A reader demands a list. Here we go. It is very far from complete. To list is not to endorse. Contemporary academic philosophy is hyperprofessionalized and overspecialized. An exposure to some of the following may have a broadening effect. Asterisks indicate a MavPhil category on the right sidebar.
Constantin Brunner (English)
Constantin Brunner (German)
Barry Miller*
This from a regular reader, professional philosopher, and Trump supporter:
You're disturbed that so many Trump supporters "refuse to admit the man's negatives". Maybe they do refuse, but I think many of them feel as I do. He has many negative qualities, and maybe in some ways he's even worse than the average politician, but — as you yourself have often emphasized — we're no longer in a situation where politics is about people with shared loyalties and values coming together to engage in fair rational discussion with each other. We are in a war. The left simply hates us, wants to destroy us culturally and maybe personally to while they're at it. The real American people are facing an existential crisis.
So what really matters in this situation? Not the personal failings of any candidate, not even the likelihood that he's sincere or able to do what he says he'll do. What really matters for now is that he is taking the crucial necessary _first step_ toward organizing a real movement to defend America and the west. What if, when Muslims were poised to invade France, we found out that Charles Martel was actually a child molester? What if I knew, in 1939, that Churchill was a total fraud and psychopath? I'd say that in that kind of situation these considerations make no difference. If he [Trump] can speak a few basic truths that inspire people to fight back and stand up, for the first and possibly last time, that's all that matters. (My analogies are extreme, but not _that_ extreme.) I realize that we won't agree on this; Trumpites and mainstream conservatives are as badly polarized as Trumpites and leftists (which may have deep implications). But I offer these remarks as a way to understand why the valid criticisms you make of him just don't have much force for me, or for millions of others, I'm assuming.
This is a good response in part because I do reluctantly incline to the view that we are in a war with the Left. So why should I be concerned with the merely personal foibles and failings of the one man with the best chance of stopping the leftist juggernaut? Who cares that he is a low life, a vulgarian, a cultural polluter, a hypocrite, a narcissist, an egomaniac, and a serial liar and bullshitter? One of his most recent lies was the one about not knowing who David Duke is. But not only did he lie, he lied unnecessarily. There was no need for him to tell that particular lie since a disavowal of David Duke and the KKK would not have hurt him much, especially since he had already disavowed Duke. This speaks to Trump's lack of good judgment and also perhaps to a lack of seriousness. Would someone who is serious about winning the presidency lie unnecessarily? He also demonstrates contempt for his audience in telling a lie that is transparently a lie.
But why should we care about any of this? One reason is that these are not merely personal defects but defects that could bring down the conservative movement and lead to a victory, perhaps even a landslide victory, by Hillary come November. This is what lefties are counting on. They hope Trump will destroy the GOP. You say you don't care? But then what party will implement conservative ideas and policies? The Constitution Party?
Another reason is that it is not clear that Trump is better equipped to defeat Hillary. Is he better qualified than Cruz? It is not clear to me or to anyone. If it is clear to my reader, I should like him to tell me why Trump is a more effective culture warrior than Cruz. And let's not underestimate the opposition Trump will get in the general election. Women, minorities, leftists, and a sizeable number of conservatives will align against him. Among the conservatives, many will not vote at all, and some will vote for Hillary to punish Trump and the GOP for supporting him.
I appreciate the force of my reader's historical analogies. But let me try one of my own. Would you have supported the Austrian corporal back in '33 to stop the Communists? Now we know what happened after 1933. Abstract from the sequel and imagine yourself to be a German anti-communist who in '33 is trying to make up his mind about the incendiary outsider. Would you have rolled the dice?
Bernie Sanders, who at least acknowledges our economic reality and refuses to accept corporate money for his presidential campaign, plays the role of the Democratic Party’s court jester. No doubt to remain a member of the court, he will not condemn the perfidy and collaboration with corporate power that define Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party. He accepts that criticism of empire is taboo. He continues, even as the party elites rig the primaries against him, to make a mockery of democratic participation, to hold up the Democrats as a tool for change. He will soon be urging his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton, actively working as an impediment to political mobilization and an advocate for political lethargy. Sanders, whose promise of a political revolution is as hollow as competing campaign slogans, will be rewarded for his duplicity. He will be allowed to keep his seniority in the Democratic caucus. The party will not mount a campaign in Vermont to unseat him from the U.S. Senate. He will not, as he has feared, end up a pariah like Ralph Nader. But he, like everyone else in the establishment, will have sold us out.
