For the first time since the end of World War II, classic anti-Semitic tropes—“the Jews” control the world and are to blame for everything that goes wrong, including the financial crisis; The Jews killed Christian children in order to use the blood to bake Matzo; the Holocaust never happened—are becoming acceptable and legitimate subjects for academic and political discussion. To understand why these absurd and reprehensible views, once reserved for the racist fringes of academia and politics, are now moving closer to the mainstream, consider the attitudes of two men, one an academic, the other a politician, toward those who express or endorse such bigotry. The academic is Professor Brian Leiter. The politician is Ron Paul.
You’ve probably never heard of Leiter. He’s a relatively obscure professor of jurisprudence, who is trying to elevate his profile by publishing a gossipy blog about law school professors. He is a colleague of John Mearsheimer, a prominent and world famous professor at the University of Chicago.
On animalism, I am just a (live) human animal. And so are you. But there is a reason to think that I cannot be identical to my animal body. The reason is that it will survive me. (Assume that there is no natural immortality of the soul.) Assume that I die peacefully in my bed. I went to bed, but now I don't exist: what occupies my place in the bed is a (human) corpse. A dramatic change took place in the immediate vicinity of the bed. One and the same human body went from alive to dead. This suggests that dying is an accidental as opposed to a substantial change. If I understand it, this is roughly the Corpse Objection to animalism. The objection, in a nutshell, is that I cannot be identical to my animal body because it will survive me. Me and my body have different persistence conditions.
But there is another way to look at the situation. Me and my body have the same persistence conditions. My body will not survive me. Death is a substantial, as opposed to an accidental, change. When I die, the animal body that I am ceases to exist and one or more new bodies begin to exist. (If my death is peaceful, as opposed to, say, 'Islamic,' then only one new body begins to exist.) So it is not as if one bodily substance undergoes an accidental change, going from being alive to being dead; one bodily substance ceases to exist and one or more others begin to exist. The change is not alterational but existential. This implies that the body itself did not exist while the animal was alive. As Patrick Toner puts it:
Neither the body itself, nor any of its atomic parts, existed while the animal was alive. This just follows from the account of substance I've given, according to which substances have no substances as parts, — there is only one substance here in my boundaries, and it's an animal. When the animal dies, whatever is left over is not the same thing that was there before. ("Hylemorphic Animalism" in Phil Stud, 155, 2011, pp. 65-81)
An Objection
This strikes me as problematic. Suppose dying is a substantial change and that Peter and Paul die peacefully at the same instant in the same place. Peter and Paul cease to exist and two corpses C1 and C2 begin to exist. Suppose C1 is Peter's corpse and C2 is Paul's corpse. What accounts metaphysically for C1's being Peter's corpse and opposed to Paul's, and vice versa? What makes Peter's corpse Peter's and Paul's corpse Paul's?
Why should there be a problem? Dying is a substantial change, but it is not annihilation. (At the other end, being born is a substantial change but it is not exnihilation: no animal is born ex nihilo.) Since dying is not annihilation, a corpse comes to be when Peter dies. And since the change is substantial, not accidental, the substance Peter ceases to exist and a numerically different substance, C1, begins to exist. Now every change is a change in a substratum or subject. So what is the subject of the change when Peter dies? Answer: prime matter, materia prima. This is what all the scholastic manuals tell me.
But if prime matter underlies substantial change, and provides the continuity between Peter and his corpse, then, given that prime matter is wholly indeterminate and bare of all forms, substantial and accidental, the continuity that prime matter allows does not distinguish between the change from Peter to Peter's corpse and the change from Paul to Paul's corpse. The substratum of these two changes is the same, namely, prime matter. If so, what makes Peter's corpse Peter's and Paul's corpse Paul's? That's my problem.
This problem does not arise if dying is an accidental change. For then we can say that Peter's designated matter (materia signata quantitate) which is numerically distinct from Paul's continues in existence as Peter's corpse. We have an accidental change, a change from being alive to being dead in a particular parcel of designated matter.
Toner's Reply
Patrick Toner's reply is that designated, not prime, matter accounts for the different continuities. Peter's corpse is continuous with Peter because the same designated matter is present in Peter and his corpse, but a different parcel of designated matter is present in Paul and his corpse. The fact that the matter underlying the two changes is prime, however, does not prevent the matter from also being designated. Toner in effect rejects my assumption that the substratum of a substantial change cannot be a particular parcel of designated matter.
What I had gathered from the manuals (e.g. Feser's, p. 171 et passim) was that (i) materia prima is the subject of substantial change; (ii) materia secunda is the subject of accidental change; (iii) every change is either substantial or accidental; (iv) no change is both; (v) no change is such that its subject or substrate is both materia prima and materia secunda.
But if Toner is right, I am wrong about (v).
