam is (a) a religion, and in fact the native religion of every child, which is why the (Cairo) Declaration of the Rights of Man in Islam, signed by all Muslim countries, carefully mentions the (logical) impossibility of leaving Islam in its article 10; (b) a system of rules for the daily life of the faithful (what he should not eat, how he should dress, how he should urinate and defecate, what he should not draw, etc.), largely in imitation of the Prophet's ways around 630 in Arabia; (c) a system of laws for society; (d) a political ideology compelling Muslims to rule the world and dominate (or expel or kill) the infidels.

Yes, all of this.

Hence the power and resilience of the system. Imagine Bolshevism or Nazism being at the same time a full-fledged religion and a list of stipulations for eating, shitting, washing after copulation, etc. Or imagine a priest delivering a sermon telling Catholic men that, when pissing, they should hold their penis in their left hand, squat whenever possible, avoid facing Jerusalem, and pronounce special prayers against toilet devils.

This can only be understood when one studies the doctrine of Islam where it should be studied according to the best experts, namely the ulamas and ayatollahs: in the Qur'an AND in the Sunna (the canonical hadiths and the Sira, Muhammad's life (notably the one by Ibn Ishaq/Ibn Hisham)). The fiqh is derived from it. And the Qur'an should be read under the principle of abrogation, which cancels generous verses with violent verses.

The following text, among very many on the Web, explains that Isam's shariah is to dominate the world:

duaat.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/how-islam-will-dominate-the-world

This is absolutely orthodox.

It is common for Muslim preachers to argue that one of the many obvious signs of superiority of Islam over, say, Christianity, is that it is a total way of life, including the social/economic/political dimensions.

Please note that the European Court of Human Rights has twice stated that shariah is incompatible with the European Convention on the Rights of Man, to which my own country, France, is signatory. This fact seems to have escaped the notice of almost every politician and pundit. Everywhere we hear versions of the inane dictum proferred by French politicians: "Islam is perfectly compatible with the laws of the Republic". Ignorant fools (or liars?), who think they know Islam better than ulamas!

Luke 2:21: Can the Not-Yet-Existent be Named?

Luke 2:21 (NIV): On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived. (emphasis added)

This New Testament passage implies that before a certain human individual came into existence, he was named, and therefore could be named. The implication is that before an individual comes into existence, that very individual can be an object of irreducibly singular reference by a logically proper name. That is by no means obvious as I shall now argue.

To simplify the discussion let us revert to a mundane example, Socrates, to keep the particulars of Christian incarnational theology from clouding the issue. We will have enough on our plates even with this simplification. At the end of this entry I will return to the theological question.

A Remarkable Prophecy

Suppose there had been a prophet among the ancient Athenians who prophesied the birth among them of a most remarkable man, a man having the properties we associate with Socrates, including the property of being named 'Socrates.' Suppose this prophet, now exceedingly old, is asked after having followed Socrates' career and having witnessed his execution: Was that the man you prophesied?

Does this question make sense? Suppose the prophet had answered, "Yes, that very man, the one who just now drank the hemlock, is the very man whose birth I prophesied long ago before he was born!" Does this answer make sense?

An Assumption

To focus the question, let us assume that there is no pre-existence of the souls of creatures. Let us assume that Socrates, body and soul, comes into existence at or near the time of his conception. For our problem is not whether we can name something that already exists, but whether we can name something that does not yet exist.

Thesis

I say that neither the question nor the answer make sense. (Of course they both make semantic sense; my claim is that they make no metaphysical or broadly logical sense.) What the prophet prophesied was the coming of some man with the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess. What he could not have prophesied was the very man that subsequently came to possess the properties in question.

What the prophet prophesied was general, not singular: he prophesied that a certain definite description would come to be satisfied by some man or other. Equivalently, what the prophet prophesied was that a certain conjunctive property would come in the fullness of time to be instantiated, a property among whose conjuncts are such properties as being snubnosed, being married to a shrewish woman, being a master dialectician, being accused of being a corrupter of youth, etc. Even if the prophet had been omniscient and had been operating with a complete description, a description such that only one person in the actual world satisfies it if anything satisfies it, the prophecy would still be general.

