Maverick Philosopher – Page 563 – Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Thinking Meat?

Argument A. Meat can't think. My brain is meat. Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.

A in Reverse: What thinks in me when I think is my brain. My brain is meat. Therefore, meat can think.

The proponent of A needn't deny that we are meatheads. Of course we are. We are literally meat (and bone) all the way through. His point is that the res cogitans cannot be a hunk of meat.

Both arguments are valid, but only one is sound. The decision comes down to the initial premises of the two arguments. Is there a rational way of deciding between these premises?

A materialist might argue as follows. Although we cannot at present understand how a hunk of meat could feel and think, what is actual is possible regardless of our ability or inability to explain how it is possible. The powers of certain configurations of matter could remain hidden for a long time from our best science, or even remain hidden forever. What else would be doing the thinking and feeling in us if not our brains? What else could the mind be but the functioning brain? The fact that we cannot understand how the brain could be a semantic engine is not a conclusive reason for thinking that it is not a semantic engine.

It is worth noting that the reverent gushing of the neuro-scientistic types over the incredible complexity of the brain does absolutely nothing to reduce the unintelligibility of the notion that it is brains or parts of brains that are the subjects of intentional and qualitative mental states. For it is unintelligible how ramping up complexity can trigger a metabasis eis allo genos. Are you telling me that meat that means is just meat that is more complex than ordinary meat? You might as well say that the leap from unmeaning meat to meaning meat is a miracle. Some speak of 'emergence.' But that word merely papers over the difficulty, labelling the problem without solving it. You may as well say, as in the cartoon, "And then a miracle occurs." But then it's Game Over for the materialist.

Our materialist would do better to insist that unintelligibility to us does not entail impossibility. Our inability to explain how X is possible does not entail that X is not possible.

My response would be that while unintelligibility does not entail impossibility, it is excellent evidence of it. If you tell me that a certain configuration of neurons is intrinsically object-directed, directed to an object that may or may not exist without prejudice to the object-directedness, then you are saying something unintelligible. It is as if you said that.5 volts intrinsically represents 1 and .7 volts intrinsically represents 0. That's nonsense. Or it as if you said that a pile of rocks intrinsically indicates the direction of the trial. (See The Philosophizing Hiker: The Derivative Intentionality of Trail Markers.)

No rock pile has intrinsic meaning or intrinsic representational power. And the same goes for any material item or configuration of material items no matter how complex. No such system has intrinsic meaning; any meaning it has is derived. The meaning is derived either from an intelligent being who ascribes meaning to the material system, or from an intelligent being whose purposes are embodied in the material system, or both.

Thus I am rejecting the view that meaning could inhere in material systems apart from relations to minds that are intrinsically intentional, minds who are original Sinn-ers, if you will, original mean-ers. We are all of us Sinn-ers, every man Jack of us, original Sinn-ers, but our Sinn-ing is not mortal or venial but vital. Intrinsic, underived intentionality is our very lifeblood as spiritual beings.

So if the materialist says that the brain means, intends, represents, thinks, etc., then I say that makes no sense given what we understand the brain to be. The brain is a material system and the physical, chemical, electrical, and biological properties it and its parts have cannot be meaningfully predicated of mental states. One cannot speak intelligibly of a voltage drop across a mental state any more than can one speak intelligibly of the intentionality of synapses or of their point of view or of what it is like to be one.

Of course, the materialist can pin his hope on a future science that understands the brain in different terms, terms that could be sensibly attached to mental phenomena. But this is nothing more than an empty gesturing towards a 'possibility' that cannot be described except in the vaguest terms. It is nothing but faith, hope, and hand-waving.

There is also the dogmatism of the materialist who insists that the subject of thinking must be the functioning brain. How does he know that? He doesn't. He believes it strongly is all.

So I give the palm to Argument A: Meat can't think. My brain is meat. Therefore, what thinks in me when I think is not my brain.

I do not absolutely foreclose on the abstract possibility that there be thinking meat. For I grant that unintelligibility to us is not invincible proof of impossibility. But when I compare that vaguely described abstract possibility with the present certainty that matter as we know it cannot think due to the very unintelligibility of the idea, then the present certainty wins over the abstract possibility and over the faith and hope of the materialist.

Cf. They're Made Out of Meat

Relations With Relatives

Our relations with our relatives are too often like the relations of Arabs and Israelis: too much past, no future. But with the Arabs and Israelis it is even worse: too much history, not enough geography.