Toner draws on Joseph Bobik's commentary on De Ente et Essentia:
When we talk about quantified matter … we are not talking about anything other than the matter which is part of the intrinsic constitution of an individual composed substance, that matter which can also be described as prime, as designated, and as nondesignated… Thus, to talk about prime matter, quantified matter, nondesignated matter, and designated matter is to talk about the same thing, but to say four different things about it, to describe it in four different ways. To speak of quantified matter, or perhaps better of matter as quantified, is to speak of what the matters of all individual composed substances have in common, namely, that in their matters which accounts for the possibility of their matter's being divided from the matters of other individual substances; it is to speak of that which makes it possible for individual composed substances to have matter in common as part of their essence. Matter as designated presupposes, and adds to, matter as quantified; and what it adds is actual circumscription so as to be just so much. To say that matter is quantified is to say that it is three-dimensionally spread out, and nothing else. To say that matter is designated is to say that it is three-dimensionally spread out and circumscribed to be just so much, just so much as is in Jack or Paul or any given individual composed substance. (148, emphasis added)
Response to the Reply
The Bobik passage implies that some one thing can be described in two different ways, as designated matter and as prime matter. But then what is the one thing that can be described in these two ways? Presumably, it is a particular parcel of designated matter, the matter of precisely Peter, say, which is numerically distinct from the matter of precisely Paul. Materia signata is matter in the concrete, and prime matter would then be an abstraction from it and from every discrete parcel of designated matter.
If prime matter is but an abstraction, how can it serve as the real substratum of any such real change as is the dying of an animal? That is a real, concrete, change. If every change is a change in something, then the something must itself be real and concrete and particular. That's one problem.
A second is that if both substantial and accidental changes are changes in a concrete parcel of designated matter, then what becomes of the distinction between substantial and accidental changes? Can every change be viewed as one or the other? Is it just a matter of the same change being described in two different ways?
This requires further development and in any case it is just the beginning of the aporetics of prime matter, something to be pursued in subsequent entries.
Conclusion
Given the extreme difficulty of the notion of prime matter, a difficulty that transfers to the notion of substantial change, I don't see that the objection I raise above has yet been adequately answered.
Brian Leiter would do well to consider and live by the following prudential analog of Ockham's Razor:
Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.
Why not? Well, it is just foolish, especially for a vain and status-obsessed careerist who craves name and fame, to attack people who, it can be expected, will expose his petty and absurd behavior.
One of the puzzles of the Leiterian psychology is that he does things that are quite plainly not in his self-interest. When he attacks those who are above him on what he perceives to be the Great Ladder of Success, he reveals his envy. When he attacks those he perceives to be below him, he reveals his pusillanimity.
In Aristotelian terms, what Leiter lacks is magnanimity (megalopsychia, great-souledness). The sphere of magnanimity is the sphere of honor and dishonor. Magnanimity is the mean between the extremes of vanity and pusillanimity. The magnanimous person knows himself and is capable of honest self-evaluation. This self-knowledge keeps him from both vanity and pusillanimity.
The vain man pegs himself too high: lacking self-knowledge he fancies that he deserves honors and emoluments, perquisites and privileges far above what he actually deserves. So we could say that vanity involves an excess of self-love together with a lack of self-knowledge. Leiter is clearly vain in this Aristotelian sense. His vanity is at the root of his envy of those who are his betters, such as Thomas Nagel whose superiority is evident and unsurpassable by the likes of Leiter no matter how hard he climbs.
The pusillanimous person pegs himself too low: lacking self-knowledge, he fails to aim at goods he is worthy of. He occupies himself with matters that ought to be beneath him such as slandering and defaming opponents.
So it appears that Leiter, lacking self-knowledge and with it magnanimity, oscillates between vanity and pusillanimity. When his vanity is in the ascendancy, he attacks those above him on the Ladder. When his pusillanimity reigns over his psyche, he attacks those below him. This is yet another proof of the appositeness of the 'Ladder Man' label. It is not just that he obsessively likes to rank things. He himself is obsessed with his rank, and thus obsessed by those above him and below him in the Rangordnung. He cannot accept with gratitude the rung upon which he is perched, however precariously. He burns for more in the way of name and fame while denigrating those he considers unsuccessful.
Leiter is a fascinating study, not qua token, but qua type. The Ladder Man type is what elicits scientific interest. There is no science of the particular qua particular, said Aristotle. Individuum ineffabile est.
For Aristotle on magnanimity and pusillanimity, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book IV.
I figure that in a week or so we should have the Leiter affair behind us. But there remain a number of lessons and insights to be learned from the Ladderman's bad behavior.
An Attack on Simon Critchley
Let me give you an example (supplied by a reader) of the sort of abuse in which Leiter engages. The trusted reader, an untenured philosophy professor, sent me this: "Leiter regularly attacks Simon Critchley with vitriol, as for example here (probably he was disappointed and enraged that he wasn't asked to moderate the NYT blog himself)."
