On ‘Stuff’ and ‘Ass’: A Language Rant

Too many people use the word 'stuff' nowadays. I was brought up to believe that it is a piece of slang best avoided in all but the most informal of contexts. So when I hear a good scholar make mention of all the 'stuff' he has published on this topic or that, I wonder how  long before he starts using 'crap' instead of 'stuff.'  "You know, Bill, I've published a lot of crap on anaphora; I think you'll find it  excellent." But why stop with 'crap'?  "Professor Zeitlich has published a fine piece of shit in Nous on temporal indexicals. Have you read it?"

If you ask me to read your 'stuff,' I may wonder whether you take it seriously and whether I should. But if you ask me to read your work, then I am more likely to take you seriously and give your work my attention. Why use 'stuff' when 'work' is available? Do you use 'stuff' so as not to appear stuffy? Or because you have a need for acceptance among  the unlettered? But why would you want such acceptance? Note that when 'stuff' is used interchangeably with 'work,' the former term does not acquire the seriousness of the latter, but vice versa: 'stuff' retains its low connotation and 'work' drops out. The net result is linguistic decline and an uptick in 'crudification,' to use an ugly word for an ugly thing.

No doubt there is phony formality. But that is no reason to elide the distinction between the informal and the formal.  A related topic is phony informality. An example of the latter is false intimacy, as when people people address complete strangers using their first names. This is offensive,  because the addresser is seeking to enjoy the advantages of intimacy (e.g., entering into one's trust) without paying the price.

'Ass' is another word gaining a currency that is already excessive. One wonders how far it will go. Will 'ass' become an all-purpose synecdoche? Run your ass off, work your ass to the bone, get your ass out of here . . . ask a girl's father for her ass in marriage? In the expression, 'piece of ass' the reference is not to the buttocks proper, but to an adjoining area. 'Ass' appears subject to a peculiar semantic spread. It can come to mean almost anything, as in 'haul ass,' which means to travel at a high rate of speed. I don't imagine that if one were hauling donkeys one could make very good time. So how on earth did this expression arise? (I had teenage friends who could not refer to a U-Haul trailer except as a U-Haul Ass trailer.)

Or consider that to have one's 'ass in a sling' is to be sad or dejected.   Here, 'ass' extends even unto a person's mood. Robert Hendrickson (Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, p. 36) suggests that 'ass in  a sling' is an extension of 'arm in a sling.' May be, but how does that get us from the buttocks to a mental state? I was disappointed to find a lacuna where Hendrickson should have had an entry on 'haul ass.'

'Ass' seems especially out of place in scholarly journals unless the reference is to some such donkey as Buridan's ass, or some such bridge as the pons asinorum, 'bridge of asses.' The distinguished philosopher Richard M. Gale, in a piece in Philo (Spring-Summer 2003, p. 132) in which he responds to critics, says near the outset that ". . . my aim is not to cover my ass. . . ." Well, I'm glad to hear it, but perhaps he should also tell us that he has no intention of 'sucking up' to his critics either.

In On the Nature and Existence of God (1991), Gale wonders why anyone would "screw around" with the cosmological argument if Kant is right that it depends on the ontological argument. The problem here is not  just that 'screw around' is slang, or that it has a sexual connotation, but that it is totally inappropriate in the context of a discussion of the existence/nonexistence of God. The latter is no joking matter, no mere plaything of donnish Spielerei. If God exists, everything is different; ditto if God does not exist. The nonexistence of God is not like the nonexistence of an angry unicorn on the far side of the moon, or the nonexistence of Russell's celestial teapot. As Nietzsche appreciated (Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, sec. 27), the death of God is the death of truth. But to prove that Nietzsche was right about this would require a long article or a short book. One nice thing about a blog post is that one can just stop when the going gets tough by pleading the inherent constraints of the genre.  Which is what I will now do.

Distasteful Slang

I have nothing against slang as such, but there are contexts in which it does not belong.  Here is a book by one Fr. Andrew Younan entitled Metaphysics and Natural Theology.  One chapter is entitled "Aristotle and the Other Guys."  Another "Thomas Aquinas — A Bunch of Stuff."  A third "God Stuff."

