Maverick Philosopher – Page 545 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Separation of Leftism and State

Liberals support separation of church and state, and so do I. But they have no problem with using the coercive power of the state to impose leftist ideology. Now leftism is not a religion, pace Dennis Prager (see article below), but it is very much like one, and if you can see what is wrong with allowing contentious theological doctrines to drive politics, then you ought to be able to see what is wrong with allowing the highly contentious ideological commitments of leftism to drive politics, most of which revolve around the leftist trinity (Prager) of race, gender, and class. If "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ," as per the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, then it ought to make no law that establishes the quasi-religion of leftism.

This is a large topic, and I have a substantial post in the works. But for today, just one example of what I am getting at.

It is a tenet of contemporary liberalism that opposition to same-sex 'marriage' is 'discriminatory' and that opponents of it are 'bigots.' Now this is both obtuse and slanderous. But liberals have a right to their opinions, even if it is to be wished that they would give some thought to the corresponding obligation to form correct opinions. Be that as it may, liberals have a right to their benighted views, and we ought to tolerate them. After all, we too are liberals in a much older, and a defensible, sense: we believe in toleration, open inquiry, free speech, individual liberty, etc. And we are liberal and self-critical enough to countenance the possibility that perhaps we are the benighted ones.

But toleration has limits.

What we ought not tolerate is the sort of coercion of the individual by the state that we find in the case of the Washington State florist who refused to sell floral arrangements to be used at a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony. This woman has no animus against gays, and had sold flowers to the homosexual couple. But she was not about to violate her own conscience by providing flowers for a same-sex event. As a result she was sued by the Washington State attorney general, and then by the ACLU.

Now do you see what is wrong with that? The state says to the individual: you have a right to your religious and philosophical beliefs, but only so long as you keep them to yourself and don't allow them to be expressed in your relations with your fellow citizens. You may believe what you want in the privacy of your own mind, but you may not translate your beliefs into social or political action. But we are free to translate our leftist 'theology' into rules and regulations that diminish your liberty. What then becomes of the "free exercise of religion" spoken of in the First Amendment? It is out the window. The totalitarian state has taken one more step in its assault on the liberty of the individual.

The totalitarian state of the contemporary liberal says to the individual: you have no right to live your beliefs unless we allow you to; but we have every right to impose our leftist beliefs on you and force you to live as we see fit.

Here are some home truths that cannot be repeated too often:

We are not the property of the state.

Our rights and liberties do not come from the state, but are logically antecedent to it, inscribed as they are in the very nature of things.

We do not have to justify our keeping of what is ours; the state has to justify its taking.

Race and Grievance

Recently over the transom from Monterey Tom:

. . . I have had a strained relationship with a long-time black friend who really thinks that opposition to Barack Obama is racially based. Beyond the personal level, I despise the tactic of dividing people in this country and capitalizing on the fact that some people love to nurture grievances derived from vicarious experiences. It always been a goal of the Left to make people hate not only their countries but their whole civilization. After all, how can you get someone to kill his father unless can get that man first to hate his father?

Well Tom, perhaps you ought to drop this guy as a friend. How can you be friends with someone who willfully believes something so plainly false, not to mention divisive and deeply offensive to those who have argued carefully and dispassionately against Obama's policies?

Anyone who thinks that opposition to Obama's policies derives from racial animus is delusional, on this point if not in general.

But assuming you value or need his friendship, then perhaps you ought to sit your friend down and very gently explain to him the distinction between a person and the policies he advocates. Explain that we conservatives are opposed to the policies of Obama, not the man. While we are not happy that a leftist is in the White House, we are very happy that a black man is there even though he is only half-black: it gives the lie to the oft-repeated leftist slander that the U. S. is institutionally racist.

But I predict that you will not get anywhere with your friend, not because he is black, but because he is a liberal.

You're right: the grievances many blacks love to nurture derive from vicarious experiences. They themselves have not experienced slavery or even Jim Crow. On the contrary, they have profited from the wonderful opportunities this country offers. But, having listened to race-baiters such as Brother Jesse and Brother Al, they think that the way forward for them is the via negativa of grievance-mongering when the latter is one of the marks of a loser and is sure to make them worse off than they are now.