Leiter describes Critchley as "a complete hack." I haven't read Critchley. But I just now found a popular piece of his in The Guardian, on Heidegger. Since I have published a half dozen articles in refereed philosophy journals on Heidegger, I know something about the German philosopher. What Critchley says here about Heidegger is accurate. 'Hack' denotes someone whose work is substandard and who works for purely mercenary reasons. So Critchley is not a hack, complete or incomplete.
Leiter's Modus Operandi
The attack on Critchley illustrates Leiter's M.O. First comes a highly disparaging label whose application to the target is dubious in the extreme. The target is a "noxious mediocrity" or a "complete hack." That's bad enough, but what makes it worse is that no evidence is provided of the applicability of the epithet. Note that I am not saying that no one is a hack, and I admit the possibility of a few complete hacks abroad in the land, though the qualifier 'complete' seriously limits the extension of the noun thus qualified. The point is that if you are going label someone in a disparaging way, then you had better provide some evidence. If I have tio explain why, then you are morally obtuse.
Finally, if the target responds in kind to the slur, Leiter acts as if an offense has been perpetrated against him.
Call it the Leiter Three-Step: trash your opponent; provide no evidence of your allegations; act offended when the opponent defends himself.
Why Leiter Feels Justified in Abusing Conservatives
There is a clue in the oft-made observation that conservatives think leftists are wrong, while leftists think conservatives are evil. Once Leiter decides that you are evil, then you are fair game: nothing you say need be objectively evaluated in terms of truth value or logical coherence. It suffices to point out that you are, say, "a crazed right-winger."
One could call it refutation by epithet. You are a sexist, a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, a homophobe, a racist, a bigot, not to mention intolerant.
Pointing out to a leftist that he is intolerant does no good. For he feels his intolerance to justified by the fact that you are evil. Surely the principle of toleration does not enjoin that we tolerate evil-doers!
An e-mail from a few years back with no name attached:
[Brian] Leiter fancies himself a gatekeeper to the realm of academic philosophy. You gotta love the professional gossip that seeps through his blog – Ned Block got an offer from Harvard but turned it down, here's the latest coming out of the Eastern APA, or noting, yesterday, that Ted Honderich consulted him during the publication of the new Oxford Companion to Philosophy. And look at the way Leiter prides himself on knowing the goings on at each school and each professor. . . what a status-obsessed elitist (I believe those are your words). No wonder this guy publishes the PGR. Others of us enjoy doing philosophy, most of the time, but here is a man who loves *being* a philosopher, all of the time.
Permit me a quibble. I would not describe a man like Brian Leiter who is a status-obsessed elitist and a careerist philosophy professor as someone who IS a philosopher. Socrates and Spinoza ARE philosophers. They and many others truly lived the philosophical life as opposed to merely doing philosophy for their enjoyment, or using it as a means to advance themselves socially and economically. For them it was a noble enterprise, a vocation in the root sense of the word (L. vocare) and not a career. Spinoza, for example, in 1673 declined an offer of a post at the prestigious University of Heidelberg in order to preserve his independence. He lived for philosophy, not from it, supporting himself by grinding optical lenses.
So I suggest a three-fold distinction. There are those who do philosophy as a sort of hobby; there are the mere professors of it who fill their belly from it and try to make a career out of it; and there are those who truly ARE philosophers. Among the latter, there are of course some professors.
While I'm on this topic, I may as well mention two other distinctions that are often confused. One is the distinction between professionals and amateurs, the other between people who make money from an activity and those who do not. These distinctions 'cut perpendicular' to one another, hence do not coincide. Spinoza was a professional philosopher even though he made no money from it. One can be a professional philosopher without being a paid professor of it, just as one can be an incompetent amateur and still be paid to teach by a college.
2,037 pageviews today according to Typepad. My per diem average is in the 1.2K-1.3 K range.
Leiter has made a foolish mistake in attacking me. He craves status and standing. But I don't care about status and in any case it is low: I am a relatively obscure blogger and an academically unaffiliated philosopher. I have no power and limited influence. By attacking me and bringing readers to my website, he raises my status and influence while lowering his own. For what people will learn here about Leiter can only damage his reputation, especially among the young philosophers who are coming up and are not yet fully apprised of his antics.
UPDATE (6/4): 929 pageviews at 4 AM. And the day is yet young. Way to go, Brian! You are working your way down the ladder of success.
UPDATE (6/4, 5 PM.) The day ended with a total of 2404 pageviews. The Ladderman is a leader (Leiter) to my site.
My recent anti-Leiter posts may give new readers the impression that I am doing the same sort of thing he does, namely, hurling abuse and name-calling. Not so. He attacked me out of the blue in November of 2004, and I ignored him. But given his recent attack, it is time to supply the context of my recent responses to him, and to explain that I am engaged in a legitimate defense against an unprovoked series of attacks. My motive is to set the record straight, but also to defend the graduate students, the untenured, and others who fear to respond to Leiter's attacks on them.