Disgusting.  Either you see why or you don't.  I can't argue you out of your low-rent sensibility.  In matters of sensibility, argument comes too late.

Residual Political Correctness Among Conservatives

Over at NRO, I found this in an otherwise very good column by Charles C. W. Cooke:

I daresay that if I had been in any of the situations that DeBoer describes, I would have walked happily out of the class. Why? Well, because there is simply nothing to be gained from arguing with people who believe that it is reasonable to treat those who use the word “disabled” as we treat those who use the word “n***er” . . . .

Isn't this precious?  Cooke shows that he owns a pair of cojones throughout the column but then he gets queasy when it comes to 'nigger.'  Why? Would he similarly tip-toe around 'kike' or 'dago'?  I doubt it. It is clear that he is aware of the difference between using a word to refer to something and talking about the word.  Philosophers call this the use-mention distinction.  Call it whatever you like, but observe it.

True:  'Boston' is disyllabic.
False: Boston is disyllabic.
True:  Boston is populous.
False: 'Boston' is populous.

Consider the following sentence

Some blacks refer to other blacks using the word 'nigger.'

The sentence is true.  Now of course I do not maintain that a sentence's being true justifies its assertive utterance in every situation. The above sentence, although appropriately asserted in the present context where a serious and important point is being made, would not be appropriately asserted in any number of other easily imagined contexts. 

But suppose that you take offense at the above sentence.  Well, then, you have taken inappropriate and unjustified offense, and your foolishness offends me!  Why is my being objectively offended of less significance than your being merely subjectively offended?  Your willful stupidity justifies my mockery and derision.  One should not give offense without a good reason.  But your taking inappropriate offense is not my problem but yours.

In this regard there is no substitute for sound common sense, a commodity which unfortunately is in short supply on the Left.  You can test whether you have sound common sense by whether or not you agree with the boring points I make in such entries as the following:

Of 'Blind Review' and Pandora's Box

Of Black Holes and Political Correctness

The White House Beer Summit    

Related articles
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The Use and Mention of Cartoons and Other Images

The Left’s Central Delusion

Thomas Sowell points to central planning.  I would add that the 'progressive' conviction that people are basically good along with the concomitant conviction that there is no such thing as radical evil is also deeply delusional, and also dangerously delusional. 

Sowell also has wise things to say about 'under-representation' and 'over-representation.'

Do libertarians have a central delusion?  I should think so.  It is the tendency wildly to exaggerate the number of  people who know their own long-term best interest.  To properly qualify and explain this claim requires a separate entry.

Saturday Night at her Oldies: Forgotten and Unforgotten Folkies

Paul Clayton, Wild Mountain Thyme.  Baez version from the "Farewell, Angelina" album.  A snippet of the same song by Dylan and Baez with a beaming Albert Grossmann looking on.  And while we're at it, here is Joan with Farewell, Angelina.  Beautiful as it is, it doesn't touch the magical quality of Dylan's own version which is in a dimension by itself.

Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone).  Dylan borrowed a bit of the melody and some of the lyrics for his "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."  Here performed by Marcus Mumford and Justin Hayward-Young.

Dylan talks about Clayton in the former's Chronicles, Volume One, Simon and Shuster, 2004, pp. 260-261.

Mark Spoelstra is also discussed by Dylan somewhere in Chronicles.  While I flip through the pages, you enjoy Sugar Babe, It's All Over Now.  The title puts me in mind of Dylan's wonderful It's All Over Now, Baby Blue.  Bonnie Raitt does a good job with it. Or perhaps you prefer the angel-throated Joan Baez. Comparing these two songs one sees why Spoelstra, competent as he is, is a forgotten folkie while Dylan is the "bard of our generation" to quote the ultra conservative Lawrence Auster.

Ah yes, Spoelstra is mentioned on pp. 74-75.

About Karen Dalton, Dylan has this to say (Chronicles, p. 12):

My favorite singer in the place [Cafe Wha?, Greenwich Village] was Karen Dalton. She was a tall white blues singer and guitar player, funky, lanky and sultry.  I'd actually met her before, run across her the previous summer outside of Denver in a mountain pass town in a folk club.  Karen had a voice like Billie Holliday's and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it.  I sang with her a couple of times.

Karen_dalton_newspaperIt Hurts Me Too

In My Own Dream.

