The Left Banke, Walk Away Renee, 1966. This song is the personal soundtrack to 40-year-old memories of a woman, older than me, whom I loved from afar, a love never revealed to its object. Does hidden love count as unrequited love?
Don Gibson, Sea of a Heartbreak, a country-rock crossover hit from 1961, and one of the best. Underplayed. I heard it in '61, and didn't hear it again until '89.
Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You, 1963. You say it's sentimental? Well, what would life be without sentiment and feeling? Qualia are what make life worth living, as a philosopher might put it. It would be interesting to try to figure out just what sentimentality is, and what is wrong with it.
One self-indulgently 'wallows' in a sentimental song, giving into its 'cheap' emotions. The emotions are 'false' and 'faked.' The melody and lyrics are formulaic and predictable, 'catchy.' The listener allows himself to be manipulated by the songwriter who is out to 'push the listener's buttons.' The aesthetic experience is not authentic but vicarious. And so on. Adorno would not approve.
A theist friend requests a design argument. Here is one.
You are out hiking and the trail becomes faint and hard to follow. You peer into the distance and see three stacked rocks. Looking a bit farther, you see another such stack. Now you are confident which way the trail goes.
Your confidence is based on your taking the rock piles as more than merely natural formations. You take them as providing information about the trail's direction, which is to say that you to take them as trail markers, as meaning something, as about something distinct from themselves, as exhibiting intentionality, to use the philosopher's term of art. The intentionality, of course, is derivative rather than original. It is not part of your presupposition that the cairns of themselves mean anything. Obviously they don't. But it is part of your presupposition that the cairns are physical embodiments of the original or intrinsic intentionality of a trail blazer or trail maintainer. Thus the presupposition that you make when you take the rock piles as providing information about the direction of the trail is that an intelligent being designed the objects in question with a definite purpose, namely, to indicate the trail's direction.
Of course, the two rock piles might have come into existence via purely natural causes: a rainstorm might have dislodged some rocks with gravity plus other purely material factors accounting for theirplacement. And their placement might be exactly right. Highly unlikely, but possible. This possibility shows that the appearance of design does not entail design. A stack of rocks may appear to be a cairn without being one. A cairn, by definition, is a marker or memorial, and thus an embodiment of meaning, meaning it cannot possess intrinsically in virtue of its mere physicality, e.g., its being a collocation of bits of rhyolite.
Nevertheless, your taking of the rock piles as trail markers presupposes (entails) your belief that they were put there by someone to mark the trail. It would clearly be irrational to take the piles as evidence of the trail's direction while at the same time maintaining that their formation was purely accidental. And if you later found out that they had come into being by chance due to an earthquake, say, you would cease interpreting them as meaning anything, as providing information about the trail. One must either take the rock piles as meaningful and thus designed or as undesigned and hence meaningless. One cannot take them as both undesigned and meaningful. For their meaning — 'the trail goes that-a-way' — derives from a designer whose original intentionality is embodied in them.
In short: the rock stacks have no meaning in themselves. They have meaning only as embodying the original intentionality of someone who put them there for a purpose: to show the trail's direction. The hiker who interprets the stacks as meaningful presupposes that they are embodiments or physical expressions of original intentionality and not accidental collocations of matter.
Now consider our incredibly complex sense organs and brain. We rely on them to provide information about the physical world. I rely on eyesight, for example, both to know that there is a trail and to discern some of its properties. I rely on hearing to inform me of the presence of a rattlesnake. I rely on my brain to draw inferences from what I see and hear, inferences that purport to be true of states of affairs external to my body. The visual apparatus (eye, optic nerves, visual cortex and all the rest) exhibits apparent design. It is as if the eyes were designed for the purpose of seeing. As we say colloquially, eyes are for seeing. But the appearance of design is no proof of real design. And indeed, human beings with their sensory apparatus are supposed to have evolved by an unguided process of natural selection operating upon random mutations. If so, eye and brain are cosmic accidents. The same goes for the rest of our cognitive apparatus: memory, introspection, reason, etc.
But if this is the case, how can we rely on our senses to inform us about the physical world? If eye and brain are cosmic accidents, then we can no more rely on them to inform us about the physical world than we can rely on an accidental collocation of rocks to inform us about the direction of a trail.
As a matter of fact, we do rely on our senses. Our reliance may be mistaken in particular cases as when a bent stick appears as a snake. But in general our reliance on our senses for information about the world seems justified. Our senses thus seem reliable: they tend to produce true beliefs more often than not when functioning properly in their appropriate environments. We rely on our senses in mundane matters but also when we do science, and in particular when we do evolutionary biology. The problem is: How is our reliance on our sense organs justified if they are the accidental and undesigned products of natural selection operating upon random mutations?