Hate Thought

My man Hanson once again. Excerpt:

Apparently, racist, sexist or homophobic words themselves do not necessarily earn any rebuke. Nor is the race or gender of the speaker always a clue to the degree of outrage that follows.

Instead, the perceived ideology of the perpetrator is what matters most. Maher and Letterman, being good liberals, could hardly be crude sexists. But when the conservative Limbaugh uses similar terms, it must be a window into his dark heart.

It's apparently OK for whites or blacks to slur conservative Clarence Thomas in racist terms. Saying anything similar of the late liberal Justice Thurgood Marshall would have been blasphemous.

In short, we are dealing not with actual word crimes, but with supposed thought crimes.

The liberal media and popular culture have become our self-appointed thought police. Politics determines whether hate speech is a reflection of real hate or just an inadvertent slip, a risqué joke or an anguished reaction to years of oppression.

I Too Was Once a Democrat!

Like many conservatives, I didn't start out as one. My background is working class, my parents were Democrats and so was I until the age of 41. I came of age in the '60s. One of my heroes was JFK, "the intrepid skipper of the PT 109" as I described him in a school essay. I was all for the Civil Rights movement. Musically my heroes were Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. I thrilled to Blowin' in the Wind and other Civil Rights anthems. As I see it, those civil rights battles were fought and they were won. But then the rot set in as the the party of JFK liberals became the extremists and the leftists that they are today.

For example, Affirmative Action in its original sense gave way to reverse discrimination, race-norming, minority set-asides, identity politics and the betrayal of Martin Luther King's dream that people be judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." As liberals have become extremists, people with moderate views such as myself have become conservatives. These days I am a registered Independent.

Liberal Fascism: The Floral Variation

Suppose a florist refuses to provide flowers for a Ku Klux Klan event, or a caterer refuses to cater a neo-Nazi gathering. Suppose the refusal is a principled one grounded in opposition to the respective ideologies. Would you say that the purveyors of the services in question would have the right to refuse service, and that the State would have no right to force the purveyors to provide their services?

Yes you would. Well, it is no different if a florist refuses on grounds of principle to sell flowers to be used in a same-sex ceremony. She has the right to refuse, and the State has no right to compel the florist to violate her conscience.

There is no relevant difference between these cases. Opposition to same-sex marriage is grounded in principle. For some these principles are religious, for others purely philosophical, and for still others a mixture of both.

People had better wake up. Day by day we are losing our liberties to the fascists of the totalitarian Left.

The above is an actual case, and it is no suprise that the shysters of the ACLU are among the tormentors of the florist in question.

One what ground? Discrimination!

The shysters of the ACLU need to read my Profiling, Prejudice, and Discrimination.

Overbelief and Romans 1: 18-20

I met with S. N. in Tempe yesterday for philosophy and chess. While we were talking about overbelief, it occurred to me that Romans 1: 18-20 is another good example of overbelief. Now there is an issue that the budding theologian S. N. made me aware of, an issue that the philosopher in me desires to set aside, namely, the question whether St. Paul is speaking in his own voice in the passage in question. That is indeed an interesting question, but my concern is with the argment that the passage embodies, regardless of who is making it. I will write as if Paul is speaking in his own voice. If you disagree, substitute 'pseudo-Paul' for 'Paul.'

I will first give my reading of the passage, and then explain how it connects with William James' notion of overbelief. (I understand that the term 'overbelief' surfaces first in Matthew Arnold who supposedly derives it from Goethe's use of Aberglaube. My concern is solely with James' use of the word.)

The Pauline Passage

Rather than quote the whole of the Pauline passage at Romans 1: 18-20, I'll summarize it. Men are godless and wicked and suppress the truth. What may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Human beings have no excuse for their unbelief. "For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made . . . ."