Why would the complete description, satisfied uniquely if satisfied at all, still be general? Because of the possibility that some other individual, call him 'Schmocrates,' satisfy the description. For such a complete description, uniquely satisfied if satisfied at all, could not capture the very haecceity and ipseity and identity of a concrete individual.

We can call this view I am espousing anti-haecceitist: the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual cannot antedate the individual's existence. Opposing this view is that of the haecceitist who holds that temporally prior to the coming into existence of a concrete individual such as Socrates, the non-qualitative thisness of the individual is already part of the furniture of the universe.

My terminology is perhaps not felicitous. I am not denying that concrete individuals possess haecceity. I grant that haecceity is a factor in an individual's ontological 'assay' or analysis. What I am denying is that the haecceity of an individual can exist apart from the individual whose haecceity it is. From this it follows that the haecceity of an individual cannot exist before the individual exists.

But how could the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual be thought to antedate the individual whose thisness it is? We might try transforming the non-qualitative thisness of a concrete individual into an abstract object, a property that exists in every possible world, and thus at every time in those worlds having time.

Consider the putative property, identity-with-Socrates. Call it Socrateity. Suppose our Athenian prophet has the power to 'grasp' (conceive, understand) this non-qualitative property long before it is instantiated. Suppose he can grasp it just as well as he can grasp the conjunctive property mentioned above. Then, in prophesying the coming of Socrates, the prophet would be prophesying the coming of Socrates himself. His prophecy would be singular, or, if you prefer, de re: it would involve Socrates himself.

What do I mean by "involve Socrates himself"? Before Socrates comes to be there is no Socrates. But there is, on the haecceitist view I reject, Socrateity. This property 'deputizes' for Socrates at times and in possible worlds at which our man does not exist. It cannot be instantiated without being instantiated by Socrates. And it cannot be instantiated by anything other than Socrates in the actual world or in any possible world. By conceiving of Socrateity before Socrates comes to be, the Athenian prophet is conceiving of Socrates before he comes to be, Socrates himself, not a mere instance of a conjunctive property or a mere satisfier of a description. Our Athenian prophet is mentally grabbing onto the very haecceity or thisness of Socrates which is unique to him and 'incommunicable' (as a Medieval philosopher might say) to any other in the actual world or in any possible world.

But what do I mean by "a mere instance" or a "mere satisfier"?

Let us say that the conjunctive property of Socrates mentioned above is a qualitative essence of Socrates if it entails every qualitative or pure property of Socrates whether essential, accidental, monadic, or relational. If Socrates has an indiscernible twin, Schmocrates, then both individuals instantiate the same qualitative essence. It follows that, qua instances of this qualitative essence, they are indistinguishable. This implies that, if the prophet thinks of Socrates in terms of his qualitative essence, then his prophetic thought does not reach Socrates himself, but only a mere instance of his qualitative essence.

My claim, then, is that one cannot conceive of an individual that has not yet come into existence. For until an individual comes into existence it is not a genuine individual. Before Socrates came into existence, there was no possibility that he, that very man, come into existence. (In general, there are no de re possibilities involving future, not-yet-existent, individuals.) At best there was the possibility that some man or other come into existence possessing the properties that Socrates subsequently came to possess. To conceive of some man or other is to think a general thought: it is not to think a singular thought that somehow reaches an individual in its individuality.

To conceive of a complete description's being satisfied uniquely by some individual or other it not to conceive of a particular individual that satisfies it. If this is right, then one cannot name an individual before it exists.

Back to Theology

Could an angel have named Jesus before he was conceived? If I am right, no angel, nor even God, could name Socrates before he came to be. But the case is different for Jesus on classical Trinitarian theology. For while there is on Christian doctrine no pre-existence of the souls of creatures, there is on Christian doctrine the pre-existence of the Word or Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity. So one could possibly say that the angel named the pre-existent Word 'Jesus.'

Klavan on Experience

I am now on p. 118 of Andrew Klavan's memoir, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ. Thomas Nelson, 2016, 269 pp. As I reported a few days ago when I was on p. 18,

If you are a tough-minded American Boomer like me on a religious/spiritual quest you will probably be able to 'relate' very well to this book. A fortiori, if you are Jewish.

The book gets better and better especially for those of us who are (i) 'true' Boomers and (ii) were influenced by the Zeitgeist of the '60s. I divide the Boomer cohort (1946-1964) into the 'true' Boomers and the 'shadow' Boomers. You are one of the former if and only if you remember the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November of 1963. Otherwise you are a 'shadow' boomer. Klavan, born in 1954, is a 'true' Boomer.