Conservatives and Prudence

The fourth of Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles reads:

Fourth, conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence. Burke agrees with Plato that in the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues. Any public measure ought to be judged by its probable long-run consequences, not merely by temporary advantage or popularity. Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. As John Randolph of Roanoke put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. Human society being complex, remedies cannot be simple if they are to be efficacious. The conservative declares that he acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

How does Barack Obama stack up against this fourth principle? Permit me a slight exaggeration: Obama is the apotheosis of imprudence. Like Randolph's "devil who always hurries," he is in a big rush to "fundamentally transform America" (his words), as witness Obamacare and Obama's stunning fiscal irresponsibility. The national debt approaches 17 trillion (by a very conservative measure) and the man thinks that not a problem. Well, as Krazy Krugman says, the government is not like a household: the government can print money! Yes it can. And will.

At once a devil and a deification. We are in for it.

Why Liberals Still Detest Fox News

Good analysis by Jonathan Tobin from the pages of Commentary.

No one is more illiberal than a contemporary liberal. They don't deserve the appellation. 'Leftist' is better.

On Philosophical Denials of the Obvious

In philosophy, appeals to the obvious don't cut much ice because, as Hilary Putnam says somewhere, "It ain't obvious what's obvious." And as Spencer Case, MavPhil Cairo correspondent, points out, ". . . in contemporary academic philosophy there is a perverse incentive to deny the obvious." One who denies what counts as obvious to the vulgar comes off as a learned sophisticate while the one who invokes the obvious is cast in the role of rube or bigot or intransigent fool.

This raises the question whether there are obvious truths the denial of which would be perverse and sophistical. The answer is obviously in the affirmative. For example, it is obvious that normal post-natal human beings have two legs, that if they live long enough they learn to walk upright upon them, etc. Examples are easily multiplied ad libitum in the Moorean manner. More interesting is the question whether there are obvious truths that competent, academically accredited philosophers have denied either directly or by implication. I asked Spencer for examples. Here is part of that he said:

As far as more serious philosophers go, certain pro-choice hardliners at the University of Colorado deny that it is wrong to kill small children in fairly mundane circumstances. In addition, I believe every emotivist and expressivist theory of semantic content of moral statements denies the obvious. It's obvious that when I say "eating meat is morally wrong" I do not mean "eating meat (Boo!)" or anything of the sort. I am the one formulating the statement, and I know damn well what I intend to say. Extreme materialism in philosophy of mind, and David Lewis' ideas about modality also seem like good examples to me. Then there's Graham Priest who denies the law of non-contradiction. (But you might have already noticed the hedging in "I believe" or "seem like.")

Let's consider three examples. I expect Case to agree with me about the first two and disagree about the third.

1. Infanticide. I argue this way: "Infanticide is morally wrong; there is no morally relevant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide; ergo, late-term abortion is morally wrong." But of course the argument can be run in reverse with no breach of logical propriety: "Late-term abortion is not morally wrong; there is no morally relevant difference between late-term abortion and infanticide; ergo, Infanticide is not morally wrong." For details, see here.

Both arguments are valid, but only one can be sound. Which one? The first, say I. I am tempted to say that is just obvious that killing infant humans is morally wrong in the vast majority of circumstances, and that if you say the opposite, then you are denyng the obvious. I think Spencer will agree with me on this. So here is a case where it is obvious what's obvious. Even if it is not blindingly self-evident that killing infant humans, for convenience say, is morally wrong, it is more obvious than the opposite.

Of course, much more can be said in elaboration of the basic point, and to soften up my opponent. But if he remains intransigent, then I am well within my epistemic rights in writing him off as morally blind and showing him the door. What is both subjectively and objectively self-evident to me is not subjectively self-evident to him — but that is due to a defect in his cognitive apparatus: he is just morally obtuse.

2. Extreme Materialism. One form of extreme materialism about the mind, the most extreme, is eliminative materialism. I trust Spencer will agree with me if I simply dismiss it as a lunatic philosophy of mind despite its having been espoused by some brilliant people. For argument, see my Eliminative Materialism category. Brilliance is no guarantee of truth. (David Lewis goes wrong brilliantly and most creatively.) My dismissal of eliminative material is a dismissal of its claim to be credible. It is incredible. (By its own lights there are no beliefs, which also supplies a reason for its being unbelievable). But I am not saying that one shouldn't study it. After all, pathology can be very instructive, whether one studies diseased tissue or diseased thinking.

