I am happy to see that Ed is back to blogging. It have reproduced his latest entry and added some comments.
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Peter Geach (“Intentional Identity.” Journal of Philosophy 64, 627-32, reprinted in Logic Matters. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972) argues that the following sentence can be true even if there are no witches, yet can only be true if Hob and Nob are, as it were, thinking of the same witch.
Hob thinks that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow.
But how it could be true? If we read it in the opaque way of reading indirect speech clauses then each that-clause must stand on its own syntactically, but there is no way of interpreting the pronoun ‘she’ as a bound variable. The two thoughts add up, as it were, to ‘for some x, x has blighted Bob’s mare, and x killed Cob’s sow. But we can’t split them up into two separate thoughts, because of the second part of the conjunction. I.e. the following is not well-formed.
* Hob thinks that for some x, x has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether x killed Cob’s sow.
On the other hand, if we render the original sentence in the transparent way, we have to presume the existence of a real witch, i.e. some witch such that Hob thinks that she has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow. Neither of these are satisfactory. I don’t propose any answer yet, but I will start by noticing that the same problem attaches to saying what sentences say, rather than what people think.
(1) A witch has blighted Bob’s mare. (2) She killed Cob’s sow. (3) Sentence (1) says that a witch has blighted Bob’s mare. (4) Sentence (2) says that she (or the witch) has blighted Bob’s mare.
Clearly sentences (3) and (4) are true, even though sentences (1) and (2) are false. Yet the problem is exactly the same as the problem involving different thoughts. Thus we have simplified the problem. We don’t have to worry about explaining thoughts in different minds, but only how we express the meaning of different sentences. Meanings are a little easier than thoughts.
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Ed maintains that the problem of intentional identity can be put as a problem concerning what sentences say rather than as a problem concerning what people think. Ed thinks that this reformulation renders the problem simpler and more tractable. But here I object.
Strictly speaking, sentences don't say anything; people say things using sentences. For (1) to express a thought or proposition, it must be assertively uttered by a definite person in definite circumstances. What's more, the assertive utterance has to be thoughtful, i.e., made by a thinker who intends to express a proposition by his assertive utterance of (1). So we are brought right back to people and their thoughts. We have turned in a circle. (Out of respect for Ed, I will not comment on the 'diameter' of the circle.)
To exfoliate or unwrap what I just wrote:
a. Strictly speaking. In philosophy we must speak and write strictly and avoid the sorts of shorthand expression that are perfectly acceptable in ordinary discourse. Philosophy is not ordinary discourse. It is (in part) an attempt to understand ordinary discourse, its logic, its ontological commitments, and its connections with thought.
b. Utterance. To utter a sentence is to produce a token of it consisting of sounds or phonemes. If x is a token of y, then y is a type. So (1) above represents a sentence-type. What your eyes see is of course a token of that type, a token that deputizes for the type, which you cannot see with your eyes. The token you see is of course not an utterance, but an inscription consisting of visible marks. To utter a sentence is only one way of tokening it. To token is to produce a token in some medium.
c. Assertive utterance. Not every tokening is assertive. If I write or say 'Cats are animals' in English class to illustrate, say, noun-verb agreement, I have not asserted that cats are animals. Assertion is a speech act. I can utter a sentence without asserting anything even if the sentence is grammatically declarative.
d. Circumstances. There are many people in the world who rejoice under the nickname 'Bob.' A context of utterance, or, more broadly, a context of tokening is required to know which Bob is being referred to when (1) is assertively uttered.
e. Thoughtful. To say something I cannot merely mechanically produce a token of a sentence even if the sentence upon being heard by a hearer conveys a proposition or thought to the hearer. Voice synthesizers never say anything, even when they produce such sentence tokens as 'Your prescription is ready at Walgreen's pharmacy at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth.' Saying involves a person or thinker's intention to express a thought or proposition.