For a lefty one can never be too far Left. Some on the Right are like this as well: balanced positions are anathema to them.
For a lefty like Hedges, corporations are at the root of all political evil:
Corporations control the three branches of government. Corporations write the laws. Corporations determine the media narrative and public debate. Corporations are turning public education into a system of indoctrination. Corporations profit from permanent war, mass incarceration, suppressed wages and poor health care. Corporations have organized a tax boycott. Corporations demand “austerity.” Corporate power is unassailable, and it rolls forward like a stream of lava.
In other news, see below, Spike Lee has come out for Bernie. Well, with Lee, Dick van Dyke, and 'Killer Mike' supporting him, how can he lose?
Related articles
The last few days I have spoken with a number of people about Donald Trump, almost all of them supporters. What surprises me is their refusal to admit the man's negatives. Their partisanship blinds them. And then there is the naive belief that, if elected, Trump will accomplish what he says he will. Given his bad judgment and school-boy mouthing off and glee at offending people, how will he work with Congress? Or will he try to do everything by executive order? There is this document called the Constitution. Or does he too believe in a 'living' Constitution?
Will I vote for Trump if nominated? Of course. Hillary must be defeated, and Trump has so mastered the politics of personal destruction, hitherto a specialty of leftists, that he has a good chance of defeating her.
So what's my point? My point is that we are very sick society if it should come down to a choice between a brazen hard-leftist liar like Hillary and a low life like Trump. I would like to see a bit of understanding by Trump's supporters of who it is they are supporting. That and a little less rah-rah partisanship. You don't think he is a low life? He fails the decency test. Max Lucado has his number:
I don't know Mr. Trump. But I've been chagrined at his antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made mockery of a reporter's menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to the former first lady, Barbara Bush as "mommy," and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people "stupid," "loser," and "dummy." These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded, and presented.
Such insensitivities wouldn't even be acceptable even for a middle school student body election. But for the Oval Office? And to do so while brandishing a Bible and boasting of his Christian faith? I'm bewildered, both by his behavior and the public's support of it.
The stock explanation for his success is this: he has tapped into the anger of the American people. As one man said, "We are voting with our middle finger." Sounds more like a comment for a gang-fight than a presidential election. Anger-fueled reactions have caused trouble ever since Cain was angry at Abel.
We can only hope, and pray, for a return to decency. Perhaps Mr. Trump will better manage his antics. (Worthy of a prayer, for sure.) Or, perhaps the American public will remember the key role of the president is to be the face of America. When he speaks, he speaks for us. Whether we agree or disagree with the policies of the president, do we not hope that they behave in a way that is consistent with the status of the office?
Assertion is a speech act of an agent, a speaker. This topic belongs to pragmatics. But one can also speak of the assertoric force of a sentence, considered apart from a context of use. So considered, assertoric force is presumably an aspect of a sentence's semantics along with the sentence's content. That is what I want to think about in this entry. The assertoric force of a sentence is, as it were, a semantic correlate of the speech act of assertion. I cannot assert a sentence unless it is of the right grammatical form. I can assert 'Dan is drunk' but not 'Dan, be drunk!' or 'Is Dan drunk?' or 'Would that Dan were drunk.'
Suppose I assert that Dan is drunk. I do this by tokening the sentence type 'Dan is drunk.' The assertoric force of the tokened sentence type is indicated by 'is' which signals the indicative mood among other things. Now here is my question: Are indicative mood and assertoric force the same, or different? When I refer to the assertoric force of a sentence, am I referring to its indicativity, and vice versa? Or must we distinguish between indicativity and assertoric force? I will argue that they are the same property.
Consider this exchange between speakers A and B:
A: Peter is innocent.
B: (Ironically) Yeah, right. Peter is innocent.