Less extreme is identity materialism which I argue collapses into eliminativism. I am within my epistemic rights in simply stating that it is obvious that my present thinking about the Boston Common is not identical to a complex state of my brain. Of course, I am not saying that one should not be prepared to give detailed arguments and to answer objections. But all that is merely in the service of what really ought to be obvious. The arguments merely articulate the position one finds obvious, situating it within the space of reasons.

3. Berkeleyan Idealism. Can it be dismissed in the same way, as involving a denial of the obvious? As I said in an earlier post (December 2009) responding to Case:

I think it is clear that someone who identifies God with an anthropomorphic projection simply denies the existence of God. This putative identification collapses into an elimination. You are not telling me what God is when you tell me he is an anthropomorphic projection, you are telling me that there is no such being. Same with felt pains. A putative identification of a felt pain with a brain state collapses into an elimination of felt pains. For a felt pain simply cannot be identical to a brain state: it has properties no brain state could possibly have. But an identification of a physical object with a cluster of items such as Berkeleyan ideas or Husserlian noemata, items that exist only mind-dependently, does not collapse into an elimination, the reason being that there is nothing in the nature of physical objects as we experience them that requires that such objects exist in splendid independence of any mind. I just located my coffee mug on my desk, and now I am drinking from it. There is nothing in my experiential encounter with this physical thing that requires me to think of it as something that exists whether or not any mind exists. And so I am not barred from the idealist interpretation of the ontological status of stones and coffee cups and their parts (and their parts . . .). Nor does the meaning of 'coffee cup' or 'physical object' constrain me to think of such things as existing in complete independence of any mind. Neither phenomenology nor semantics forces realism upon me. There is nothing commonsensical about either realism or idealism; both are theories.

Neither a realist nor an idealist interpretation of the ontological status of physical objects can be 'read off' from the phenomenology of our experiential encounter with such things or from the semantics of the words we use in referring to them and describing them. Only if realism were built into the phenomenology or the semantics would an identification of a physical thing with a cluster of mind-dependent items collapse into an elimination of the physical thing. For in that case it would be the very nature of a physical thing to exist mind-independently so that any claim to the contrary would be tantamount to a denial of the existence of the physical thing. The situation would then be exactly parallel to the one in which someone claims that God is an anthropomorphic projection. Since nothing could possibly count as God that is an anthropomorphic projection, any claim that God is such a projection amounts to a denial of the existence of God. But the cases are not parallel since there is nothing in the nature of a physical thing as this nature is revealed by the phenomenology of our encouter with them to require that physical things exist in sublime independence of any and all minds.

Of course, one could just stipulate that physical objects are all of them mind-independent. But what could justify such a stipulation? That would be no better than Ayn Rand's axiomatic declaration, Existence exists! What Rand means by that is that whatever exists exists in such a way as to require no mind for its existence. But although that may be true, it is far from self-evident and so has no claim to being an axiom.

In sum, token-token-identity theory in the philosophy of mind collapses into eliminativism about mental items. As so collapsing, it is refutable by Moorean means. The identitarian claims of idealists, however, do not collapse into eliminativist claims, and so are not refutable by Moorean means.

My claim, then, is that Berkeleyan idealism does not deny the obvious in the way that the eliminative materialist does. Indeed, it shows a lack of philosophical intelligence if one thinks that Berkeleyan idealism or its opposite is obvious. St. Paul displays the same lack of philosophical intelligence when he claims, at Romans 1:18-20 that the existence and nature of God are obvious from nature. See Is Atheism Intellectually Respectable? On Roman 1:18-20.

Nature can be reasonably interpreted both as divine handiwork and as the opposite in the same way that the tree in the quad can be interpreted Berkeley-wise or the opposite. But my current headache or my present thoughts about Bostion cannot be reasonably interpreted as identical to material states. It is obvious that they are not material states given the understanding of 'material 'supplied by current physics.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Forgotten Folkies

Paul Clayton, Wild Mountain Thyme.

Who's Gonna Buy You Ribbons (When I'm Gone). Dylan borrowed a bit of the melody and some of the lyrics for his Don't Think Twice. This is a proto-version prior to the Freewheelin' album.

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

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

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

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

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

It Hurts Me Too

In My Own Dream.