To put it in terms of rationality: How could it be rational to rely on our sense organs (and our cognitive apparatus generally) if evolutionary biology under its naturalistic (Dawkins, Dennett, et al.) interpretation provides a complete account of this cognitive apparatus? How could it be rational to affirm both that our cognitive faculties are reliable, AND that they are accidental products of blind evolutionary processes? That would be like affirming both that the cairns are reliable trail indicators AND that they came about by unguided natural processes. I agree with Richard Taylor who writes:
. . . it would be irrational for one to say both that his sensory and cognitive faculties had a natural, nonpurposeful origin and also that they reveal some truth with respect to something other than themselves, something that is not merely inferred from them. (Metaphysics, 3rd ed. p. 104)
This train of thought suggests the following aporetic triad or antilogism:
1. It is rational to rely on our cognitive faculties to provide access to truths external to them.
2. It would not be rational to rely on our cognitive faculties if they had come about by an unguided process of natural selection operating upon random genetic mutations. 3. Our cognitive faculties did come about by an unguided process of natural selection operating upon random genetic mutations.
The limbs of the triad are individually plausible but collectively inconsistent: they cannot all be true. From any two limbs one can validly argue to the negation of the remaining one. So, corresponding to our antilogism there are three valid syllogisms. One of them is a design argument that argues to the negation of (3) and the affirmative conclusion that behind the evolutionary process is intelligent, providential guidance. "And this all men call God."
To resist this design argument, the naturalist must reject either (1) or (2). To reject (2) is to accept the rationality of believing both that our cognitive faculties arose by accident and that they produce reliable beliefs. It is to accept the rationality of something that, on the face of it, is irrational. To reject (1) is not very palatable either. But I suppose one could bite the bullet and say, "Look, we are not justified in relying on our cognitive faculties, we just rely on them and so far so good."
A mysterian naturalist could say this: Our cognitive faculties came about through an unguided evolutionary process; it is rational to rely upon them; but our cognitive architecture is such that we simply cannot understand how it could be rational to rely on processes having this origin. For us, the problem is insoluble, a mystery, due to our irremediable limitations. Just because it is unintelligible to us how something could be the case, it does not follow that it is not the case.
The best objection to this little design argument I have sketched comes from the camp of Thomas Nagel. Nagel could say, "You have given good reason to reject unguided evolution, but why can't the guidance be immanent? Why must there be a transcendent intelligent being who supervises the proceedings? Nature herself is immanently intelligible and unfolds according to her own immanent teleology. You cannot infer theism since you haven't excluded the pansychist option."
Of course, one could beef up the design argument presented by working to exclude the panpsychist option.
I demanded an argument valid in point of logical form all of whose premises are purely factual but whose conclusion is categorically (as opposed to hypothetically or conditionally) normative. Recall that a factual proposition is one which, whether true or false, purports to record a fact, and that a purely factual proposition is a factual proposition containing no admixture of normativity.
My demand is easily, if trivially, satisfied.
Ex contradictione quodlibet. From a contradiction anything, any proposition, follows. This is rigorously provable within the precincts of the PC (the propositional calculus). As follows:
1. p & ~p 2. p (from 1 by Simplification) 3. p v q (from 2 by Addition) 4. ~p & p (from 1 by Commutation) 5. ~p (from 4 by Simplification) 6. q (from 3, 5 by Disjunctive Syllogism)
Now plug in 'Obama is a liar' for p and 'One ought to be kind to all sentient beings' for q. The result is:
Obama is a liar Obama is not a liar Ergo One ought to be kind to all sentient beings.
My demands have been satisifed. The above is an argument valid in point of logical form whose premises are all purely factual and whose conclusion is categorically normative.
I recall a remark by Hans-Georg Gadamer in his Philosophische Lehrjahre to the effect that the harvest years of a scholar come late. That was certainly true in the case of the Australian philosopher Barry Miller (1923-2006). His philosophical career culminated in a burst of productivity. In roughly the last decade of his long life he published a trilogy in philosophical theology: From Existence to God (1992), A Most Unlikely God (1996), and The Fullness of Being (2002). I reviewed the first two in the journals and made substantial comments on a manuscript version of the third. Miller kindly acknowledged my help at the end of the preface of the 2002 book. So I was pleased to be of some small service on Miller's behalf by refereeing Kremer's manuscript for Oxford UP and supplying the blurb below when it was accepted by Bloomsbury.