Although both A and B are tokening 'Peter is innocent,' only A is asserting that Peter is innocent. Now the sentence type considered by itself is in the indicative mood. So I am tempted to say that assertoric force, as a semantic component, is identical to indicativity. Both tokens have assertoric force despite the fact that only one is asserted. Now consider this example:
1. If Peter is innocent, then his conviction is unjust.
To assert a conditional is not to assert its antecedent. (Or its consequent for that matter.) The antecedent, 'Peter is innocent,' is in the indicative mood. I want to say that it has assertoric force despite the fact that it is not being asserted.
What is assertoric force? I suggest that it is that property of a sentence that renders it capable of being used by an agent to say something either true or false. As far as I can see, it is the same as the property of indicativity. Sentences with assertoric force can be used without being asserted, but no sentence lacking assertoric force can be asserted. To say that a sentence is assertoric, or has assertoric force, is to say that it is of the appropriate form for the making of assertions.
Since assertoric force either is or is equivalent to the property of being either true or false, a sentence's being assertoric does not entail its being true. Nor, of course, does a sentence's being asserted by someone entail its being true. To assert a sentence is to assert it as being true, but that is not to say that an asserted sentence is true. Whatever truth is, it involves a relation to something external to sentences or propositions.
One reason, the best reason, is to keep ourselves face-to-face with the reality of death. To live well is to live in the truth, without evasion. Transhumanist and cryonic fantasies aside, death cannot be evaded. We remember the dead, then, for our own spiritual benefit. Where they are, we will be. And soon enough. But people think they have plenty of time. Don't put off until the eleventh hour your preparation for death. You may die at 10:30.
Another reason is because we owe the dead something: honor, remembrance, gratitude, care of their monuments, legacies and intentions. But how can anything be owed to the no longer existent?
For a taste of some of the underlying puzzles, see Death as a Relational Harm?
Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, Twelve, 2012, p. 91:
If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.
Witty unto the end. But in the end, what does wit get you? One last vain flash of brilliance and then extinction — or judgment.
Robert V. Koepp, long-time commenter at this weblog, died on Leap Day, 2012. Here is what I had to say about him in 2012.
Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist and I have loosely referred to him in the same way, violating my own strictures against loose talk. Mea culpa. But of course Sanders is not a socialist in any reasonably strict sense of the term. Not only does he misuse the term, but he also does so quite foolishly since in American politics 'socialist' remains a dirty word. By so labeling himself he insures that he will never be more than a Vermont senator. He is a decent old coot, unlike the despicable Hillary, but in the end a side show on the way to the main event. Practically, then, my question is moot, but theoretically interesting nonetheless.
Sanders recently claimed that he, like Pope Francis, is a socialist. When asked to clarify his meaning, he said the following: "Well, what it means to be a socialist, in the sense of what the pope is talking about, what I'm talking about, is to say that [1] we have got to do our best and live our lives in a way that alleviates human suffering, [2] that does not accelerate the disparities of income and wealth."
I have intercalated numbers to distinguish the two different claims Sanders makes. [1] has nothing specifically to do with socialism. After all, I agree with [1] and I support free enterprise under the rule of law. Capitalism is good because it leads to prosperity and the alleviation of human suffering. Capitalism makes charitable giving possible. [2] has something to do with socialism but it is based on the foolish notion that there is something wrong with inequality as such.
The main point, however, is that Sanders' definition of 'socialism' is risible. Here is a dictionary definition adequate for present purposes:
Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods;
a system of society or group living in which there is no private property : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.
By this definition, Sanders is not a socialist. For he does not advocate government ownership of the means of production, nor is he out to abolish all private property. He needs capitalism to generate the loot that he wants to confiscate and redistribute.
Here it is argued that Sanders would do better to label himself a social democrat rather than a democratic socialist.
While Sanders is not a socialist strictly speaking you could say he is drifting in the socialist direction toward the omni-competent (omni-incompetent?) and omni-intrusive state. So if you value liberty you must oppose Bernie and Hillary and the whole bunch of gun-grabbing, religion-bashing, race-baiting, tradition-trashing, free speech-despising, liberty-quashing, Constitution-shredding, state-worshipping, hate-America leftists.