Same Old Man

Presentism and Existence Simpliciter: Questions for Rhoda

For Alan Rhoda, "Presentism is the metaphysical thesis that whatever exists, exists now, in the present. The past is no more. The future is not yet. Either something exists now, or it does not exist, period." Rhoda goes on to claim that presentism is "arguably the common sense position." I will first comment on whether presentism is commonsensical and then advance to the weightier question of what it could mean for something to exist period, or exist simpliciter.

Common Sense?

It is certainly common sense that the past is no more and the future is not yet. These are analytic truths understood by anyone who understands English. They are beyond the reach of reasonable controversy, stating as they do that the past and the future are not present. But presentism is a substantive metaphysical thesis well within the realm of reasonable controversy. It is a platitude that what no longer exists, does not now exist. But there is nothing platitudinous about 'What no longer exists, does not exist at all, or does not exist period, or does not exist simpliciter.' That is a theoretical claim of metaphysics about time and existence that is neither supported nor disqualified by common sense and the Moorean data comprising it.

In the four sentences that begin his article, Rhoda has two platitudes sandwiched between two metaphysical claims. This gives the impression that the metaphysical claims are supported by the platitudes. My point is that the platitudes, though consistent with the metaphysical theory, give it no aid and comfort.

Compare the problem of universals: It is a Moorean fact that my cup is blue and that I see the blueness at the cup. But this datum neither supports nor disqualifies the metaphysical theory that blueness is a universal, nor does it either support or disqualify the competing metaphysical theory that the blueness is a particular, a trope. Neither common sense, nor ordinary language analysis, nor phenomenology can resolve the dispute. Dialectical considerations must be brought to bear.

Existence Simpliciter

Be that as it may. If we pursue the above line we will be led into metaphilosophy. On to the central topic. 'Whatever exists, exists now' is open to the Triviality Objection: of course, what exists (present-tense) exists now! Enter existence simpliciter. The following is not a tautology: 'Whatever exists simpliciter, exists now.'

The problem is to understand exactly what existence simpliciter is. Let's recall that in this series of posts it is not the truth-value of presentism that concerns me, but something logically prior to that, namely, the very sense of the thesis. Only after a thesis is identified can it be evaluated. I am not being coy. I really don't understand what precisely the presentist thesis is. What's more, I have no convictions in the philosophy of time the way I do in the philosophy of existence. No convictions, and no axes to grind. For example, I am convinced that the Fregean doctrine of existence is mistaken, pace such luminaries as Frege, Russell, Quine and their latter-day torch-bearers such as van Inwagen. I am not at all convinced that presentism is wrong. Like I said, I am not clear as to what it states.

Alan can correct me if I am wrong, but I think what he means by 'existence simpliciter' is something like this:

ES. X exists simpliciter =_df (Ey)(x = y).

In plain English, an item exists simpliciter if it is identical to something. 'Identical to something' is elliptical for 'identical to something or other.' I ascribe (ES) to Alan on the basis of a comment of his to the effect that existence simpliciter is the unrestricted quantifier sense of 'exists.' I take it that unrestricted quantifiers range over unrestricted domains, and that an absolutely unrestricted domain contains everything: past items, present items, future items, atemporal items, merely possible items . . . . Presentism could then be put as follows:

P. (x)[(Ey)(x = y) =_df x exists now].

That is,

P*. Everything is such that it is identical to something iff it exists now.

Now if the quantifiers in (P) and (P*) range over everything, including past and future items, then the theses are trivially false. But if they range only over present items, then they are trivially true. To avoid this difficulty, we might formulate Rhoda's presentism thusly:

P**. All and only present items instantiate the concept being identical to something.

The idea, then, is that we have the concept existence simpliciter and this concept is the concept being identical to something. Accordingly the presentist is saying something nontrivial about this concept, namely, that all and only its instances are temporally present items.

Unfortunately, I am still puzzled. Is the verb instantiate' in (P**) present-tensed? No, that way lies Triviality. Is it timeless? No, there is nothing timeless on Rhoda's scheme. Is it disjunctive: 'did instantiate or do instantiate or will instantiate'? No, for that too is false: it is false that all items that did or do or will instantiate the concept identical to something are temporally present. Socrates did instantiate the concept but he is not temporally present. And obviously 'instantiate' in (P**) cannot be replaced by 'omnitemporally instantiate.' That leaves a tense-neutral reading of 'instantiate' which somehow abstracts from the timeless, the present-tensed, the omnitemporal and the disjunctive use of a verb.