As for solving Geach's puzzle, I have nothing to propose with confidence. But how would Ed counter the following suggestion? Ed tells us that, "if we render the original sentence in the transparent way, we have to presume the existence of a real witch, i.e. some witch such that Hob thinks that she has blighted Bob’s mare, and Nob wonders whether she killed Cob’s sow."
Ed is assuming that the particular quantifier is an existential quantifier. He is assuming that 'Some witch is such that _______' is logically equivalent to 'There exists a witch such that ________.' The assumption is entirely plausible. But it could be rejected by a Meinongian. If 'a witch' picks out a nonexistent item from the realm of Aussersein, then what would be wrong with a transparent reading of the original sentence? If there are nonexistent items, then one can quantify over them using quantifiers that are objectual (as opposed to substitutional) but not existentially loaded.
Might Geach's puzzle dissolve on a Meinongian approach? Is there any literature on this?
A tip of the hat to Karl White for pointing us to this article which includes a critique of Francis Beckwith's contribution to the debate. Craig concludes:
So whether Muslims and Christians can be said to worship the same God is not the truly germane question. The question is which conception of God is true.
I would allow that the latter question is the more important of the two questions, but it is not the question most of us were discussing. In my various posts, I endeavored to remain neutral on the question of the truth of Christianity while pursuing the former question. See the first two related articles infra.
Among other things, Bernie Sanders supports free tuition at all public colleges and universities, medicare for all, and an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. Are such socialist proposals implementable? Are they economically feasible? A necessary but not sufficient condition of practical implementation would have to be a major curtailment of the influx of illegal immigrants and a serious reform of the system of legal immigration. And yet when we look at his immigration policy, we see that Sanders wants to allow all immigrants, legal or illegal, to purchase health care under the Affordable Care Act; that he supports sanctuary cities, and that he opposes building a physical barrier along the southern border.
It's a bit of a paradox: you cannot combine socialism with porous borders and sanctuary cities. 'Freebies' such as free tuition will attract too many legal and illegal immigrants. If you want to be 'liberal' with citizens, you cannot also be 'liberal' with non-citizens. And of course what is free for some will not be free for others, for those who are footing the bill. There are only so many fat cats, and they will not allow themselves to be fleeced.
A second, sharper, form of the paradox. A welfare state cannot work without strict border control. Equally, a welfare state cannot work without large numbers of people willing to work at physically demanding and relatively low-paying jobs such as re-roofing houses in Phoenix in the summer. Where are these people going to come from? Presumably from outside: the existing population, having had their work ethic eroded by welfare state benefits, will not want to work at the demanding jobs. So a welfare state needs strict and also lax immigration controls. There is also the problem that an aging population the members of which will most of them live for many years in retirement on supposed 'entitlements' is not sustainable without plenty of young immigrants.
Feel the 'Bern' yet? Feel the tension? It would be wonderful if turkeys flew around ready-roasted or were delivered by government drones on major holidays. But who is going to foot the bill?
At the other end of the political spectrum, the libertarians are also in a bit of a bind. "Open the borders!" John Stossel once said. That would work only on condition that you first dismantle the welfare state. But the welfare state is here to stay. The only question is whether we can contain it or roll it back a little.
So choose. You can't have both a robust welfare state that provides 'free' health care, education, and so on while also having a liberal immigration policy. You will have noticed, if you went to Sanders' site, that he refuses to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. After all, that would be 'xenophobic' as liberals (mis)use the word.
But the question of Sanders' socialism is moot. He won't get the Democrat nomination. Hillary will get the nod. And no, she will not be indicted, no matter what further evidence of her wrongdoing turns up. It is really very simple. Obama will not allow his 'gains' to be overturned or be in any way mitigated by a Republication administration. The rule of law counts for nothing for those who believe that their ends — noble and worthy in their own eyes — are to be achieved by any means.