So if it comes down to Trump versus Hillary, you must roll the dice and vote for the awful Trump and hope for the best.
Another spectacular column by Victor Davis Hanson. I will resist the temptation to quote the entire piece.
On college:
Today’s campuses have become as foreign to American traditions of tolerance and free expression as what followed the Weimar Republic. To appreciate cry-bully censorship, visit a campus “free-speech” area. To witness segregation, walk into a college “safe space.” To hear unapologetic anti-Semitism, attend a university lecture. To learn of the absence of due process, read of a campus hearing on alleged sexual assault. To see a brown shirt in action, watch faculty call for muscle at a campus demonstration. To relearn the mentality of a Chamberlain or Daladier, listen to the contextualizations of a college president. And to talk to an uneducated person, approach a recent college graduate.
On Bernie:
Sanders has little appreciation that he is an artifact of free-market capitalism, which alone has created enough bounty for such a demagogue to call for massive redistribution—in a way impossible for socialists any longer in exhausted Cuba, Greece, Venezuela, or any other command-economy paradise. Where does Sanders think his statism has worked—China, North Korea, Bolivia, Cuba, or the ossified European Union?
On Hillary:
Mrs. Clinton is now like a tottering third-world caudillo—she can’t really continue on in politics and she can’t quit trying if she wants to stay out of jail. Her possible indictment depends entirely on her political viability and utility. She and the once disbarred Bill Clinton might appear like tired, tragic dinosaurs, bewildered that politics have left them behind in their late sixties—were it not for these aging egoists’ routine petulance and sense of entitlement.
On Trump:
Donald Trump is probably not a serious student of the European 1930s, but in brilliant fashion he has sized up the public’s worries over a Potemkin economy, exhaustion with wars, and namby-pamby leadership. His own remedy is 1930s to the core: nationalism, crude bombast, mytho-history, and sloganeering without much detail. Trump’s trajectory is predicated on the premise that a jaded public cares more about emotion than logic, and how a leader speaks rather than what he says.
In European 1930s street-brawling fashion, no one knows quite whether Trump is a 1990s Clinton Democrat, a 1980s Reagan Republican, or a Perotist misfit. He has thrown a ball and chain through the pretentious glass of American campaigning. Trump excites voters because he can profane, smear, interrupt, and fabricate—on the premise that as a performance artist he reifies what they think but don’t dare say about a corrupt political class and its warped, politically correct values. Trump reminds Americans what deterrence is: the supposedly courageous media, the so-called truth-to-power leftists, and the sober and judicious careerist politicians are all terrified how he might reply or react to their criticism. None of them want to spend 2-3 days trading smears with Donald Trump.
On Pope Francis:
Not since Pius XII has a pope proved as mysterious and exasperating as Francis. He seems not to have transcended the parochial time and space of Peronist Argentina. The well-meaning and kindly pope acts as if he is unworried about the historical wages of leftwing authoritarianism and government-mandated redistribution. Why would a pontiff, protected by medieval walls and Vatican territorial security, blast U.S. immigration policy toward Mexican illegal immigrants?
Since Obama’s reelection, the southern border has been wide open, in naked efforts to recalibrate American electoral demography. The U.S. has taken in more immigrants, legal and illegal, than has any other country—the only impediment for entry is being educated, skilled, with resources, and insisting on legality. The U.S. last year allowed nearly $80 billion to be sent in annual remittances to Mexico and Latin America, mostly from those here illegally. Certainly, Mexico, in a most un-Christian fashion, has built walls on its own southern border to prevent unlawful entry, published comic-book manuals to instruct its emigrants how to violate U.S. immigration law, and written into its own constitution repulsive racial prerequisites for emigrating to Mexico—all to the apparent ignorance of the otherwise intrusively editorializing pope. Mexico’s own obsession with exporting its indigenous people to the U.S. is predicated on historic Mexican racism, always emanating from grandees in Mexico City.