“Barry Miller’s philosophical theology clearly shows how a philosopher can think rigorously about God without caving into fashionable and facile refutations of theism. In this study of his writings, Elmar Kremer provides an exemplary account of his sophisticated arguments while discussing their value and cogently defending them against a number of objections. Kremer’s welcome book is both a fine introduction to Miller and a significant contribution to philosophy of religion.” – Brian Davies, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University, USA,
“Barry Miller was a brilliant philosophical theologian with an original argument for, and development of, the Thomist idea of God as the entity whose essence is existence. Unfortunately Miller's ideas have not been given the attention they deserve. In part this is because he made few concessions to the reader. In this book Elmar J. Kremer provides the 'clear, well-developed exposition' that Miller's ideas deserve. I recommended it highly to all interested in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, or theology.” – Peter Forrest, Retired Professor of Philosophy, University of New England, Australia,
“Barry Miller's penetrating work in philosophical theology has not received the attention it deserves. It is therefore with pleasure that I recommend the first book-length treatment of Miller's work, Elmar J. Kremer's Analysis of Existing: Barry Miller's Approach to God.” – William F. Vallicella, Retired Professor of Philosophy, USA,
“Kremer's book consists of philosophically acute, painstaking scholarship. It is a very fine introduction to Miller’s highly original work on the metaphysics of theism.” – Bruce Langtry, Senior Fellow in Philosophy, The University of Melbourne, Australia,
Some in the habit of running run in a habit. The Poor Clares are sponsoring their 5th annual Desert Nun Run in Tempe on March 8th. Might be fun to run with a nun. And you can vote with your feet against the scumbaggers and bullies of the current administration.
The Poor Clares are the group of sisters who have been targeted by the lawless and corrupt thugs of the Obama administration. See here. Here is the Obamacare Anti-Conscience Mandate.
Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (editiones scholasticae, vol. 39, Transaction Books, 2014) provides an overview of Scholastic approaches to causation, substance, essence, modality, identity, persistence, teleology, and other issues in fundamental metaphysics. The book interacts heavily with the literature on these issues in contemporary analytic metaphysics, so as to facilitate the analytic reader’s understanding of Scholastic ideas and the Scholastic reader’s understanding of contemporary analytic philosophy. The Aristotelian theory of actuality and potentiality provides the organizing theme, and the crucial dependence of Scholastic metaphysics on this theory is demonstrated. The book is written from a Thomistic point of view, but Scotist and Suarezian positions are treated as well where they diverge from the Thomistic position.
I thank Professor Feser for sending me a complimentary copy which arrived a couple of hours ago. So far, I have read the Prolegomenon (pp. 6-30) which is mainly a critique of scientism together with a rejection of the view of philosophy as mere 'conceptual analysis.'
Scientism is the doctrine that "science alone plausibly gives us objective knowledge, and that any metaphysics worthy of consideration can only be that which is implicit in science." (10) That is exactly what it is in contemporary discussions, although, for the sake of clarity, I would have added 'natural' before both occurrences of 'science.' Also worth noting is that scientism is to naturalism as epistemology to ontology: scientism is the epistemology of the ontological view according to which (concrete) reality is exhausted by the space-time manifold and its contents as understood by physics and the natural sciences built upon it such as chemistry and biology.
I won't repeat Feser's arguments, but they are pellucid and to my mind conclusive. The usual suspects, Lawrence 'Bait and Switch' Krauss and Alexander Rosenberg, come in for a well-deserved drubbing. Ed's prose in this book is characteristically muscular, but he keeps his penchant for polemic in check.
By the way, if you want to read a truly moronic article on scientism, I recommend (if that's the word) Sean Carroll, Let's Stop Using the Word "Scientism. Carroll thinks that the word is "unhelpful because it’s ill-defined, and acts as a license for lazy thinking." Nonsense. He should read Feser or indeed any competent philosopher's discussion of the topic.
Some hold that philosophy, because it is not science, can only be conceptual analysis. Ed makes a forking good point when he observes that this view is a variation on Hume's Fork:
The claim that "all the objects of human reason or enquiry" [Hume] are or ought to be either matters of "conceptual analysis" matters of natural science is itself neither a conceptual truth nor a proposition for which you will find, or could find, the slightest evidence in natural science. It is a proposition as metaphysical as any a Scholastic would assert, differing from the latter only in being self-refuting." (26)
It occurred to me this morning that there is an ominous parallel between Putin's occupation of the Ukraine and Hitler's of the Sudetenland, and on a similar pretext, namely, the protecting of ethnic Russians/Germans. The Sudetenland was the German-speaking region of Czechoslovakia whose annexation by Hitler in 1938 was part of the run-up to the Second World War. But I'm no historian. So let me ascend from these grimy speluncar details into the aether of philosophy.