So it will come down to a contest between Hillary and Rubio, and Hillary will win. Cruz is a brilliant man and would make a good president, but he is not electable because of his personality. Rubio is more personable, more of a regular guy. Trump will flame out. He is essentially an empty suit riding a short-term populist wave, to mix some metaphors. In any case, there is no way the Republicans would allow his nomination.
Those are my predictions. I hope I'm wrong about Hillary winning. She is Sanders writ small, a gradualist Sanders if you will, who cunningly hides her true convictions in the manner of the stealth ideologue that Sanders is too honest to be. I am assuming, perhaps falsely, that Hillary has convictions and is not merely out for personal gain. It might be better to say that she either has no convictions or leftist convictions.
A neo-reactionary I was arguing with a while back claimed in effect that I have more in common with Muslims than I do with contemporary liberals. This entry will begin an exploration of this theme.
A reader the other day referred me to to Sayyid Qutb (Milestones p.120):
If the family is the basis of the society, the basis of the family is the division of labour between husband and wife, and the upbringing of children is the most important function of the family, then such a society is indeed civilized. In the Islamic system of life, this kind of a family provides the environment under which human values and morals develop and grow in the new generation; these values and morals cannot exist apart from the family unit. If, on the other hand, free sexual relationships and illegitimate children become the basis of a society, and if the relationship between man and woman is based on lust, passion and impulse, and the division of work is not based on family responsibility and natural gifts; if woman's role is merely to be attractive, sexy and flirtatious, and if the woman is freed from her basic responsibility of bringing up children; and if, on her own or under social demand, she prefers to become a hostess or a stewardess in a hotel or ship or air company, thus spending her ability for material productivity rather than in the training of human beings, because material production is considered to be more important, more valuable and more honourable than the development of human character, then such a civilization is 'backward' from the human point of view, or 'Jahili' in the Islamic terminology.
The emphases were added by my reader. He asks: "Is Qutb right or wrong? In which version of conservatism would this doctrine fit best?"
Five years ago, on 11 February 2011, unaware of the above passage, I wrote, in an entry occasioned by the death of Maria Schneider of "Last Tango in Paris" fame/imfamy:
Islamic culture is in many ways benighted and backward, fanatical and anti-Enlightenment, but our trash culture is not much better. Suppose you are a Muslim and you look to the West. What do you see? Decadence. And an opportunity to bury the West.
If Muslims think that our decadent culture is what Western values are all about, and something we are trying to impose on them, then we are in trouble. They do and we are.
Militant Islam's deadly hatred of us should not be discounted as the ravings of lunatics or psychologized away as a reflex of envy at our fabulous success, despite the obvious presence of lunacy and envy. For there is a kernel of insight in the ravings that we do well to heed. Sayyid Qutb , theoretician of the Muslim Brotherhood, who visited the USA at the end of the '40s, writes in Milestones (1965):
Humanity today is living in a large brothel! One has only to glance at its press, films, fashion shows, beauty contests, ballrooms, wine bars and broadcasting stations! Or observe its mad lust for naked flesh, provocative pictures, and sick, suggestive statements in literature, the arts, and mass media! And add to all this the system of usury which fuels man's voracity for money and engenders vile methods for its accumulation and investment, in addition to fraud, trickery, and blackmail dressed up in the garb of law.
A wild exaggeration in 1965, the above statement is much less of an exaggeration today. But setting aside the hyperbole, we are in several ways a sick and decadent society getting worse day by day. On this score, if on no other, we can learn something from our Islamist critics. The fact that a man wants to chop your head off does not mean that he has nothing to teach you. We often learn more from our enemies than from our friends. Our friends often will spare us hard truths.
Turning now to the topmost passage from Qutb, what should we say about it? Here are some points where this conservative agrees with Qutb and some points where he disagrees.
Points of Agreement
1. The family is the building block of a societal order that deserves to be called civilized. The central function of the family is the education and socialization of children. Human offspring need to be brought from the animal to the social level. This requires the cooperation of husband and wife, man and woman, and a division of labor reflecting the different natural abilities of men and women.