Mike Gilleland, who is my age and few years older than Klavan, told me some years back that the '60s passed him by. I would put it this way: many of those who came of age in the '60s were not of the '60s. It is like a Christian's being in the world but not of it. My point is that if you a 'true' Boomer of and not merely in the '60s, then Klavan's book is one you will want to read.

We were experience-hungry. We were in quest of the Real and thought that it could be found by a close grappling with the seedier and seamier sides of life. We took drugs, consorted with dead-end women, got drunk in flophouses with bums, worked dirty and dangerous jobs, left on 1200 mile trips with five dollars in the pocket returning with ten. This is what got a lot of us into a lot of trouble. Klavan:

Experience! That's what made a writer great, I thought. Harsh, brutal, savage Experience — I would have done anything to get my hands on some. But where? There were nothing but lawns and homes and normal families around me as far as the eye could see.

I didn't want to go to war. Those in the know had declared the Vietnam conflict corrupt and evil. [. . .]

Instead I took jobs whenever I could — not jobs that would teach me something or contribute to my future or career. No, I took jobs that I hoped would get me nearer to the grit of things: Experience. I was a gas jockey, a warehouseman, a truck driver, a construction worker, a delivery boy to some of the dodgier areas of New York City. After seventeen years in grassy peace and comfort, I was hungry for anything that looked like cruel reality.

What I wanted most, though, was to wander. Not to travel — to drift. [. . .] My romantic fantasies often involved a girl in some other town, not this town. A brief affair. A tearful goodbye. Then, babe, I've got to travel down that lonesome, dusty road. (116-117)

At this point Klavan might have referenced Dylan's Don't Think Twice with its talk of long, lonesome roads and the lines:

So long honey babe
Where I'm bound, I cain't [sic] tell
But goodbye is too good a word, babe
So I'll just say fare thee well.

Robert Zimmerman, too, the middle-class Jewish son of a Hibbing, Minnesota appliance salesman. recoiled from the unreality of suburbia and hit the road, more or less.

Summing this up: reading Klavan's book I am reading about myself.

Why No Posts Yesterday?

Because of a Typepad outage. Not my fault! Typepad, though, has served me well over the years. I have been with them since Halloween, 2008. Been blogging, though, since 2004. Total Typepad pageviews are now over four million. I thank you for your patronage. I'll write all the same, readers or no. I'm a natural-born scribbler. But it is nice to be read and receive fan mail. I'm only human.

If you are a person of good will, I wish you the best for the New Year. If you are not, I wish you a belated bag of Christmas coal.

This is a good time to repeat MY PLEDGE:

You will never see advertising on this site. You will never see anything that jumps around in your visual field. You will not be assaulted by unwanted sounds. You will never have to read anything against a black background. I will not beg for money with a 'tip jar.' This is a labor of love and I prize my independence.

I also pledge to continue the fight, day by day, month by month, year by year, against the hate-America, race-baiting, religion-bashing, liberty-destroying, gun-grabbing, university-trashing, truth-intolerant, terror-appeasing fascists of the Left. As long as health and eyesight hold out.

I will not pander to anyone, least of all the politically correct.

And I won't back down. Are you with me?

Afraid to show some civil courage? Buy guns and learn how to use them. That should enhance your self-confidence.

Barbarians Within the Gates

Robert Royal:

Some European newspapers have reported lately – very quietly – that, according to police in Germany’s North Rhineland/ Westphalia region, from 2011 to 2016 there were 3500 cases of vandalism/desecration of Christian churches. About two per day in only one region of Germany, every day for the past five years.

That's the bad news. The good news is that Trump defeated Hillary who would have continued Obama's ostrichism.

Change and hope for 2017!

Royal again:

We, of course, can coexist with Muslims who want to coexist with us. But the presence of jihadists – essentially an amorphous armed force within our society – is going to drive us quite close to religious tests for entry into the country and perhaps more.

Royal is assuming that Islam is a religion like any other. Not so. It is a hybid religious-political ideology that promotes values inimical to the West and its flourishing. Sharia and the West do not mix. Muslim immigration ought to be curtailed because of Muslims' destructive Sharia-based political values. They have no right to come here, and we have no obligation to let them in. There is no net benefit to their immigration when you factor in the destruction, which is not merely physical, wrought by jihadis. The Europeans are learning this the hard way. May they learn their lesson well.