On segregation:
Segregation, not integration and assimilation, is the new trajectory of racial relations. “White privilege” is said to be such an insidious aid to career success that careerist whites like Elizabeth Warren, Ward Churchill, Shaun King, and Rachel Dolezal will do almost anything to insist that they are really non-white. The president of the United States invited a rapper for a White House visit. The rapper's latest album cover shows a dead white judge lying at the feet of celebratory African-American men, with fists of money and champagne held in triumph—in front of the White House. Reality imitates art. Could the president give another Cairo speech about such symbolism?
Is it perhaps time to give dictatorship a chance?
I would have liked to have read from Professor Hanson a comparison of the sexual decadence of Weimar Germany and that of Weimar America.
A regular reader, professional philosopher, and Trump supporter writes that he is "very puzzled" by my position on Donald Trump. The occasion of his puzzlement is my linkage to a vitriolic anti-Trump piece by C. W. Cooke at NRO.
But what exactly is supposed to be so terrible about Trump? So terrible as compared to anyone else who has any chance of winning the [Republican] nomination or the election? For the most part, he [C. W. Cooke] seems to be focused on issues of character or history: Trump is 'an entitled mess' with a 'questionable' record, he merely pretends to be religious, etc. He fails to even address the real reason for Trump's appeal.
What's so bad about him? Well, for one thing he is vicious and narcissistic. He is in some ways like Brian Leiter who is also a New Yorker and who is on record as justifying his offensive behavior because he is one. Like Leiter, Trump viciously attacks people without provocation and then acts hurt and wronged when a reply in kind is made, sometimes to the point of threatening a law suit in retaliation. Trump's attack on Carly Fiorina's appearance is a clear example, one of many. He did not criticize her on something over which she has control such as personal hygiene, but because she is not beautiful. And he did it in public. Is this the sort of person we want representing the greatest country that has ever existed? If nothing else, it shows very bad judgment on his part.
And then there is the fact that the man is mendacious. Many of us conservatives are sick of the brazen liars in politics. Obama and Hillary are prime examples. It is now well-known that Obamacare was rammed though on the basis of repeated lies. There is no doubt that both Obama and Hillary are liars in the strict sense of that term. Why would we want another presidential liar? Trump clearly lied when, 'channeling' Code Pink, he claimed that Bush the Younger lied about WMDs in Iraq. The man seems incapable of controlling his mouth.
You say all politicians lie? But are they all liars? There is a difference. Are they all brazen liars in the Obama mold? It may be a good idea to make some distinctions here. In any case a defense on the ground that all politicians lie is pretty weak.
Is Trump a conservative or a leftist? We expect Obama and Hillary to lie: they are leftists. Truth is not a leftist value. What matters to a leftist is power and winning. That sounds just like Trump. Winning is what counts; otherwise you are a 'loser.' Winning by any means. The end, winning, justifies the means, e.g., lying about George W. Bush, a morally decent man, even if inept.
Vicious, petty, petulant, narcissistic, and how about unprincipled? Ted Cruz is rooted in sound conservative principles. Trump is about as principled as Hillary, which is to say devoid of principles except for the supreme 'principle' of personal ambition. Anything to win. When Cruz pointed out that Trump had reversed himself on key positions, he called Cruz a liar when the mendacity is all in the Trumpster's court. He cannot take any criticism; he can only flail about and lash back.
Not only is he unprincipled, his proposals are little more than vacuous bluster. He says he will build a wall. That's great. I'm all for it. But he also says that the Mexicans will pay for it. How exactly? He said something last night about trade deficits. But how is this supposed to work in detail? We got nothing last night. In all fairness, his people have made some detailed proposals here. Perhaps the Donald should bone up on his own position statements.
Trump has some good ideas but he is incapable of articulating them in a way that could appeal to any reasonable person and persuade fence-sitters. For example, he has called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration. That is a sound idea easily defended. But he can't defend it or even articulate it. For example, to properly articulate the proposal one has to add some qualifications. Suppose an American citizen who is a Muslim visits a relative in Turkey. Does the Trump proposal prevent him from returning to the USA? It had better not. And Trump had better make this clear.