2. The transmission of life-enhancing values and the inculcation of morality must occur primarily at the family level, starting when children are very young. This is where the transmission and inculcation is most effectively achieved.
3. The effects of the 'sexual revolution' have been largely negative. The 'revolution' has not led on the whole to human liberations but rather to enslavement, to the destruction of families, and the degradation of the entire culture so much so that television and popular culture can be described, without too much exaggeration, as an open sewer.
4. The "training of human beings" and "the development of human character" are more important and more honorable than "material production."
Points of Disagreement
1. Qutb goes too far with his claim that the transmission of values and the inculcation of morality cannot occur apart from the family unit.
2. My main disagreement with Qutb is that he assigns women a social role which, while reflecting the natural strengths and abilities of women, is oppressive for many women in that it prevents them from developing as persons in the way men are allowed to develop themselves as persons and not merely as fathers. Clearly, many women have what it takes to become competent physicians, lawyers, engineers, university professors, etc. and among these women, some are better at their chosen fields than many men. This is not to say that women as a group are equal to men as a group with respect to ability in any of these fields; it is to say that women as a group should not be discriminated against on the basis of sex. The same goes for voting. While women as a group are too much influenced by their emotions and thus not as well-suited as men to make wise choices at the polling places, the franchise is overall good and it is just wrong to deny women a political say on the basis of their sex.
Of course, in some areas women should be discriminated against on the basis of sex. If you say that all combat roles in the military should be open to women, then I say you are a p.c.-whipped, crazy leftist. The fact that a handful of amazons could overpower a Navy SEAL cuts no ice.
So this makes me a paleoconservative who yet takes on board the best of the classically liberal tradition while avoiding the latter-day lunacies of contemporary liberalism as well as the extremism of the neo-reactionary paleocons. My reader asked: In which version of conservatism does Qutb's doctrine best fit? Answer: that of the neo-reactionary paleocons.
I expect to be, and have been, attacked from both sides. This is something a maverick philosopher should take pride in. The maverick philosopher navigates by the Polaris of Truth Herself, avoiding extremes, and shunning herds.
Time for my annual Super Bowl Sunday rant. But perhaps I should not be so harsh on the masses who need their panem et circenses to keep them distracted from matters of moment, both secular and spiritual. The Latin could be very loosely translated as 'food stamps and football.'
I won't be watching the game. I don't even know which teams are playing. Undoubtedly there is more to football than I comprehend. But the games are nasty, brutish, but not short, and I know all I need to know about the implements of shaving.
As for the buxom wenches who strut their stuff during the half-time show, the less I stoke the fire below the better.
I am no fan of spectator sports in general. We have too many sports spectators and too many overpaid professional louts. I preach the People's Sports, despite the leftish ring of that.
Remove your sorry tail from the couch of sloth and start a softball league with your friends and neighbors. Play volley ball whether in a pool or on dry land. Engage your fellow paisani in a game of bocce. (But don't call it bocce ball. Do you call tennis tennis ball?)
Or take the Thoreauvian high road, leave the People behind, and sally forth solo into the wild. As Henry said, "A man sits as many risks as he runs." Old Henry puts me in mind of Cactus Ed, the Thoreau of the American Southwest.
In Vox Clamantis in Deserto Edward Abbey has it right:
Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are — retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.
The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.
Compare the words Plato puts in the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedo:
. . . every pleasure and pain has a kind of nail, and nails and pins her [the soul] to the body, and gives her a bodily nature, making her think that whatever the body says is true. (tr. F. J. Church St. 83)
From Oscar Wilde to Plato to Hank Williams here channeled hauntingly through Kurt Nilsen and Willie Nelson:
I'm a rollin' stone all alone and lost For a life of sin I have paid the cost When I pass by all the people say Just another guy on the lost highway
Just a deck of cards and a jug of wine And a woman's lies make a life like mine On the day we met, I went astray I started rollin' down that lost highway
I was just a lad, nearly 22 Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you And now I'm lost, too late to pray Lord I paid the cost, on the lost highway
Now boys don't start your ramblin' 'round On this road of sin are you sorrow bound Take my advice or you'll curse the day. You started rollin' down that lost highway.