Same Old Man

Acronyms, Initialisms, and Truncations

Every acronym is an abbreviation, but is every abbreviation an acronym?  I just read something in which 'SNBR' was referred to as an acronym.  'SNBR' abbreviates the trendy phrase 'spiritual but not religious.'  The phrase is  foolish despite its currency, but that is not my present topic. 

Call me pedantic, but 'SNBR' is so unlike 'laser,' 'sonar, 'radar,' 'Gestapo,'  'Stasi,' NASA,' and 'NATO,'  that it ought not be referred to as an acronym.   Call it an initialism.  Think of it as a species of the genus, abbreviation, alongside acronyms and truncations. 

What is the difference between an acronym and an initialism?  Perhaps this: An acronym can be  pronounced as a a word, whereas an initialism cannot be pronounced as a word, but only as a list of letters.  Consider 'BBC' which abbreviates 'British Broadcasting Company.'  One can pronounce, sequentially, the individual letters as Bee-Bee-Cee and thereby communicate something, but the sound you get from pronouncing 'BBC' as a word won't communicate anything except to yourself and your cat.  Same goes for 'HTML,' the standard abbreviation for 'hyper text markup language.'

'App' is a truncation, most commonly of 'application' in the sense of 'computer program.'  But just last night I saw a TV commercial in which 'app' was used as a truncation of 'appetizer.'  I was led to believe that Appleby's serves up great 'apps.'

Acronyms and truncations are both pronounceable as words.  What then is the difference between the two especially since acronyms involve truncations of words?  For example, the acronym Gestapo derives from the phrase Geheime Staatspolizei which is composed of two words  which are then treated as three words each of which is truncated down to its initial two or three letters.  Thus: Ge-sta-po.

Perhaps we can say that a truncation involves the shortening of a single word whereas an acronym involves the shortening of two or more words.

'Arizona State University' is abbreviated as 'ASU.'  Initialism or acronym?  I said above that an initialism cannot be pronounced as a word.  But 'ASU' can be so pronounced, and I do sometimes so pronounce it when I am talking to people associated with the university, e.g. 'I'll meet you at Ah-Soo by the fons philosophorum." (As I have said or written to Kid Nemesis.)

So what do we say about this example?

I got some help from this page.

Does any of this matter?  Well, it matters if language matters, and it does. 

Filed under: Language Matters

Van Inwagen, Properties, and Bare Particulars

In this entry I expand on my claim that Peter van Inwagen's theory of properties commits him to bare particulars, not in some straw-man sense of the phrase, but in a sense of the phrase that comports with what proponents of bare particulars actually have claimed.  I begin by distinguishing among four possible senses of 'bare particular.'

Four Senses of 'Bare Particular'

1. A bare particular is an ordinary concrete particular that lacks properties.  I mention this foolish view only to set it aside.  No  proponent of bare particulars that I am aware of ever intended the phrase in this way.  And of course, van Inwagen is not committed to bare particulars in this sense.

2. A bare particular is an ontological constituent of an ordinary concrete particular, a constituent that has no properties.  To my knowledge, no proponent of bare particulars ever intended the phrase in this way.  In any case, the view is untenable and may be dismissed.  Van Inwagen is of course not committed to this view.  He is a 'relation' ontologist, not a 'constituent' ontologist.

3. A bare particular is an ontological constituent of an ordinary concrete particular, a constituent that does have properties, namely, the properties associated with the ordinary particular in question, and has them by instantiating (exemplifying) them.  This view is held by Gustav Bergmann and by David Armstrong in his middle period.  Armstrong, however, speaks of  thin particulars rather than bare particulars, contrasting them with thick particulars (what I am calling ordinary concrete particulars).  When he does uses 'bare particular,' he uses the phrase incorrectly and idiosyncratically to refer to something like (1) or (2).  For example, in Universals and Scientific Realism, Cambridge UP, 1978, vol. I, p. 213, he affirms something he calls the "Strong Principle of the Rejection of Bare Particulars":

For each particular, x, there exists at least one non-relational property, P, such that x is P.

(I should think that the first occurrence of 'P' should be replaced by 'P-ness' despite the unfortunate sound of that.)  This principle of Armstrong is plausibly read as a rejection of (1) and (2).  It is plainly consistent with (3).