George Santayana is repeatedly quoted as saying that "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Although this may be true individually, I cannot see that it is true collectively. I have learned from my mistakes, and I don't repeat them. But a collection of individuals, with its ever-changing membership, is not an individual. Collectively, whether we remember the past or not we are condemned to repeat it. That is how I would go Santayana one better. Or to put it in less ringing terms:
Collectively, knowledge of the past does little to prevent the recurrence of old mistakes.
One reason for this is that there is no consensus as to what the lessons of history are. What did we Americans learn from Viet Nam? That we should avoid all foreign entanglements? That when we engage militarily we should do so decisively and with overwhelming force and resolve? (E.g, that we should have suppressed dissent at home and used a few tactical nukes against the Viet Cong?) What is the lesson to be learned? What is the mistake to be avoided? Paleocons, neocons (the descendants of old-time liberals) and leftists don't agree on questions like these.
One cannot learn a lesson the content of which is up for grabs.
What did we learn from Hiroshima and Nagasaki? That the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants is sometimes justified and may (as it actually has) usher in a long period of world peace? (There hasn't been a world war in going on 70 years). That this is a case in which the end justified the means? No adherent of just war doctrine would agree that that is the lesson.
Another reason why knowledge of the past is of little help in the present is that, even if there is agreement on some general lesson — e.g., don't appease dictators — there is bound to be disagreement as to whether or not the lesson applies in particular circumstances. Is Obama an appeaser? Is Putin a dictator? Is the Ukraine sufficiently like the Sudetenland to justify an action-guiding comparison? Et cetera ad nauseam.
It may be that moral and intellectual progress is possible only here. After death it may be too late, either because one no longer exists, or because one continues to exist but in a state that does not permit further progress.
It is foolish to think that believers in post-mortem survival could have no reason to value their physical health and seek longevity. Even a Platonist who believes that he is his soul and not a composite of soul and body has reason to prolong the discipline of the Cave. For it may be that the best progress or the only progress is possible only in the midst of its speluncarchiaroscuro.
Philosophia longa, vita brevis. It is precisely because philosophy is long that one ought to extend one's earthly tenure for as long as one can make progress intellectually and morally. And this, whether or not one has the hope that Vita mutatur non tollitur.
Giving the familiar a rest this Saturday night, we venture into the far out and experimental. A young friend recommends the following as among the more accessible pieces by Kayo Dot:
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book II, sec. 92, tr. Kaufmann:
Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry: all of its attractions depend on the way in which poetry is continually avoided and contradicted.
I thank Tully Borland for pushing the discussion in this fascinating direction.
A
Affirming the Consequent is an invalid argument form. Ergo One ought not (it is obligatory that one not) give arguments having that form.
B
Modus Ponens is valid Ergo One may (it is permissible to) give arguments having that form.
C
Correct deductive reasoning is in every instance truth-preserving. Ergo One ought to reason correctly as far as possible.
An argument form is valid just in case no (actual or possible) argument of that form has true premises and a false conclusion. An argument form is invalid just in case some (actual or possible) argument of that form has true premises and a false conclusion. Deductive reasoning is correct just in case it proceeds in accordance with a valid argument form. 'Just in case' is but a stylistic variant of 'if and only if.'
Now given these explanations of key terms, it seems that validity, invalidity, and correctness are purely factual, and thus purely non-normative, properties of arguments/reasonings. If so, how the devil do we get to the conclusions of the three arguments above?
View One: We don't. A, B, and C are each illicit is-ought slides.
View Two: Each of the above arguments is valid. Each of the key terms in the premises is normatively loaded from the proverbial 'git-go,' in addition to bearing a descriptive load.. Therefore, there is no illict slide. The move is from the normative to the normative. Validity, invalidity, and correctness can be defined only in terms of truth and falsity which are normative notions.
View Three: We have no compelling reason to prefer one of the foregoing views to the other. Each can be argued for and each can be argued against. Thus spoke the Aporetician.
Commenting on a NYT piece on Brewer's capitulation to the anti-liberty forces of political correctness, long-time correspondent Anthony Flood writes:
“Religious liberty is a core American and Arizona value,” Governor Brewer philosophized, but “so is no discrimination.” The syntactically challenged governor, or was it her ghost-writer?, evaded the implication that, should the two conflict, religious liberty must give way to "no discrimination."
To elicit the desired Pavlovian response, "discrimination," a "boo" word, replaced "freedom of association," once a "yay" word. The Christian photographer or baker who invites a same-sex couple to seek services elsewhere is slandered as the moral equivalent of a Jim Crow-era bigot. "No discrimination" — which no American founding document honors — is the inviolable dogma of post-Christian Humanism, itself a species of religion.