I am having trouble understanding what what this tense-neutral use of 'instantiate' amounts to. But this may only be a problem for me and not for Rhoda's theory.

Could the Meaning of Life be the Quest for the Meaning of LIfe?

I have toyed with the notion that the meaning of life just is the search for its meaning. But this is really no better than saying that the meaning of life is subjective: posited and maintained by the agent of the life, and potentially different for different agents. If the meaning of human life is subjective, however, then it has no meaning. Similarly, if the meaning of life is exhausted in the search for life's meaning, then there is no meaning apart from the search, which is to say that life has no meaning, strictly speaking. The following, then, is a nonstarter:

1. The meaning of human life consists in the quest for its meaning.

But (1) is to be distinguished from

2. No human life can count as truly meaningful unless some portion of it is devoted to raising, investigating, and answering for oneself the question as to the meaning of human life.

(2) I heartily endorse. The difference between (1) and (2) is that (1) identifies the quest for meaning with meaning whereas (2) does not.

Tweet This

He who tweets is a twit whose brain will soon be fit only to flit.

Philosopher Lectures on the Cogito at Bordello in Pahrump, Nevada

My sources tell me that he had one hell of a time putting Descartes before the whores. Well, as Dorothy Parker once observed, "You can lead a whore to culture but you can't make her think."

Should Nagel’s Book Be on the Philosophical Index Librorum Prohibitorum?

Via Reppert's blog I came to an article by Simon Blackburn about Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. The article ends as follows:

There is charm to reading a philosopher who confesses to finding things bewildering. But I regret the appearance of this book. It will only bring comfort to creationists and fans of “intelligent design”, who will not be too bothered about the difference between their divine architect and Nagel’s natural providence. It will give ammunition to those triumphalist scientists who pronounce that philosophy is best pensioned off. If there were a philosophical Vatican, the book would be a good candidate for going on to the Index [of prohibited books].

The problem with the book, Blackburn states at the beginning of his piece, is that

. . . only a tiny proportion of its informed readers will find it anything other than profoundly wrong-headed. For, as the title suggests, Nagel’s central idea is that there are things that science, as it is presently conceived, cannot possibly explain.

Blackburn doesn't explicitly say that there ought to be a "philosophical Vatican," and an index of prohibited books but he seems to be open to the deeply unphilosophical idea of censoring views that are "profoundly wrong-headed." And why should such views be kept from impressionable minds? Because they might lead them astray into doctrinal error. For even though Nagel explicitly rejects God and divine providence, untutored intellects might confuse Nagel's teleological suggestion with divine providence.

Nagel's great sin, you see, is to point out the rather obvious problems with reductive materialism as he calls it. This is intolerable to the scientistic ideologues since any criticism of the reigning orthodoxy, no matter how well-founded, gives aid and comfort to the enemy, theism — and this despite the fact that Nagel's approach is naturalistic and rejective of theism!

So what Nagel explicitly says doesn't matter. His failing to toe the party line makes him an enemy as bad as theists such as Alvin Plantinga. (If Nagel's book is to be kept under lock and key, one can only wonder at the prophylactic measures necessary to keep infection from leaking out of Plantinga's tomes.)

Blackburn betrays himself as nothing but an ideologue in the above article. For this is the way ideologues operate. Never criticize your own, your fellow naturalists in this case. Never concede anything to your opponents. Never hesitate, admit doubt or puzzlement. Keep your eyes on the prize. Winning alone is what counts. Never follow an argument where it leads if it leads away from the party line.

Treat the opponent's ideas with ridicule and contumely. For example, Blackburn refers to consciousness as a purple haze to be dispelled. ('Purple haze' a double allusion, to the Hendrix number and to a book by Joe Levine on the explanatory gap.)

What is next Professor Blackburn? A Naturalist Syllabus of Errors?

Still Puzzling Over Presentism

The presentist aims to restrict what exists in time to what exists in time now. Call this the presentist restriction. But if the presentist says that only what exists now, exists, he cannot possibly mean that only what exists at the time of his utterance or thought of the presentist thesis exists. If it is now 5:05 AM GMT on 20 March 2013 anno domini, the presentist thesis is not that only what exists at 5:05 AM GMT on 20 March 2013 anno domini exists. The presentist is not a solipsist of the present moment. He is a metaphysician, not a lunatic. Nor is presentism an infinite family of time-indexed theses, but one thesis about time and existence.