But of course I do not claim that van Inwagen is committed to bare or thin particulars in the sense of (3). For again, van Inwagen is not a constituent ontologist.

4. A bare particular is an ordinary concrete particular that has properties by instantiating them, where instantiation is a full-fledged external asymmetrical relation (not a non-relational tie whatever that might come to) that connects  concrete objects to abstract objects, where abstract objects are objects that are not in space, not in time, and are neither causally active nor causally passive. 

What is common to (3) and (4) is the idea that bare particulars  have properties all right, but they have them in a certain way, by being externally related to them.  A bare particular, then, is nothing like an Aristotelian primary substance which has, or rather is, its essence or nature.   The bareness of a bare particular, then, consists in its lacking an Aristotle-type nature, not it its lacking properties. 

My claim is that van Inwagen is committed to bare particulars in sense (4).  Let me explain.

Van Inwagen's Bare Particulars

Consider my cat Max.  Van Inwagen is committed to saying that Max is a bare particular.  For while Max has properties, these properties are in no sense  constituents of him, but lie (stand?) outside him in a realm apart.  These properties are in no sense at him or in him or on him, not even such properties as being black or being furry, properties that are plausibly held to be sense-perceivable.  After all, one can see black where he is and feel furriness where he is.  None of Max's properties, on van Inwagen's  construal of properties, are where he is or when he is.  As I made clear earlier, the realms of the concrete and the abstract are radically disjoint for van Inwagen.  They are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive realms: for all x, x is either concrete or abstract, but not both and not neither.  So Max is here below in the realm of space, time, change, and causality while his properties exist in splendid  isolation up yonder in the realm of abstracta.

Max and his properties are of course connected by instantiation which is a relation that is both external and abstract.  In what sense is the relation external?  X and y are externally related just in case there is nothing intrinsic about the relata that entails their being related.  Max is two feet from me at the moment.  This relation of being two feet from is external in that there are no intrinsic properties of me or Max or both that entail our being two feet from each other.  Our intrinsic properties would be just the same if we were three feet from each other.  But Max and his brother Manny are both black.  In virtue of their both being intrinsically black, they stand in the same color as relation.  Hence the latter relation is not external but internal. Internal relatedness is supervenient upon the intrinsic features of the relata; external relatedness is not.

Suppose I want to bring it about that two balls have the same color.  I need do only two things: paint the one ball red, say, and then paint the other ball red.  But if I want to bring it about that there are two balls having the same color ten feet from each other, I have to do three things: paint the one ball red, say; paint the other ball red; place them ten feet from each other.   The external relatedness does not supervene upon the intrinsic properties of the relata.

Given that concrete particulars are externally related to their properties, these particular are bare particulars in the sensedefined in #4 above. 

And What is Wrong with That?

Suppose you agree with me that van Inwagen's concrete particulars are bare, not in any old  sense, but in the precise sense I defined, a sense that comports well with what the actual proponents of bare/thin particulars had in mind.  So what?  What's wrong with being committed to bare particulars?  Well, the consequences seem unpalatable if not absurd.

A. One consequence is that all properties are accidental and none are essential.  For if Max is bare, then there is nothing in him or at him or about him that dictates the properties he must instantiate or limits the  properties he can instantiate.  He can have any old set of properties so long as he has some set or other.  Bare particulars are 'promiscuous' in their connection with properties.   The connection between particular and property is contingent and all properties are accidental.  It is metaphysically (broadly logically) possible that Max combine with any property.  He happens to be a cat, but he could have been a poached egg or a valve lifter.  He could have had the shape of a cube.  Or he might have been a dimensionless point.  He might have been an act of thinking (temporal and causally efficacious, but not spatial). 

B. A second consequence is that all properties are relational and none are intrinsic.  For if Max is black in virtue of standing in an external instantiation relation to the abstract object, blackness, then his being black is a relational property and not an intrinsic one.

C. A third consequence is that none of Max's properties are sense-perceivable. PvI-properties are abstract objects and none of them are perceivable.  But if I cup my hands around a ball, don't I literally feel its sphericalness or spheroidness?  Or am I merely being appeared to spheroidally?