Paul's claim here is that the existence and nature of God are evident from creation and that unbelief is a
result of a willful turning away from the truth. There is no excuse for unbelief because it is a plain fact that the natural world is divine handiwork. Now I am a theist and I am sympathetic to Christianity. But although I have one foot in Jerusalem, the other is planted firmly in Athens. And so I must point out that to characterize the natural world as 'made' or 'created' begs the question in favor of theism. As begging the question, the Pauline claim about the evidentness of the world's being created offers no support for theism. It is an analytic proposition that there is no creation without a creator. So if the heavens and the earth are a creation, then it follows straightaway that a creator exists.

But is the world a divine creation? This is the question, and the answer is not obvious. That the natural world is a divine artifact is not evident to the senses, or to the heart, or to reason. Of course, one can argue for the existence of God from the existence and order of the natural world. I have done it myself. But those who reject theistic arguments, and construct anti-theistic arguments, have their reasons too, and it cannot fairly be said that what animates the best of them is a stubborn and prideful refusal to submit to a truth that is evident. It is simply not evident to the senses that the natural world is a divine artifact.

I may be moved to marvel at "the starry skies above me." This was one of two things that filled Kant with wonder, the other being "the moral law within me." But seeing is not seeing as. If you see the starry skies as divine handiwork, then this is an interpretation from within a theistic framework. But the datum seen can just as easily be given a nontheistic interpretation.

If the atheism of some has its origin in pride, stubborness and a willful refusal to recognize any power or
authority beyond oneself, or beyond the human, as is plainly the case with many, it does not follow that the atheism of all has this origin.

It is all-too-human to suspect in our opponents moral depravity when we cannot convince them. The Pauline passage smacks of that all-too-humanity. There are sincere and decent atheists, and they have plenty of excuse for their unbelief. The best of them, if wrong in the end, are excusably wrong.

Overbelief in the Pauline Passage

Here is my working definition of 'overbelief' based on my reading of William James: an overbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience more than is contained within it.

We experience the world as existent, as beautiful, and as orderly. But we don't experience the world as divine handiwork any more than we experience it as the work of Satan contrived to fool us into taking it to be real when it is not, and seduce us with its beauty and order. That the world is divine handiwork is therefore, by the above definition, an overbelief.

That is not to say that it is false. It is to say, as S. N. pointed out yesterday, that the belief is undetermined by the experience. Overbeliefs are undetermined by what we actually and literally experience. (Admittedly, it is a tricky question what exactly we literally experience: do I see my car, or only the front of my car? Do I touch my cat, or only the fur of my cat? I see a green tree, but do I see that a tree is green? Do I even see a green tree? I see an instance of greenness and an instance of treeness, but do I see that the two property-instances are compresent?)

That the world is divine handiwork is an overbelief. That doesn't make it false or even unreasonable. Indeed, overbeliefs are unavoidable. As James writes,

These ideas [overbeliefs] will thus be essential to that individual's religion; — which is as much as to say that over-beliefs in various directions are absolutely indispensable, and that we should treat them with tenderness and tolerance so long as they are not intolerant themselves. As I have elsewhere written, the most interesting and valuable things about a man are usually his over-beliefs. (The Varieties of Religious Experience, Penguin 1982, p. 515, orig. publ. 1902)

Technorati Ranking

Technorati ranks Maverick Philosopher at #185 of 8,735 U.S. politics blogs, and at 476 of 21,024 world politics blogs. For purposes of comparsion, Michelle Malkin sits at #7 of U. S. politics blogs.

Not too shabby. Meanwhile readership approaches two million total pageviews for this, the third major incarnation of MavPhil.

Needless to say, I don't see this blog as primarily about politics. But politics matters like waste disposal matters, and one ought not go quietist, even if one is on balance a quietist, when the world is drowning in a crapload of stupidity, ignorance, and political correctness.

The Two Opposites of ‘Nothing’

It is interesting that 'nothing' has two opposites. One is 'something.' Call it the logical opposite. The other is 'being.' Call it the ontological opposite. Logically, 'nothing' and 'something' are interdefinable:

D1. Nothing is F =_df It is not the case that something is F

D2. Something is F =_df it is not the case that nothing is F.