The LGBT "civil rights movement," apparently bored with mere "tolerance," now demands participation by Christians in the celebration of what they deem morally abhorrent if they are "asked." If they refuse, they can risk prosecution or shutter their businesses. Humanism's propagandists, including many deluded but professing Christians, get to label their opponents "bullies" and "bigots." Meanwhile, AG Holder brazenly suggests to his state counterparts that they need not enforce statutes they swore an oath to uphold but which, in their superior wisdom, deem indefensible, particularly laws that defend traditional marriage.
Let God be true, but every man a liar (Rom 3:4). He will not be mocked (Gal 6:7)
Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994) is an outstanding aphorist of a decidedly conservative, indeed reactionary, bent. What follows are some of his observations on the Catholic Church of the Second Vatican Council. I found them here thanks to Karl White. I've added a couple of comments in blue.
The phenomena of the decay of Catholicism are entertaining; those of Protestantism dull. (p. 191)
Tongues of fire didn’t descend upon the Second Vatican Council, as they did upon the first assembly of the apostles, but a stream of fire – a Feuerbach. (p. 245)
If one were to translate Ludwig Feuerbach's name into English it would come out as Firebrook. (Of course, one does not translate proper names; at most one transliterates them.) Feuerbach was an important influence on Karl Marx. He is famous or notorious for the notion that God is an unconscious anthropomorphic projection. Man alienates himself from his best attributes by unconsciously projecting them, in maximized forms, upon a nonexistent transcendent being.
A single council is nothing more than a single voice in the real ecumenical council of the Church: her complete history. (p. 265)
Popular Catholicism is the target of all progressive anger. Popular faith, popular hope, popular charity exasperate a clergy of petit bourgeois origin. (p. 266)
For the left-wing Catholic Catholicism is the great sin of the Catholic. (p. 248)
Catholics have lost that sympathetic capacity of sinning without arguing that sin doesn’t exist. (p. 274)
The problems of man can be neither exactly defined nor even remotely solved. Whoever hopes that Christianity can solve them ceases to be a Christian. (p. 285)
Add 'here below' at the end of the first sentence, and then the aphorism is true.
The progressive Catholic is only active in zealously seeking for whatever he can still hand over to the world.
Better a small church with Catholics than a numerous one with Rotarians. (p. 334)
Today’s Church is so nice as to exclude everything from the revealed traditions which public opinion condemns. (p. 319)
The current pope prays for that progress which Bury – its historian – called the “substitute for Providence.” (p. 319)
The thing that exasperates today’s Christian about the Middle Ages is Christianity. (p. 319)
The new liturgists have abolished the sacred pulpits in order that no scoundrel can assert that the Church intends to compete with the secular ones. (p. 319)
Catholics don’t have the slightest idea that the world feels betrayed by the concessions made to it by Catholicism. (p. 325)
The progressive clergy crowns the towers of the church of today not with a cross but with a weathervane. (p. 325)
Only the Catholic on the brink of losing his faith is outraged by the Church’s dazed state, sent by Providence.
St. Thomas Aquinas: an Orleaniste of theology? (p. 350)
Aggiornamento is the sellout of the Church. (p. 363)
The progressive Catholic collects his theology from the garbage can of Protestant theology. (p. 363)
Intending to open her arms to the world the Church instead opened her legs. (p. 363)
Instead of a theology of the mystical body the theologians of today teach a theology of the mystical masses. (p. 363)
Today it is impossible to respect the Christians. Out of respect for Christianity. (p. 379)
To elicit the desired Pavlovian response, "discrimination," a "boo" word, replaced "freedom of association," once a "yay" word. The Christian photographer or baker who invites a same-sex couple to seek services elsewhere is slandered as the moral equivalent of a Jim Crow-era bigot. "No discrimination" — which no American founding document honors — is the inviolable dogma of post-Christian Humanism, itself a species of religion.
The LGBT "civil rights movement," apparently bored with mere "tolerance," now demands participation by Christians in the celebration of what they deem morally abhorrent if they are "asked." If they refuse, they can risk prosecution or shutter their businesses. Humanism's propagandists, including many deluded but professing Christians, get to label their opponents "bullies" and "bigots." Meanwhile, AG Holder brazenly suggests to his state counterparts that they need not enforce statutes they swore an oath to uphold but which, in their superior wisdom, deem indefensible, particularly laws that defend traditional marriage.
Let God be true, but every man a liar (Rom 3:4). He will not be mocked (Gal 6:7)