Related articles
Peter van Inwagen, "A Theory of Properties," Exposition and Critique

Oughtness, Obligation, Duty

If I ought to do something, am I obliged to do it?  And if I am obliged to do something, is it my duty to do it? I tend to assume the following principle, where A is an agent and X an act or rather act-type such as feed one's children.

P. Necessarily, A morally ought to X iff A is morally obligated to X iff A has a moral duty to X.

The necessity at stake is conceptual; so by my lights (P) is a conceptual truth. But, as if to illustrate that philosophers disagree about every bloody thing under the sun, a correspondent writes:

Andrew Sullivan Gives Up Blogging

And it isn't even Lent yet.  Why?

Two reasons. The first is one I hope anyone can understand: although it has been the most rewarding experience in my writing career, I’ve now been blogging daily for fifteen years straight (well kinda straight). That’s long enough to do any single job. In some ways, it’s as simple as that. There comes a time when you have to move on to new things . . . .

And when a writer stoops to 'kinda,' that too is perhaps an indication that it is time to hang up the keyboard.

The second is that I am saturated in digital life and I want to return to the actual world again. I’m a human being before I am a writer; and a writer before I am a blogger, and although it’s been a joy and a privilege to have helped pioneer a genuinely new form of writing, I yearn for other, older forms. I want to read again, slowly, carefully. I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged. I want to write long essays that can answer more deeply and subtly the many questions that the Dish years have presented to me. I want to write a book.

Sullivan here touches upon a serious problem, that of time apportionment as between serious writing and blogging, which tends to be scribbling of a more ephemeral sort.  (If truth be told, almost everything that almost all of us will ever write is of no lasting significance; so it's almost all of it ephemeral scribbling.)

I think it is possible to balance the two if one is willing to write well and in depth about important topics that transcend the fads, fancies, and fatuities of the moment, and eschew the need to post many times per day or even daily.  Some of what I write on this blog gets reworked for serious publication.  In this way my blogging aids  my serious writing.  It also aids it by making it less 'academic.'  The blogger is forced by his chosen medium to be pithy and direct.

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. 

More Reasons to Blog

Comments on “On the Individuation of Tropes”

What follows is a paper by a reader, posted with his permission, together with some comments of mine.  I will make my comments as time permits and not all in one session.  Others are invited to add their comments in the ComBox.

On the Individuation of Tropes

Introduction

Trope theorists see their view as a happy middle ground between nominalism and universalism. It is not too hot or too cold; it’s just right. It does not scandalously posit entities that are said to be simultaneously in multiple places, like universalism. And, at least at first blush, it does not seem to be plagued by an appeal to a primitive notion of resemblance, like some prominent versions of nominalism.

BV: 'Universalism' is used in more than one way in ontology alone.  So I would like to see a definition of this term right at the outset of the paper.  I take it that universalism as here intended is the doctrine that there are universals.  But what exactly are universals?  Here too a definition would be helpful.  And please note that a commitment to universals does not bring with it a commitment to entities that are wholly present in multiple places.  For example, van Inwagen thinks of properties as universals but, eschewing as he does constituent ontology, does not view them as present in the things that have them.

One distinction that needs to be made is that between transcendent and immanent universals.  A transcendent (immanent) universal is one that can (cannot) exist unexemplified.  A second needed distinction is between universals that enter into the  structure of the things that have them and those that don't.  Call the first constituent universals; call the second nonconstituent universals.  The two distinction-pairs cut perpendicular to each other yielding four combinatorially possible views according to which properties are: (a) transcendent non-constituent universals (Peter van Inwagen, e.g., if we leave aside haecceities); (b) immanent non-constituent universals (e.g., R. Grossmann); (c) immanent constituent universals (e.g., G. Bergmann, D. Armstrong); (d) transcendent constituent universals.

 

Continue reading “Comments on “On the Individuation of Tropes””

Observations on Free Speech

1. One's right to express an opinion brings with it an obligation to form correct opinions, or at least the obligation to make a sincere effort in that direction.    The right to free speech brings with it an obligation to exercise the right responsibly.1

2. Free speech is rightly valued, not as a means to making the world safe for pornography, but as a means to open inquiry and the pursuit of truth.