These definitions give us no reason to think of one term as more basic than the other. Logically, they are on a par. Logically, they are polar opposites. Anything you can say with the one you can say with the other, and vice versa.

Ontologically, however, being and nothing are not on a par. They are not polar opposites. Being is primary, and nothing is derivative. (Note the ambiguity of 'Nothing is derivative' as between 'It is not the case that something is derivative' and 'Nothingness is derivative.' The second is meant.)

Suppose we try to define the existential 'is' in terms of the misnamed 'existential' quantifier. (The proper moniker is 'particular quantifier.') We try this:

y is =_df for some x, y = x.

In plain English, for y to be or exist is for y to be identical to something. For Quine to be or exist is for Quine to be identical to something. This thing, however, must exist. Thus

Quine exists =_df Quine is identical to something that exists

and

Pegasus does not exist =_df nothing that exists is such that Pegasus is identical to it.

The conclusion is obvious: one cannot explicate the existential 'is' in terms of the particular quantifier without circularity, without presupposing that things exist.

I have now supplied enough clues for the reader to advance to the insight that the ontological opposite of 'nothing,' is primary.

Mere logicians won't get this since existence is "odious to the logician" as George Santayana observes. (Scepticism and Animal Faith, Dover, 1955, p. 48, orig. publ. 1923.)

Unusual Experiences and the Problem of Overbelief and Underbelief

One day, well over 30 years ago, I was deeply tormented by a swarm of negative thoughts and feelings that had arisen because of a dispute with a certain person. Pacing around my apartment, I suddenly, without any forethought, raised my hands toward the ceiling and said, "Release me!" It was a wholly spontaneous cri du coeur, a prayer if you will, but not intended as such. I emphasize that it was wholly unpremeditated. As soon as I had said the words and made the gesture, a wonderful peace descended upon my mind and the flood of negativity vanished. I became as calm as a Stoic sage.

That is an example of what I am calling an unusual experience. Only some of us have such experiences, and those who do, only rarely. I never had such an experience before or since, though I have had a wide variety of other types of unusual experiences of a religious, mystical and paranormal nature.

A second very memorable experience occurred while in deep formal meditation. I had the strong sense that I was the object of a very powerful love. I suddenly had the feeling that I was being loved by someone. Unfortunately, my analytic mind went to work on the experience and it soon subsided. This is why, when the gifts of meditation arrive, one must surrender to them in utter passivity, something that intellectual types will find it very hard to do.

The typical intellectual suffers from hypertrophy of the critical faculty, and in consequence, he suffers the blockage of the channels of intuition. He hones his intellect on the whetstone of discursivity, and if he is not careful, he may hone it away to nothing, or else perfect the power of slicing while losing the power of splicing.

Now suppose one were to interpret an experience such as the first one described as a reception of divine grace or as the answering of a prayer by a divine or angelic agent. Such an interpretation would involve what William James calls overbelief. Although the genial James uses the term several times in Varieties of Religious Experience and elsewhere, I don't believe he ever defines the term. But I think it is is keeping with his use of the term to say that an overbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience more than is contained within it.

Similarly, if I came to believe that what I experienced in the second experience was the love of Christ (subjective genitive), that would be an overbelief. The experience could not be doubted while I was having it, and now, a few years after having the experience, I have no practical doubts about it either: I have the testimony of my journal account which was written right after the experience, testimony that is corroborated by my present memories.

Unfortunately, experiences do not bear within themselves certificates of veridicality. There are two questions that an experience qua experience leaves open. First, is it of something real? Second, even if it is of something real, is it of the particular thing the overbelief says it is of?

Suppose a skeptic pipes up: "What you experienced was not the love of Christ, you gullible fool, but a random electro-chemical discharge in your brain." But of course, that would be wrong, indeed absurd. The experience was certainly not of that. The experience had a definite and describable phenomenological content, a content not describable in electro-chemical or neural terms.