No one should be allowed to immigrate who is not prepared to assimilate.

No comity without commonality.

While diversity is good, it is good only up to a point. A diversity worth wanting presupposes a unity of shared principles.

A good part of the problem here is the silly liberal conceit that 'deep down' we are all the same and want the same things. False! There really are crazies ought there who want to disembarrass you of your head because you differ with them on some abstruse point of theology. Leftists, who cannot take religion seriously, think that no one else really takes it seriously either so that what motivates terrorists are things like "lack of jobs" as the foolish Obama once said. A very stupid form of projection!

But we will soon be rid of the feckless fool.

That being said and rejoiced in, Happy New Year! By OUR calendar.

The Trials and Tribulations of Anthony Esolen

"Because of recent events at the school where I teach, Providence College, I have come to see that the winning side of the so-called culture wars has no interest in rational or equable conversation about the neuralgic issues of our time." Here.

Defund the bastards, I say. It does no good to speak truth to power when those in power believe only in it and not in truth.

Pragmatic and Ideological Political Parties

A good distinction. The Dems used to be pragmatic, but now are ideological. David Carlin makes the distinction and then sketches the ideology of the contemporary Democrat Party:

(1) They [the intellectual leaders of the party] preach a metaphysics: There is no God, at least no God like the God of the Bible; no Supreme Being who created the universe and governs it. And if they sometimes say that they are agnostics, not atheists, their agnosticism is virtually identical with atheism; the two differ in name only.

(2) They preach a theory of knowledge: There is no knowledge other than sense-based knowledge, the kind of empirical knowledge upon which natural science is based. (They pride themselves on their respect for science even though very few of them are actual scientists or philosophers or historians of science.) Thus there is no such thing as Divine Revelation. And there is no such thing as trans-empirical intuitive knowledge – for example, intuitive knowledge of the existence of God, of the immortality of the soul, of the fundamental laws of morality.

Comment: The Dems promote scientism, the epistemology of metaphysical naturalism. The latter, roughly, is the thesis that reality is exhausted by the space-time system and its contents. Scientism is the philosophical (not scientific!) doctrine that all genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge. It is a philosophical doctrine that entails the noncognitive status of all philosophy including itself!

Typically, the proponents of scientism don't see the problems with it; their ideological commitment is dogmatic and uncritical. A particularly offensive example is provided by Senator Barbara Boxer in this brief YouTube video in which she derides philosophy and a philosopher who dares to dissent from the party line on fossil fuels.

(3) They preach a theory of morality, a morality of maximum personal liberty. We should be free to do as we like, and we should tolerate a like freedom in others. Of course certain practical limits must be placed on this freedom if we are to avoid a war of all against all: we should not be free to inflict direct and tangible harm on non-consenting others.

(4) Sexual freedom: While there are many other kinds of freedom, sexual freedom is, so to speak, the keystone of the arch. If sexual intolerance is permitted, many other kinds of intolerance will follow.

Comment: The tendency is to give free rein to concupiscence in all of its forms, without of course admitting that this is what one is doing. Concupiscence? What's that? Do you think that our deep natural concupiscence, excited and maintained by the blandishments of a sex-saturated society, might help explain why the many strong arguments against abortion are simply dismissed unexamined by the 'pro choice' crowd? The existence of a moral issue is not admitted. It is just assumed that the right to an abortion is a woman's reproductive right.

(5) Anti-Christianity: The most influential opponent of the above beliefs and values is Christianity, more especially old-fashioned Catholic and Protestant Christianity. Therefore old-fashioned Christianity must be marginalized, must be driven into a social corner where it can do little or no harm.

Comment: But at the same time, Islam is touted as the religion of peace, and its dangers denied.

(6) Omnicompetent government. There is no problem, not even the problem of controlling the terrestrial climate for the next 10,000 years, that cannot be solved, at least in the long run, by the action of the U.S. federal government. Do we have problems of poverty or crime or education or health or drug addiction or global warming? There must be solution that Washington can find for it – a law, an agency, a spending program, a global treaty, etc.

Carlin's article is here.