3. Although free speech and free expression generally are correctly valued mainly as means to open inquiry and the pursuit, acquisition, and dissemination of truth, it does not follow that some free expression is not a value in itself.

4. The more the populace is addicted to pornography, the less the need for the government to censor political speech.  A tyrant is therefore  well advised to keep the people well supplied with bread, circuses, and that 'freedom of expression' that allows them to sink, and remain, in the basest depths of the merely private where they will pose no threat to the powers that be.

5.  One who defends the right to free speech by identifying with adolescent  porno-punks and nihilists of the Charlie Hebdo ilk only succeeds in advertising the fact that he doesn't understand why this right is accorded the status of a right.

6. The free speech clause of the First Amendment to the United States constitution protects the citizen's right to free expression from infringement by the government, not from infringement by any old entity.  My home is my castle; you have no First Amendment rights here, or at my cybercastle, my weblog. So it is no violation of your First Amendment rights if I order you off of my property because of your offensive speech or block you from leaving stupid or vile comments at my website. It is impossible in principle for me to violate your First Amendment rights: I am not the government or an agent thereof.  And the same holds at your (private) place of work: you have no First Amendment rights there.

7.  The First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press — call them collectively the First Amendment right to free expression — is not the same as the right to free expression.  If the latter is a natural right, as I claim that it is, then one has it whether or not there is any First Amendment.  The First Amendment is a codicil to a document crafted by human beings.  It has a conventional nature.  The right to free speech, however, is natural.  Therefore,  the First Amendment right to free expression is not the same as the right to free expression.  Second, the right to free expression, if a natural right, is had by persons everywhere.  The FA, however, protects citizens of the U.S. against the U. S. government.   Third, the First Amendment in its third clause affords legal protection to the natural moral right to free expression.   A right by law is not a natural right.  Ergo, etc.

8. The right of free expression is a natural right.  Can I prove it?  No. Can you prove the negation? No.  But we are better off assuming it than not assuming it.

9. To say that the right to free expression is a natural right is not to say that it is absolute.  For the exercise of this right is subject to various reasonable and perhaps even morally obligatory restrictions, both in public and in private. There are limits on the exercise of the right in both spheres, but one has the right in both spheres.  To have an (exercisable) right is one thing, to exercise it another, and from the fact that one has the right it does not follow that one has the right to its exercise in every actual and possible circumstance.  If you say something I deem offensive in my house, on my blog, or while in my employ, then I can justifiably throw you out, or shut you up, or fire you and you cannot justify your bad behavior by invocation of the natural right to free speech.  And similarly in public:  the government is justified in preventing you from from shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater, to use the hackneyed example.  You are not thereby deprived of the right; you are deprived of the right to exercise the right in certain circumstances.

10. The restraint and thoughtfulness exhibited in a responsible exercise of one's right to free speech is not well described as 'self-censorship' given the pejorative connotations of 'censorship.'

11. To suppose that government censorship can never be justified is as extreme as the view that the right to free speech is absolute. 

12. It is silly to say, as many do, that speech is 'only speech.' Lying speech that incites violence is not 'just' speech' or 'only words.' 

 _______________

1If one cannot be obliged to do that which one is unable to do, then there cannot be a general obligation to form correct opinions.

Related articles
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We Are All Bothered by Different Things
A Dog Named 'Muhammad'

On the Use and Mention of Cartoons and Other Images

I had a new thought this morning, new for me anyway.  It occurred to me that the familiar use-mention distinction can and should be applied to images, including cartoons.  I recently posted a pornographic Charlie Hebdo cartoon that mocks in the most vile manner imaginable the Christian Trinity.  A reader suggested that I merely link to it.  But I wanted people to see how vile these nihilistic Charlie Hebdo porno-punks are and why it is a mistake to stand up for free speech by lying down with them, and with other perpetual adolescents of their ilk.  Those who march under the banner Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie) are not so much defending free speech as advertising their sad lack of understanding as to why it is accorded the status of a right.

So it occurred to me that the use-mention distinction familiar to philosophers could be applied to a situation like this.  To illustrate the distinction, consider the sentences

'Nigger' is disyllabic.
The use of 'nigger,' like the use of 'kike' is highly offensive.
Niggers and kikes are often at one another's throats.