'Homophobic' is a coinage of leftists to prevent one of those famous 'conversations' that they otherwise call for. It is a question-begging epithet and semantic bludgeon meant to close down debate by the branding of their opponents as suffering from a mental defect. This is why only a foolish conservative acquiesces in the use of this made-up word. Language matters. One of the first rules for successful prosecution of the Kulturkampf is to never let the enemy distort the terms of the debate. Insist on standard English, and always slap them down when they engage in their notorious 'framing.' He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.
As for 'gay,' that too is a word we ought not surrender. Use the neutral 'homosexual.' Same with 'queer.' 'Queer' is a good old word. Nominalists think abstracta are queer entities. There is no implication that the analysis of such is in any way proctological.
It seems to me that the theory [the Millian theory of proper name] must fail as soon as its psychological implications are considered (those about beliefs are among them). In a judgement "Peter is wise" Peter must be somehow represented, not just linguistically but mentally. And since we are not omniscient, Peter-qua-represented will not equal Peter-qua-real ("warts and all"). In other words, there will have to be some conceptual content corresponding to "Peter" through which Peter will be represented; i.e. a "Sinn" or imperfect "Art der Gegebenheit" of Peter.
BV: I agree. The human mind is finite. So when I make a judgment about Peter, it cannot be Peter himself who is before my mind, Peter with all his properties. And yet something must be before my mind if I am to affirm that Peter is wise or even just to entertain the proposition that Peter is wise. Furthermore, this thinking reference or mental reference is prior to any linguistic reference. We can call this the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic. Chisholm championed it, but it is a controversial thesis. Now what it is that I have before my mind if it is not Peter himself?
Here very difficult questions arise. It seems we need some intermediary item to mediate the mind's commerce with the thing in reality. One vexing question is whether this intermediary item is or is not an ontological constituent of the infinitely-propertied thing in reality. If the intermediary item is a Fregean sense, then it is not such a constituent, but belongs in a third world (Third Reich?) of its own, a realm of Platonica, sealed off from the realm of primary reference (the first world) containing things like Peter. If the intermediary item is a Castanedan guise, then it is an ontological constituent of Peter.
Connected with this is the dispute whether Husserl's noema is something like Frege's Sinn.
I agree that "there will have to be some conceptual content corresponding to 'Peter' through which Peter will be represented."
This seems to me completely unrelated to the question of rigidity/non-rigidity of reference. It seems to me that all Kripke & Co. can (and do) prove is that names (normally) refer rigidly. But in my opinion rigidity/non-rigidity is not part of the semantics of an expression (Kripke's tacit assumption), but a way of its usage. Undeniably, you can use even a description rigidly, if you choose so. ("The president of the U.S. might very well not be a president" is perfectly meaningful and true, if "the president of the U.S." is meant to rigidly refer to whomever satisfies the description in the actual world.).
BV. Now you have lost me, Lukas. Suppose sense determines reference. And suppose the sense of 'Socrates' is specified by the definite description, 'the wisest Greek philosopher.' Used attributively as opposed to referentially (Donnellan), this definite description is non-rigid: it picks out different individuals in different possible worlds. So if the sense of 'Socrates' is given by 'the wisest Greek philosopher,' then the reference of 'Socrates' will be non-rigid. What then do you mean by "completely unrelated"?