It all started when I posted the following on the first version of MavPhil. The entry is dated 4 November 2004 and I reproduce it verbatim:
Theocracy and the Left
Nobody wants a theocracy in the U.S. except the Islamo-fascists, and they want it everywhere. The fear among some leftists that the re-election of G.W. Bush is moving us towards theocracy shows just how delusional their thinking is. The problem with leftists is not so much stupidity as their ideological fixations. The latter prevent their minds from functioning properly. They see threats that aren't there and fail to see the ones that are. They ignore the very real theocratic threat of militant Islam, all the while fabricating a Christian theocratic threat.
Hostility to religion, especially institutionalized religion, is a defining characteristic of the Left. We've known that since 1789. What is surprising, and truly bizarre, is the Left's going soft on militant Islam, the most virulent strain of religious bigotry ever to appear. It threatens all of their values. But their obsession with dissent is so great, dissent at all costs and against everything established, that they simply must denounce Bush and Co. as potential theocrats, all the while cozying up to militant Islam. Their hatred for Bush is so great that they will sacrifice their defining values just to oppose him. In their perversity, they think the enemy of their enemy is — still their enemy.
The above post got Leiter's goat even though there is no reference to him and no link to his website. But being the sort of vain and self-centered fellow he is, he took it personally as directed against him in particular. So taking it, he replied with a personal attack on me in Paranoid Fantasies of the Right:
In keeping with my general policy of not linking to noxious mediocrities–who, experience has shown, crave any attention–I am just going to quote a posting that is interesting not because of who said it (though he purports to be a philosopher), but because of what it reveals about the right-wing mindset (it resonates with rhetoric one hears from Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens and others of that slimy ilk). The author was reacting (badly, it appears) to my reference to Bush & co. as fascist theocrats. Our right-winger comments: [Leiter goes on to quote me.]
Note for starters the man's huge ego: he thinks I am responding to his post. Not so. Second, what I have to say is just "rhetoric" of the sort spewed by Sullivan, Hitchens "and others of that slimy ilk." The suggestion, of course, is that I am of the same ilk. Third, I "purport" to be a philosopher. The suggestion is that I represent myself as being a philosopher when I am not a real philosopher like Leiter. Leiter is a philosopher (in his own mind), while I merely purport to be one. We will have to consider the criteria for being a real philosopher in a separate post.
Fourth, I am one of those who "crave any attention." How could Leiter have known this? (We have never met.) I am an introvert, an INTP in the Myers-Briggs classification and such types do not "crave any attention." To the contrary. Note also how Leiter appears to be engaged in psychological projection: he most assuredly craves attention, he recognizes at some pre-conscious level that this is unacceptable and an indicator of immaturity, and so to prevent this realization on his part he projects the unacceptable attribute into others. Projection is a defense mechanism the purpose of which is to reduce anxiety. So in Leiter's view I am the one who craves attention, which is why my name cannot be mentioned or my site linked to. Having projected his craving into me, he alleviates the anxiety he subconsciously feels at being an attention whore. What's more, Leiter wouldn't want to give me what I "crave" and he wouldn't want any one to be influenced by ideas that are on Leiter's index idearum prohibitarum.
There is apparently a link between psychological projection and bullying, a link we may follow up in a separate post.
Fifth, I am a "noxious mediocrity." In one sense of the term, 'mediocre' is not a pejorative; it just means of average ability. But then we are both mediocrities in philosophy if we are held to a truly rigorous standard. Why then is one of us "noxious"? Because he is not the other? And then there is the question as to how Leiter could know that I am a mediocrity in philosophy. Has he studied any of my papers published in such journals as Analysis, Nous, Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, The Monist, Dialectica, and numerous others? Has Leiter published in any of these journals? Some of my papers are listed on my PhilPapers page.
To sum up. Leiter is a leftist ideologue first, and a philosopher second, if at all. Philosophy for him is but a means for the advancement of himself and his ideology. This explains the personal nature of his attack on me cited above. A good leftist, he seeks to destroy those who disagree with his ideas. It is all about power and it is all about winning. It is right out of Alinsky and the CP. Don't forget, PC is from the CP. You shout down your opponent; you ridicule him; but if the opponent replies in kind, then you protest that he is a hypocrite who doesn't live up to the standards he professes. Alinsky: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. Another rule of lefties: Always invoke the double standard: Treat your opponents like dirt but then protest the "sick viciousness" of a reply in kind.
I'll end with part of an e-mail from a young philosophy professor:
I hope that you are wearing Leiter's attack on you as a true badge of honor. The fact that Leiter deems you worthy of an attack post means that his grotesque, opportunistic, tyrannical mind is squirming at the fact that you are not assimilating into the proper politically correct hierarchy of contemporary academia. But this why I, and so many others, love your blog. Keep up the great work!
Perhaps Patrick Toner could tell me whether whether I understand the different uses of 'matter' in Aristotelian-Scholastic (A-S) philosophy. Here are some of the distinctions as I understand and interpret them.