In the first two sentences, 'nigger' and 'kike' are mentioned, not used; in the third sentence, 'nigger' and 'kike' are used, not mentioned. 

Please note that nowhere in this post do I use 'nigger' or 'kike.' 

I chose these examples to explain the use-mention distinction in order to maintain the parallel between offensive words and offensive pictures. 

Suppose someone asserts the first two sentences but not the third.  No reasonable person could take offense at what the person says.  For what he would be saying is true.  But someone who asserts the third sentence could be reasonably taken to have said something offensive.

Jerry Coyne concludes a know-nothing response to a review by Alvin Plantinga of a book by Philip Kitcher with this graphic:

Alvin Chipmunk

 Coyne added a caption: AL-vinnn!  Those of a certain age will understand the caption from the old Christmas song by the fictitious group, Alvin and the Chipmunks, from 1958. ( A real period piece complete with a reference to a hula hoop.)

Here's my point.  Coyne uses the image to the left to mock Plantinga whereas I merely display it, or if you will, mention it (in an extended sense of 'mention') in order to say something about the image itself, namely, that it is used by the benighted Coyne to mock Plantinga and his views.

No one could reasonably take offense at my reproduction of the image in the context of the serious points I am making.

 

 

Likewise, no one could reasonably take offense at my reproduction of the following graphic which I display here, not to mock the man Muslims consider to be a messenger of the god they call Allah, but simply to display the sort of image they find offensive, and that I  too find offensive, inasmuch as it mocks religion, a thing not to be mocked, even if the religion in question is what Schopenhauer calls "the  saddest and poorest form of theism." 

By the way,  journalists should know better than to refer to Muhammad as 'The Prophet.' Or do they also refer to Jesus as 'The Savior' or 'Our Lord' or 'Son of God'?

Ready now?  This is what CNN wouldn't show you.  Hardly one of the more offensive of the cartoons.  They wouldn't show it lest Muslims take offense. 

My point, again, is that merely showing what some benighted people take offense at is not to engage in mockery or derision or any other objectively offensive behavior.

 

Related articles
Plantinga Reviews Philip Kitcher, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism
The No True Scotsman or No True Muslim Fallacy
Alvin Plantinga savages Philip Kitcher's new book, but makes dumb philosophical errors

Cops, Muslims, and a Double Standard

Suppose there are two groups, the As and the Bs.  Some of the As are really bad actors.  And some of the Bs are as well. But most of the members of both groups are tolerably well-behaved.  Suppose there is a third group, the Cs.  Some of the Cs comment on the bad behavior of the bad actors among the As and the Bs.  But they comment in two very different ways.  These commenting Cs  attribute the bad behavior of the bad actors among the As to their being As,while they attribute the bad behavior of the bad actors among the Bs, not to their being Bs, but to factors that have nothing to do with their being Bs. The commentators among the Cs can be said to apply a double standard in respect of the As and the Bs as regards the etiology of their bad behavior.  They employ one standard of explanation for the As, a different one for the Bs.

That's the schema, presented schematically.  Instances of the schema are not hard to locate.

Consider cops, Muslims, and lefties. (Some leftists will complain about 'leftie' which I admit is slightly derisive.  But these same people do not hesitate to refer to conservatives as teabaggers, right-wing nutjobs, etc., terms which are not just slightly derisive.  Here then is another double standard.  "We can apply any epithet we like to you, but you must always show us respect!"  But I digress.)

So you've got your cops, your Muslims, and your lefties.  The behavior of bad cops — and there are such without a doubt — is said by many lefties to derive from something 'institutional' or 'systemic' such as 'systemic racism.'  Cops are racists qua cops, if not by nature, then by their professional acculturation in 'racist Amerika.'  But the bad behavior of some Muslims, such as committing mass murder by driving jumbo jets into trade towers, or slaughtering those, such as the Charlie Hebdo porno-punks, who 'diss' their prophet, does not derive from anything having to do with Muslims qua Muslims such as their adherence to Muslim beliefs. A spectacular example is the case of Nidal Malik Hasan, the 2009 Fort Hood shooter who killed 13 people and wounded many more.  His deed was dismissed by the Obama Administration as 'work place violence' when it was quite clearly a terrorist act motivated  by Islamist beliefs.  Wikipedia:

Once, while presenting what was supposed to be a medical lecture to other psychiatrists, Hasan talked about Islam, and said that, according to the Koran, non-believers would be sent to hell, decapitated, set on fire, and have burning oil poured down their throats. A Muslim psychiatrist in the audience raised his hand, and challenged Hasan's claims.[113] According to the Associated Press, Hasan's lecture also "justified suicide bombings."[114] In the summer of 2009, after completion of his programs, he was transferred to Fort Hood.