But IMHO there is something true in the "mere label" intuition about names. I take names to have a dual role: First, they serve as imagined labels we use to mark individuals in order to be able to uniquely identify them. So far Kripke's intuitions are correct. But this role of a name is non-linguistic; in this role the name is not a sign but an imagined quasi-property of the individual. We could as well use real labels, real or imagined colours, numbers etc. Once an individual is named ("baptized"), we always have a descriptive content the one who (in this context) bears the name so-and-so uniquely representing that individual at our disposal. If we marked our individuals by means of colours, we would need a special linguistic item to represent such a description: the linguistic phrase "the one who (in this context) is marked by the colour so-and-so". But since we used words and not colours as our labels, we can use these very words as shorthands for such descriptions – and this is (usually) the other, properly linguistic role of proper names. Just like all other categorematic (extra-logical) terms, names in this role stand for a mental content, a "something-qua-mentally-represented" and in virtue of this can linguistically refer to the named individual. Note that this relation of "referring to" is distinct from (and conditioned by) the extra-linguistic relation of "naming" or "being a label of". This is why the theory is not circular (pace Kripke). Many names have this "minimal" meaning; but there are others, like "Jack the Ripper", that are shorthands for more substantial descriptions. But this does not preclude their capability to be used to refer rigidly – which, I would say, is the same thing as to supposit de re (in modal and other (hyper)intensional contexts). You need not expel the "reference-fixing descritpion" from the sphere of meaning in order to save the possibility of rigid reference.
BV: You are on to something important here. We need to distinguish the tagging/labeling function of names from their properly linguistic function. Suppose you and I each have a black cat and that the cats are practically indistinguishable. To tell them apart, to identify them, to refer to them, I put a red collar on mine and you put a blue collar on yours. The collars are tags or labels. As you point out, in effect, these collars are not signs of the cats, but something like properties of them or features of them. The collars by themselves have no semantic or referential function. The collars are, in themselves, senseless tags. The baptizing of a cat is the attaching of a collar. Corresponding to the physical act of my attaching a red collar to my cat is the sense expressed by the sentence, 'the cat with the red collar is Bill's cat.'
What makes the red collar signify Bill's cat cannot be the merely physical fact that the cat wears a red collar. We are brought back to intentionality and sense. A mind (my mind) must intend to mark my cat with a red collar, and to communicate this intention to Lukas I must use some such sentence as 'the cat with the red collar is my cat.'
The semantic function of a name cannot be exhausted by the object to which it refers since no physical item (whether a cat collar or sounds in the air or marks on paper) refers to anything. There has to be more to the semantics of a name than the object to which it refers. A name that actually names something cannot be a senseless tag.
The old man's libido on the wane, he thinks more clearly and more truly about sexual matters. And when the waning of all his physical forces and endowments reaches its term — will he then think best of all, or not at all?
The dove soars through the air and imagines it could soar higher and with less effort if there were no air to offer resistance. But the dove is mistaken. The dove on the wing does not understand the principle of the wing, Bernoulli's principle. Are we like the dove? The dove needs the air to fly. Do we need the body to think? Is the body necessary for thought? Pascal says that our whole dignity consist in thought. Is our dignity tied of necessity to the flesh ?
Or are we like the rocket whose propulsion has nothing to do with wings, the rocket the principle of whose propulsion is Newton's Third Law of Motion: To every action there is an equal but opposite reaction?
Barack Obama suffers from serious case of the real Islamophobia — fear of telling the truth about Islam. Even though a "progressive," he says nary a word about the rampant misogyny and homophobia in Islam or about Sharia law whose medieval strictures are preferred by 51% of American Muslims. Nor does he seem to care that so few of these same American Muslims actively oppose radical Islam. The president prefers the Hamas-linked CAIR to courageous reformers like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. But that's no surprise. For Obama, radical Islam doesn't even exist.