A typical business-type, he seem incapable of thinking in any abstract way grounded in principles. If I wanted to persuade you of the reasonableness of a moratorium on Muslim immigration, I would start with the idea that there is no legal or moral right to immigrate. I would then make points about the purposes of immigration and right of a nation to defend its culture and values, and in so doing select immigrants on that basis. I would explicitly point out that there is nothing 'xenophobic' about an immigration policy that excludes unassimilable elements and favors certain countries of origin over others. I would point out that at the present time there is no net benefit to Muslim immigration. I would make sure that people understand that moratoria, by definition, are temporary. And so on.
Is Trump capable of this? Is he capable of persuading anyone not already a member of the choir? I see no evidence of it. Instead of calmly making a case for those of his proposals that are reasonable, he alienates people with incendiary rhetoric, vicious and wholly unnecessary personal attacks, bluster and braggadocio. These are not just 'academic' points I am making. They pertain to electability. Hillary must be stopped. Trump, I fear, won't be able to stop her because of his manifold defects as a candidate. He won't be able to persuade enough people to support him. It is a good bet that many conservatives will stay home out of disgust.
You say he is a builder. Excellent. But what does he build? Casinos. So we need more casinos? What we really need in this country is moral renewal. But a moral low-life like Trump is not the man to lead it.
People are inspired by the fact that he's giving them a _voice_ for the first time. They can't speak plainly about the evils of immigration and multiculturalism, for example, and he talks about it. The country is facing existential threats, and pretty much everyone in power, including mainstream 'conservatives', pretends that it's all great. In this situation, what matters is that someone is standing up for the beliefs and values of ordinary people who've been silenced.
Here I am in broad agreement with my reader. Trump's appeal is a populist appeal. He 'channels' people's 'inner Jacksonian.' He does give people a voice and says for them what they cannot say for themselves free of reprisal. People are sick and tired of political correctness. They are disgusted by the liberal-left scum who have been allowed to infiltrate our institutions.
But the question is not what explains Trump's popularity; the question is how to stop Hillary. Can Trump stop her? I don't know. And I don't know whether Cruz has a better shot at stopping her.
But if Trump gets the nomination I will of course vote for him. Politics is always about the lesser of evils.
Want more? Read here how Trump got beta'd last night.
This weblog averages about 1,350 page views per day. But yesterday it snagged 10,695 views, and now at 6:20 AM local time it has already racked up 3,200 or so. What explains this? Reddit got hold of my Zappfe post, scroll down a bit, and that must be driving the surge.
Perhaps we philosophers need to pay more attention to anti-natalism as a cultural phenomenon and as a component in der Untergang des Abendlandes.
We are losing the will to perpetuate our civilization and its values. Christians in the Middle East are being slaughtered and their churches pulverized by Muslim savages. So what did Pope Francis say in response to Donald Trump's call for a wall along the southern U.S. border? We don't need to build walls, but bridges. Francis the fool is one dope of a pope.
Evangelicals understand this, though they are too polite and politic to put it the way I just did. This is why, mirabile dictu, so many of them support Trump, the nasty sybarite of Gotham who builds casinos to the greater glory of Lust, Greed, Gluttony, and Lady Luck.
Point of logic: 'Muslim savages' does not imply that all Muslims are savages. Or do you think that 'deciduous trees' implies that all trees are deciduous?
UPDATE 2/27: Traffic settled down a bit yesterday with a mere 4,509 page views. It should get back to normal over the next few days. As every conservative appreciates, the 'regard' of fellow mortals is a decidedly mixed blessing. I am quite happy to bump along at 1, 500 page views per day. Obscurity is bliss and he who craves fame is a fool. Fame is conferred by others and the quality of these others is a good measure of the value of fame.
"Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method," Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism, vol, 12, no. 2 (2015), pp. 99-125. This is a long review article on Peter van Inwagen's Existence: Essays in Ontology, Cambridge University Press, 2014.
"Facts: An Essay in Aporetics" in Francesco F. Calemi, ed., Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, Walter de Gruyter, 2016, pp. 105-131.
This volume also includes contributions by Matthew Tugby, Francesco F. Calemi, Peter van Inwagen, Peter Simons, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Javier Cumpa, Kristie Miller, Stephen Mumford, Andrea Borghini, Michele Paolini Paoletti, Tuomas E. Tahko, D. H. Mellor, Francesco Orilia, and Paolo Valore.