So here we have a double standard, an unjustified double standard. (Are double standards by definition unjustified?  This is something to explore.)

Of course, there is a lot more to be said on this delightful topic.  For example, police brutality does not derive from the professional training that cops receive.  They are not trained to hunt down and kill "unarmed black teenagers" who are harmlessly walking down the street or "children" on the way to the candy store.  But Muslim terrorism does derive from Muslim teachings.  Not all Muslims are terrorists, of courses, but the terrorism of those Muslims who are terrorists is not accidental to their being Muslims.

Note the difference between

A Muslim who is a terrorist is not a true Muslim

and

A cop who is corrupt is not a true cop.

The first sentence is a clear example of the the No True Scotsman Fallacy.  The second is not.  Why not? Well, there is nothing in the cop-role that requires that a person who plays that role be corrupt.  Quite to the contrary. But there is something in the Muslim-role, or at least the Muslim-role as presented by many teachers of Islam,  that requires that players of this role make jihad against the infidel.

Related articles
'Religion of Peace' is not a Harmless Platitude
Appeasement of Muslim Fanatics Did Not Begin with Barack Obama

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sartorial Songs

In Chapter 42 of his Essays, Montaigne remarks that

We praise a horse for its strength and speed, not on account of its harness; a greyhound for its swiftness and not its collar; a hawk for its wing and not for its jesses and bells. Why then do we not value a man for what is his? . . . If you bargain over a horse, you remove its trappings, you see it bare and uncovered . . . . Why, when estimating a man, do you estimate him all wrapped and muffled up? . . . We must judge him by himself, not by his attire. (Tr. E. J. Trechmann)

I am tempted to agree by saying what I once said to my mother when she told me that clothes make the man, namely, that if clothes make the man, then the kind of man that clothes make is not the kind of man I want to be. (Women are undeniably more sensitive than men to the fact that the world runs on appearances. They have a deep intuitive understanding of the truth that the Germans express when they say, Der Schein regiert die Welt.)

But there is another side to the problem, one that the excellent Montaigne ignores. A horse does not choose its bit and harness, but has them imposed on it. A man, however, chooses how he will appear to his fellows, and so choosing makes a statement as to his values and disvalues. It follows that there is some justification in judging by externals. For the externals we choose, unlike the externals imposed on a horse, are defeasible indicators of what is internal. In the case of human beings, the external is not merely external: the external is also an expression of the internal. Our outer trappings express our attitudes and beliefs, our allegiances and alignments.

But enough philosophy!  On to some tunes.  We get things off to a rousing start this fine Saturday evening with

ZZ Top, Sharp-Dressed Man.  This one goes out to Mike Valle who is definitely strutting his sartorial stuff these days.

Bobby Whitlock and Eric Clapton, Bell Bottom Blues.  Sticking with the 'blue' theme:

Bobby Vinton, Blue Velvet.  Check out the Lana Del Rey version.  And of course, this from the moody & mesmerizing David Lynch flick.

Carl Perkins, Blue Suede Shoes.  The Perry Como Show (sic!), 1956.

Mitch Ryder, Devil with the Blue Dress On

Jimmy Clanton, Venus in Blue Jeans, 1962

Bob Dylan, Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat

Nanci Griffith, Boots of Spanish Leather

Del Shannon, Hats Off to Larry

Bobby Bare, Long Black Veil

Jane Russell, Buttons and Bows

Johnny Cash, Man in Black

Big Bopper, Chantilly Lace, 1958

But:

Can you judge a man by the way he wears his hair?
Can you read his mind, by the clothes that he wears?
Can you see a bad man by the pattern on his tie?
Then Mr. You're a Better Man Than I!