I also note a confusion that has been running through this discussion, about the meaning of ‘contradiction’. I do not mean to appeal to etymology or authority, but it’s important we agree on what we mean by it. On my understanding, a contradiction is not ‘the tallest girl in the class is 18’ and ‘the cleverest girl in the class is not 18’, even when the tallest girl is also the cleverest. Someone could easily believe both, without being irrational. The point of the Kripke puzzle is that Pierre seems to end up with an irrational belief. So it’s essential, as Kripke specifies, that he must correctly understand all the terms in both utterances, and that both utterances are logically contradictory, as in ‘Susan is 18’ and ‘Susan is not 18’.
Do we agree?
Well, let's see. The Maverick method enjoins the exposure of any inconsistent polyads that may be lurking in the vicinity. Sure enough, there is one:
An Inconsistent Triad
a. The tallest girl in the class is the cleverest girl in the class. b. The tallest girl in the class is 18. c. The cleverest girl in the class is not 18.
This trio is logically inconsistent in the sense that it is not logically possible that all three propositions be true. But if we consider only the second two limbs, there is no logical inconsistency: it is possible that (b) and (c) both be true. And so someone, Tom for example, who believes that (b) and also believes that (c) cannot be convicted of irrationality, at least not on this score. For all Tom knows — assuming that he does not know that (a) — they could both be true: it is epistemically possible that both be true. This is the case even if in fact (a) is true. But we can say more: it is metaphysically possible that both be true. For (a), if true, is contingently true, which implies that it is is possible that it be false.
By contrast, if Tom entertains together, in the synthetic unity of one consciousness, the propositions expressed by 'Susan is 18 years old' and 'Susan is not 18 years old,' and if Tom is rational, then he will see that the two propositions are logical contradictories of each other, and it will not be epistemically possible for him that both be true. If he nonetheless accepts both, then we have a good reason to convict him of being irrational, in this instance at least.
Given the truth of (a), (b) and (c) cannot both be true and cannot both be false. This suggests that the pair consisting of (b) and (c) is a pair of logical contradictories. But then we would have to say that the contradictoriness of the pair rests on a contingent presupposition, namely, the truth of (a). London Ed will presumably reject this. I expect he would say that the logical contradictoriness of a pair of propositions cannot rest on any contingent presupposition, or on any presupposition at all. Thus
d. Susan is 18
and
e. Susan is not 18
form a contradictory pair the contradictoriness of which rests on their internal logical form — Fa, ~Fa — and not on anything external to the propositions in question.
So what should we say? If Tom believes both (b) and (c), does he have contradictory beliefs? Or not?
The London answer is No! The belief-contents are not formally contradictory even though, given the truth of (a), the contents are such that they cannot both be true and cannot both be false. And because the belief-contents are not formally contradictory, the beliefs themselves — where a belief involves both an occurrent or dispositional state of a person and a belief-content towards which the person takes up a propositional attitude — are in no theoretically useful sense logically contradictory.
The Phoenix answer suggestion is that, because we are dealing with the beliefs of a concrete believer embedded in the actual world, there is sense to the notion that Tom's beliefs are contradictory in the sense that their contents are logically contradictory given the actual-world truth of (a). After all, if Susan is the tallest and cleverest girl, and the beliefs in question are irreducibly de re, then Tom believes, of Susan, that she is both 18 and not 18, even if Tom can gain epistemic access to her only via definition descriptions. That belief is de re, irreducibly, is entailed by (SUB), to which Kripke apparently subscribes:
SUB: Proper names are everywhere intersubstitutable salva veritate.
A Second Question
If, at the same time, Peter believes that Paderewski is musical and Peter believes that Paderewski is not musical, does it follow that Peter believes that (Paderewski is musical and Paderewski is not musical)? Could this conceivably be a non sequitur? Compare the following modal principle:
MP: If possibly p and possibly ~p, it does not follow that possibly (p & ~p).
For example, I am now seated, so it is possible that I now be seated; but it is also possible that I now not be seated, where all three occurrences/tokens of 'now' rigidly designate the same time. But surely it doesn't follow that it is possible that (I am now seated and I am now not seated). Is it perhaps conceivable that
BP: If it is believed by S that p and it is believed by S that ~p, it does not follow that it is believed by S that (p & ~p)?