1. For starters, we can and do use 'matter' to refer to material particulars, a horse, a statue, a man, and indeed any hylomorphic compound, any compound of matter (in a different sense!) and form. When we speak of the material world, we mean these material things some of which are primary substances.
2. Then there is matter as individual proximate matter: what a material thing is immediately made of. Take a nice Southwest example, a quesadilla, the individual proximate matter of which is a tortilla and some melted cheese.
3. Individual nonproximate matter. The individual proximate matter of the melted cheese is some cheese. But this cheese and its material components, while individual, are not the proximate matter of the quesadilla.
4. Matter as specific proximate matter: the various kinds of space-filling stuff. Cheese and tortillas for example.
5. Matter as matter in general. This is materia prima, prime matter, absolutely indeterminate and bare of any and all forms and, as such, pure potency to any and all forms.
On this scheme, (2) and (3) are designated matter (materia signata) while (4) is undesignated matter: the matter that can be referred to in a definition. For example, if I eat a quesadilla, the matter I consume is designated matter whereas if I define 'quesadilla,' the matter entering the definition is undesignated and inedible: 'A quesadilla is a common item of Mexican cuisine consisting of a corn or flour tortilla folded over melted cheese and sometimes other ingredients in the shape of a half-moon.'
Now what about secondary matter, materia secunda? This contrasts with materia prima. 'Secondary matter' is an umbrella term covering both (2) and (3) and (4). Or that's how I understand it. Note that proximate matter is not the same as secondary matter. The proximate matter of a meat ball is the meat (assuming it is made of meat only), but protein is part of its secondary matter without being proximate matter. The concept of proximate matter is relative; the concept of secondary matter is not.
Herewith, some comments on and questions about Patrick Toner's fascinating paper, "Hylemorphic Animalism" (Philos Stud, 2011, 155: 65-81).
Patrick Toner takes an animalist line on human persons. Animalism is the doctrine that each of us is identical to an animal organism. A bit more precisely, "Animalism involves two claims: (1) we are human persons and (2) human persons are identical with animals." (67)
Animalism
Let's consider the second claim. Toner endorses Eric Olson's 'thinking animal' argument for (2). Based on Toner's summary, I take the argument to go as follows. I am now sitting in a chair thinking a thought T. There is also now an animal sitting in this very chair and occupying the same space. Is the animal also thinking T? There are four possibilities.
a. I am identical to the animal occupying my chair, and the thinker of my thoughts is identical to this animal.
b. I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with an animal that thinks all my thoughts.
c. I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with a nonthinking animal.
d. There is no animal in my chair; hence I am not not identical to it.
Of the four possibilities, Toner considers (a) to be actual. "It's the least ugly of the choices. Indeed, it's positively common-sensical, compared with the other rather nutty options." (70)
I agree that (b) and (d) can be excluded right away. But I don't see that (c) is 'nutty' and I don't see that (a) is "positively common-sensical." Common sense has nothing to say about abstruse metaphysical topics such as this one.
The Corpse Objection to Animalism
On (a), the thinker of my thoughts is numerically identical to this living human organsm with which I am intimately associated. But If I am (identically) my body, then me and my body ought to have the same persistence conditions. But they don't: when I die I will cease to exist, but (most likely) a corpse will remain. Now if a = b, then there is no time t at which a exists but b does not exist, and vice versa. So if there are times when I do not exist but my body does exist, then I cannot be identical to my body. On (a), I will not survive death, but my body will: it will survive as a corpse. Therefore I am not identical to my body.
Toner's Response to the Corpse Objection
The Corpse Objection, in a nutshell, is that I cannot be identical to my animal body because it will survive me. My body exists now before my death and it will exist then after my death. It is the same body dead or alive. Toner's response is a flat denial of survival. My body will not survive me. Death is a substantial, as opposed to an accidental, change. When I die the animal body that I am will cease to exist and one or more new bodies will begin to exist. So it is not as if one bodily substance undergoes an accidental change, going from being alive to being dead; one bodily substance ceases to exist and one or more others begin to exist. The change is not alterational but existential. This implies that the body itself did not exist while the animal was alive. As Toner puts it:
Neither the body itself, nor any of its atomic parts, existed while the animal was alive. This just follows from the account of substance I've given, according to which substances have no substances as parts, — there is only one substance here in my boundaries, and it's an animal. When the animal dies, whatever is left over is not the same thing that was there before. (71)
Two Questions
1. One question is whether, assuming that I am just this living animal body, my dying is an accidental change or a substantial change. I will suggest that it is more plausible to think of it as an accidental change.