Indeed, it is arguable that the skeptic is trading in underbelief, a word I just now coined. [Correction, 11 July: James uses 'under-belief' on p. 515 of The Varieties of Religious Experience.] If an overbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience more than is contained within it, then an underbelief is a belief arrived at by reading out of an experience less than is contained within it, or reading into it what manifestly is not contained within it.

Pounding on such a boneheaded skeptic, however, does not get the length of a proof of the veridicality of my experience.

We are on the point of becoming entangled in a thicket of thorny questions. Are there perceptual beliefs? If yes, are they not overbeliefs? I see a bobcat sitting outside my study and I form the belief that there is a bobcat five feet from me. But surely that existential claim goes beyond what the experience vouchsafes. The existence of the cat cannot be read off from the experience . . . .

Or is it rather underbelief if I refuse to grant that seeing a bobcat in normal conditions (good light, etc.) is proof that it exists in reality beyond my visual perception?

Should we perhaps define 'overbelief' and 'underbelief' in such a way that they pertain only to non-empirical matters?

Furthermore, is an overbelief a belief? Might 'over' function here as an alienans adjective? Beliefs are either true or false. Perhaps overbeliefs are neither, being merely matters of attitude, merely subjective additions to experiences. I think James would reject this. For him, overbeliefs are genuine beliefs. I'll dig up some passages later.

Sam Harris, you may remember, holds that the nonexistence of the self is something that one can learn from meditation. But he too, I should think, is involved in overbelief. One cannot observe the nonexistence of the self. Harris' belief goes well beyond anything that meditation discloses. The self does not turn up among the objects of experience as a separate object. Granted. It doesn't follow, however, that there is no self. To get to that conclusion overbelief is necessary, along the lines of: Only that which can be singled out as an object of experience exists or is real. How justify that on the basis of a close inspection of experience? It is sometimes called the Principle of Acquaintance. Are we acquainted with it?

The irony shouldn't be missed. Harris, the febrile religion-basher, embraces a religious overbelief in his Buddhist rejection of the self. Buddhism is a religion.

A Fool and His Coat

A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him. (anon. via Sowell)

C. D. Broad on Religious Experience

The following is reproduced from Keith Burgess-Jackson's weblog:

[W]hen persons without religious experience regard themselves as being on that ground superior to those who have it, their attitude must be treated as merely silly and offensive. Similarly, any theories about religious experience constructed by persons who have little or none of their own should be regarded with grave suspicion. (For that reason it would be unwise to attach very much weight to anything that the present writer may say on this subject.)

(C. D. Broad, "Arguments for the Existence of God, II," The Journal of Theological Studies 40 [April 1939]: 156-67, at 159 [italics in original])

Retronyms

Keith Burgess-Jackson writes, "First there was a copy; then there was an electronic copy; then there was a physical copy."

To which I add: First I had a plain old address; then I acquired an e-mail address, so that now my plain old address is a physical address.

Should we speak of retronymic families? 'Physical address' and 'snail mail' belong together in one family, 'acoustic guitar' and 'acoustic set' in another.

Liberal Apartheid

Another great column by Victor Davis Hanson.

Concessions not to be Begrudged

Our incarnation is a fact, mysterious though it may be. Eating and sleeping are concessions to it. The animals we are are also social and so a bit of socializing is a necessary concession to that part of our mix. These concessions are not to be begrudged and may in moderate measure be enjoyed. Earthly man does not live by spirit alone.

Nescio, Dutch Author

I learned yesterday that there was a Dutch novelist (1882-1961) who rejoiced under the pen name, Nescio, which is Latin for I don't know. His Amsterdam Stories is now available in English. Memo to self: get a copy!

Nescio would be a good title for a philosopher's weblog. Plato's Socrates is the hero and patron saint of philosophers, and he was the man who knew his ignorance. Intellectual humility is built into philosophy's name, philosophia, which signifies the acquisitive love of wisdom, not its possession.

Ideologues possess, or think they do. Philosophy dispossesses them of their pretended possessions.

Nowadays it is perhaps the ideologues of neurobabble who are in direst need of such dispossession.