Has anybody ever discussed this suggestion, even if only to dismiss it?
I have spoken before, romantically no doubt, of the mother tongue as our alma mater, our dear mother to whom we owe honor. Mater and matrix of our thoughts, she is yet deeper and higher than our thoughts, their sacred Enabler.
So I was pleased to come across a similar, albeit more trenchant, observation in Karl Kraus' Beim Wort Genommen, Koesel Verlag, 1955, pp. 134-135:
Ich beherrsche die Sprache nicht; aber die Sprache beherrscht mich vollkommen. Sie ist mir nicht die Dienerin meiner Gedanken. Ich lebe in einer Verbindung mit ihr, aus der ich Gedanken empfange, und sie kann mit mir machen, was sie will. Ich pariere ihr aufs Wort. Denn aus dem Wort springt mir der junge Gedanke entgegen und formt rueckwirkend die Sprache, die ihn schuf. Solche Gnade der Gedankentraechtigkeit zwingt auf die Knie und macht allen Aufwand zitternder Sorgfalt zur Pflicht. Die Sprache ist eine Herrin der Gedanken, und wer das Verhaeltnis umzukehren vermag, dem macht sie sich im Hause nuetzlich, aber sie sperrt ihm der Schoss.
I do not dominate language; she dominates me completely. She is not the servant of my thoughts. I live in a relation with her from which I receive thoughts, and she can do with me what she will. I follow her orders. For from the word the fresh thought springs, forming retroactively the language that created it. The grace of language, pregnant with thought, forces me to my knees and makes a duty of my expenditure of trembling conscientiousness. Language is a mistress of thought. To anyone who would reverse the relationship, she makes herself useful but denies access to her womb.
I might have translated Herrin as dominatrix if I wanted to accentuate the masochistic tone of the passage. 'Mistress' is obviously to be read as the female counterpart of 'master.'
The faults of Trump the vulgarian are legion. He is nasty, petty, petulant, egomaniacal . . . no true conservative . . . . So why do so many conservative Christians support him? Here is the answer.
By the way, he acquitted himself well last night, coming in second to Ted Cruz. And he graciously allowed that he was "honored" by his fine showing in Iowa. I would like to see a Cruz-Trump ticket, or a Trump-Cruz ticket. What I'd really like to see is an indictment of Hillary for her crimes. That won't happen, however. Obama's Department of Social Justice won't allow it.
This, the third main incarnation of MavPhil, commenced operations on Halloween, 2008. Since then it has racked up 3,501,215 page views. Daily average: 1,321.21. Total posts: 6,357. Total comments: 8,775.
Will I ever hang up the keyboard? I've been at this, almost daily, since May of 2004.
I can't see myself quitting as long as health and eyesight hold out. Blogging is just too deeply satisfying.
For one thing it satisfies the need to teach of someone who hated most classroom teaching. Philosophy is a magnificent, beautiful, and noble thing, but it is wasted on the typical undergraduate. In a class of 35, five might be worth teaching. And I taught at good schools. That is one of the reasons I resigned a tenured position at the age of 41. If you are reading this, you want to be here, and I'm glad to have you.
Second, blogging attracts the like-minded. Isolation is relieved and friendships are made, the genuine friendships of spiritual affinity as opposed to the superficial ones of mere propinquity. Ralph Waldo Emerson would have been a blogger for sure. "The good of publishing one's thoughts is that of hooking you to like-minded men, and of giving to men whom you value . . . one hour of stimulated thought." (Bliss Perry, The Heart of Emerson's Journals, p. 94.)
Third, blogging is superior to private journal writing because the publicity of it forces one to develop one's ideas more carefully and more thoroughly.
Fourth, the blogger has a reach that far exceeds that of the person who publishes in conventional ways.