If my dying is an accidental change, then something that exists now in one form will exist post mortem in a different form. This something could be called the proximate matter of my body. This matter is organized in a certain way and its organs and various subsystems are functioning in such a way that the entire bodily system has the property of being alive. (For example, the lungs are oxygenating the blood, the heart is pumping the blood to the brain, the pathways to the brain are unobstructed, etc.) But then suppose I drown or have a massive heart attack or a massive stroke. The body then ceases to have the property of being alive. On this way of looking at things, one and the same body can exist in two states, alive and dead. There is diachronic continuity between the living and dead bodies, and that continuity is grounded in the proximate matter of the body.
If, on the other hand, my dying is a substantial change, and I am just this living body, then at death I cease to exist entirely, and what is left over, my corpse, is something entirely new, 'an addition to being' so to speak. I cease to exist, and a corpse comes to exist. But then the only diachronic continuity as between the live body and the corpse is prime (not proximate) matter.
But what makes the corpse that comes to exist my corpse? Suppose I am just a living animal and that I die at t1. A moment later, at t2, two corpses come into existence. Which one do you bury under the 'BV' tombstone? Which is the right one, and what makes it the right one? Or suppose Peter and I die at the same instant, in the same place, and that dying is a substantial change. Peter and I cease to exist and two corpses C1 and C2 come into existence. Which is my corpse and which is Peter's? Practically, there is no problem: we look different and our looking different and having different dimensions, etc. is due to our different proximate matter, matter that is the same under two different and successive forms.
What this suggests is that dying is an accidental change, not a substantial change. It is an accidental change in the proximate matter of a human body. But if so, then the Corpse Objection holds and animalism is untenable.
There is also the very serious problem that substantial change requires prime matter, and prime matter is a very questionable posit. But I won't pursue this topic at present.
2. My second main question concerns how animalism is compatible with such phenomena as the unity of consciousness and intentionality. On animalism I am just a living human animal. The thinker of my thoughts is this hairy critter occupying my blogging chair. Is it the whole of me that is the res cogitans? Or only a proper part of me? Presumably the latter. If an animal thinks, then presumably it thinks in virtue of its brain thinking.
The animalist thus seems committed to the claim that the res cogitans, that which thinks my thoughts, is a hunk of living intracranial meat. But it is not so easy to understand how meat could mean. What a marvellous metabasis eis allo genos whereby meat gives rise to meaning, understanding, intentionality! It is so marvellous that it is inconceivable. My thinkings are of or about this or that, and in some cases they are of or about items that do not exist. I can think about Venus the planet and Venus the goddess and I can think about Vulcan even though there is no such planet. How can a meat state possess that object-directedness we call intentionality? Brains states are physical states, and our understanding of physical states is from physics; but the conceptuality of physics offers us no way of understanding the intentionality of thought.
And then there is the unity of consciousness. Can animalism account for it? At Plato's Theaetetus 184c, Socrates puts the following question to Theaetetus: ". . . which is more correct — to say that we see or hear with the eyes and with the ears, or through the eyes and through the ears?" Theatetus obligingly responds with through rather than with. Socrates approves of this response:
Yes, my boy, for no one can suppose that in each of us, as in a sort of Trojan horse, there are perched a number of unconnected senses which do not all meet in some one nature, the mind, or whatever we please to call it, of which they are the instruments, and with which through them we perceive the objects of sense. (Emphasis added, tr. Benjamin Jowett)
The issue here is the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold of sensory data. Long before Kant, and long before Leibniz, Plato was well aware of the problem of the unity of consciousness. (It is not for nothing that A. N. Whitehead described Western philosophy as a series of footnotes to Plato.)
Sitting before a fire, I see the flames, feel the heat, smell the smoke, and hear the crackling of the logs. The sensory data are unified in one consciousness of a selfsame object. This unification does not take place in the eyes or in the ears or in the nostrils or in any other sense organ, and to say that it takes place in the brain is not a good answer. For the brain is a partite physical thing extended in space. If the unity of consciousness is identified with a portion of the brain, then the unity is destroyed. For no matter how small the portion of the brain, it has proper parts external to each other. Every portion of the brain, no matter how small, is a complex entity. But consciousness in the synthesis of a manifold is a simple unity. Hence the unity of consciousness cannot be understood along materialist lines.
Conclusion
I tentatively conclude that option (c) above — I am not identical to the animal occupying my chair, but I share the space with a nonthinking animal — is, if not preferable to Toner's preferred option, at least as good as it, and not at all "nutty.' The Corpse Objection to Animalism seems like a good one, and Toner's response to it is not compelling, involving as it does the idea that dying is a substantial change, a response that brings with it all the apories surrounding substance and prime matter. Finally, it is not clear to me how animalism can accommodate intentionality and the unity of consciousness.
But perhaps Professor Toner can help me understand this better.
'Racism' and 'racist' are words used by liberals as all-purpose semantic bludgeons. Proof of this is that the terms are never defined, and so can be used in wider or narrower senses depending on the polemical and ideological purposes at hand. In common parlance 'racism' and 'racist' are pejoratives, indeed, terms of abuse. This is why it is foolish for conservatives such as John Derbyshire to describe themselves as racists while attempting to attach some non-pejorative connotation to the term. It can't be done. It would be a bit like describing oneself as as an asshole, 'but in the very best sense of the term.' 'Yeah, I'm an asshole and proud of it; we need more assholes; it's a good thing to be.' The word has no good senses, at least when applied to an entire human as opposed to an orifice thereof. For words like 'asshole,' 'child molester,' and 'racist' semantic rehabilitation is simply not in the cards. A conservative must never call himself a racist. (And I don't see how calling himself a racialist is any better.) What he must do is attack ridiculous definitions of the term, defend reasonable ones, and show how he is not a racist when the term is reasonably defined.
Let's run through some candidate definientia of 'racism':
1. The view that there are genetic or cultural differences between racial groups and that these differences have behavioral consequences.
Since this is indeed the case, (1) cannot be used to define 'racism.' The term, as I said, is pejorative: it is morally bad to be a racist. But it is not morally bad to be a truth-teller. The underlying principle here is that it can't racism if it is true. Is that not obvious?
Suppose I state that blacks are 11-13% of the U.S. population. That cannot be a racist statement for the simple reason that it is true. Nor can someone who makes such a statement be called a racist for making it. A statement whose subject matter is racial is not a racist statement. Or I inform you that blacks are more likely than whites to contract sickle-cell anemia. That too is true. But in this second example there is reference to an unpleasant truth. Even more unpleasant are those truths about the differential rates of crime as between blacks and whites. But pleasant or not, truth is truth, and there are no racist truths. (I apologize for hammering away at these platitudes, but in a Pee Cee world in which people have lost their minds, repetition of the obvious is necessary.)
2. The feeling of affinity for those of one's own racial and ethnic background.
It is entirely natural to feel more comfortable around people of one's own kind than around strangers. And of course there is nothing morally objectionable in this. No racism here.
3. The view that it is morally justifiable to put the interests of one's own race or ethnic group above those of another in situations of conflict or limited resources. This is to be understood as the analog of the view that it it morally justifiable to put the interests of oneself and one's own family, friends, and neighbors above the interests of strangers in a situation of conflict or limited resources.
There is nothing morally objectionable in his, and nothing that could be legitimately called racism.
4. The view that the genetic and cultural differences between races or ethnic groups justify genocide or slavery or the denial of political rights.
Now we arrive at an appropriate definiens of 'racism.' This is one among several legitimate ways of defining 'racism.' Racism thus defined is morally offensive in the extreme. I condemn it and you should to. I condemn all who hold this.
Getting through to liberals on a topic like this is well-nigh impossible, so willfully benighted are they. So why do I write on these topics? First to clarify my own ideas for my own enjoyment and edification. Second, to provide argumentative ammo for my conservative and libertarian friends. Third, because I am a happy culture warrior and joyful scribbler.
1. Is anybody against gun control? Not that I am aware of. Everybody wants there to be some laws regulating the manufacture, sale, importation, transportation, use, etc., of guns. So why do liberals routinely characterize conservatives as against gun control? Because they are mendacious. It is for the same reason that they label conservatives as anti-government. Conservatives stand for limited government, whence it follows that that are for government. This is a simple inference that even a liberal shallow-pate should be able to process. So why do liberals call conservatives anti-government? Because they are mendacious: they are not interested in civil debate, but in winning at all costs by any means. With respect to both government and gun control, the question is not whether but how much.
2. Terminology matters. 'Magazine' is the correct term for what is popularly called a clip. Don't refer to a round as a bullet. The bullet is the projectile. Avoid emotive phraseology if you are interested in serious discussion. 'Assault weapon' has no clear meaning and is emotive to boot. Do you mean semi-automatic long gun? Then say that. Don't confuse 'semi-automatic' with 'fully automatic.' Bone up on the terminology if you want to be taken seriously.
3. Gun lobbies benefit gun manufacturers. No doubt. But they also defend the Second Amendment rights of citizens, all citizens. Be fair. Don't adduce the first fact while ignoring the second. And don't call the NRA a special interest group. A group that defends free speech may benefit the pornography industry, but that is not to say that the right to free speech is not a right for all. Every citizen has an actual or potential interest in self-defense and the means thereto. It's a general interest. A liberal who has no interest in self-defense and the means thereto is simply a liberal who has yet to be mugged or raped or had her home invaded. Such a liberal's interest is yet potential.
4. Question for liberals: what is your plan in case of a home invasion? Call 9-1-1? What is your plan in case of a fire? Call the Fire Department? Not a bad thought. But before they arrive it would help to have a home fire extinguisher at the ready. Ergo, etc.
5. The president and Congress are fiddling while Rome burns. Compared to the fiscal crisis, the gun issue is a non-issue. That really ought to be obvious. There was no talk of it early in the Obama administration. Why not? It looks to be a red herring, a way of avoiding a truly pressing issue while at the same time advancing the Left's totalitarian agenda. One can strut and posture and show how sensitive and caring one is while avoiding painful decisions that are bound to be unpopular and for some pols suicidal. I am talking about entitlement reform. Here's a part of a solution that would get me tarred and feathered. After a worker has taken from the Social Security system all the money he paid in plus, say, 8% interest, the payments stop. That would do something to mitigate the Ponzi-like features of the current unsustainable system.
6. Believe it or not, Pravda (sic!) has warned Americans about draconian gun control. 'Pravda,' if I am not badly mistaken, is Russian for truth. That took real chutzpah, the commies calling their propaganda organ, Truth. Well, the former commies speak truth, for once, here: "These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions." Read the whole thing. Some days I think the US is turning into the SU what with Obama and all his czars.
7. Nannystaters like Dianne Feinstein ought to think carefully before they make foolish proposals. The unintended consequences may come back to bite them. Gun and ammo sales are through the roof. Although more guns in the hands of responsible, trained, individuals leads to less crime, more guns in civilian hands, without qualification, cannot be a good thing.
8. It doesn't follow, however, that if, per impossibile (as the philosophers say) all guns were thrown into the sea we would be better off. The gun is an equalizer, a peace-preserver, a violence-thwarter. Samuel Colt is supposed to have said, "Have no fear of any man no matter what his size, in time of need just call on me and I will equalize." Granny with her .45 is a pretty good match for an unarmed Tookie Williams.
9. SCOTUS saw the light and pronounced it an individual right. You persist in thinking the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right? I wonder if you think that the right to life is also collective. If my right to life is an individual right, how can my right to defend my life and the logically consequent right to the means to such defense not also be an individual right?
Addendum. Tony Bevin usefully contributes the following:
You write (#9):
"SCOTUS saw the light and pronounced it an individual right. "
An oft overlooked fact is the definition of "milita" in the United States legal code. It is easily available to anyone who searches for US Code militia (reproduced below, emphasis mine):
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia
In my various defenses of capital punishment (see Crime and Punishment category) I often invoke the principle that the punishment must fit the crime. To my surprise, there are people who confuse this principle, label it PFC, with some barbaric version of the lex talionis, the law of the talion, which could be summed up as 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' The existence of this confusion only goes to show that one can rarely be too clear, especially in a dumbed-down society in which large numbers of people cannot think in moral categories. Recently I received the following from a reader:
If your argument is that the punishment must fit the crime, what about cases of extreme cruelty (Ted Bundy, e.g.)? Should the state have tortured him? Of course not, that would be inhumane. What makes this different from the death penalty?
This question shows a confusion of PFC with the 'eye for an eye' principle. Everything I have written on the topic of capital punishment assumes the correctness of Amendment VIII to the magnificent U. S. Constitution: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments imposed." (emphasis added).
The exact extension of 'cruel and unusual punishments' is open to some reasonable debate. But I should hope that we would all agree that drawing and quartering, burning at the stake, crucifixion, the gouging out of eyes, and disembowelment are cruel and unusual. And here in the West we would add to the list the stoning of adulterers, the cutting off the hands of thieves, the flogging of women for receiving a kiss on the cheek from a stranger, and genital mutilation.
So PFC does not require the state-sanctioned gouging out of the eye of the eye-gouger, or the raping of the rapist, or the torturing of Ted Bundy, or the poisoning by anti-freeze of the woman who disposes of her husband via anti-freeze cocktails. ("Try this, sweetie, it's a new margarita recipe I found on the Internet!")
PFC is a principle of proportionality. The idea is that justice demands that the gravity of the punishment match or be proportional to the gravity of the crime. Obviously, a punishment can 'fit' a crime in this sense without the punishment being an act of the same type as that of the crime. Suppose a man rapes a woman, is caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a night in jail and a $50 fine. That would be a travesty of justice because of its violation of PFC. The punishment does not fit the crime: it is far too lenient. But sentencing the rapist to death by lethal injection would also violate PFC: the punishment is too stringent.
Now consider the case of the man Clayton Lockett — a liberal would refer to him as a 'gentleman' — who brutally raped and murdered a girl, a murder that involved burying her alive. His execution was 'botched' because ". . . lethal injection has becoming increasingly difficult after European pharmaceutical companies stopped exporting drug compounds used for the death penalty in line with the EU outlawing of executions . . . ." Death is surely the fitting punishment for such a heinous deed. If you deny that, then you are violating PFC.
But if death is the appropriate punishment in a case like this, it does not follow that the miscreant ought to be brutally raped, tortured, and then buried alive. That would be 'cruel and unusual.' Death by firing squad or electric chair would not be cruel and unusual.
Now either you see that or you don't. If you don't, then I pronounce you morally obtuse. You cannot think in moral categories. You do not understand what justice requires.
Related issue. Suppose you believe that we either are or have immortal souls. Would you still have good reason to consider murder a grave moral breach? See Souls and Murder.