The presentist restriction is not to the time that happens to be present, but to each time: Each time t is such that whatever exists in time exists at t. Formulated so as to avoid the solipsism of the present moment, the formulation must quantify over times. But whatever we quantify over must exist: it must be there to be quantified over. So nonpresent times must exist. But nonpresent times cannot exist if presentism is true and only what is present exists.

Therefore, when formulated so as to evade SPM, presentism entails its own falsity. If true, then false. If false, then False. Ergo, necessarily false.

But 'surely' it cannot be that easy to refute presentism! So I must have gone wrong somewhere. Where exactly?

Over Sunday breakfast, Peter L. suggested that the presentist can make an exception in the case of (nonpresent) times. But then the presentist thesis is drastically weakened. Moreover, no presentist that I know of makes such an exception.

Lent for Atheists?

Apparently, there are some atheists who are adopting Lenten-type practices without abandoning their atheist beliefs. This ought to be cautiously applauded: we all can profit morally from a bit of voluntary abstinence. One cannot live well without (moderate) asceticism. (See William James on Self-Denial.) Better self-controlled atheists than atheists 'gone wild.'

But I would urge these atheists to go further and practice doxastic abstinence. Without rejecting your atheist beliefs, put them within brackets for the Lenten period. Practice epoché with respect to them, that is, withhold intellectual assent. That is not to doubt them or disbelieve them, but simply to make no use of them. Leave them alone for a time. In the strict sense epoché goes beyond even suspension of judgment. If I suspend judgment with respect to a propositional content, I neither affirm it, deny it, doubt it, nor even just entertain it. For if I do any of those things I admit that it has a coherent sense. In epoché, however, I leave it open whether the content has a coherent sense. Epoché is the ultimate in doxastic disengagement. Practicing total doxastic abstinence, I totally disengage from those propositions that ignite often acrimonious disagreement.

You can always go back to your atheist beliefs. Another excellent form of self-denial for atheists and religionists alike is to abstain from all theological controversies and polemics from time to time. One could call it a 'belief fast.' I hope we can all agree that being just is better than developing a theory of justice. And if discussing the Trinity only makes you angry and combative, then it might be best to drop theology and cultivate piety.

But while atheists can profit from voluntary self-denial, bringing such practices under the Lent umbrella makes little sense. Will the period of self-denial go from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday? Why tie it to these dates freighted as they are with Christian metaphysics? When a Christian reminds himself on Ash Wednesday that he is dust and shall return to dust, the whole point of that memento mori is situated within the context of the hope for and promise of eternal life. Christian mortalism is toto caelo different from atheist mortalism. And what the Christian celebrates on Easter Sunday is precisely the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ by the power of God and the hope that death will be conquered eventually for all. No atheist believes that.

In the final analysis, Lent secularized is no longer Lent. Atheists ought to exercise their imaginations and come up with a secular analog free of Chistian trappings.

Atheists ought also to worry that if they take up Christian practices, the beliefs may follow . . . .

Can One Forgive Oneself? An Aporetic Triad

I pointed out earlier that forgiving is triadic: x forgives y for z. There is the forgiver, the one to whom forgiveness is proffered, and that which is forgiven. Nominative, dative, accusative. It is of course correct English to say 'I forgive you,' but this fact about usage cuts no ice since 'I forgive you' is elliptical for 'I forgive you for what you did or what you failed to do.' 'I forgive you' is not evidence that forgiving is in some cases dyadic any more than 'Tom is married' is evidence that marriage is monadic. Forgiving is then at least triadic: it is a three-place relation. 'X forgives y for z' has three argument-places. But it doesn't follow that forgiving is in every case a three-term or three-relata relation. For if one one can forgive oneself, then x and y are the same person. Compare identity, which is a two-place, but one-term relation.

Why did I write "at least triadic"? Because we need to think about such examples as 'I forgive you both for conspiring against me.' That appears to involve three persons and one action. I set this issue aside for later discussion.

At the moment, the following aporetic triad is at the cynosure of my interest:

1. There are cases of self-forgiveness and they are instances of genuine forgiveness.

2. If a person forgives himself at time t for doing or failing to do z , then he cannot help but be aware of and admit his own guilt at t for doing or failing to do z.

3. Genuine forgiveness is unconditional: it is consistent with a non-admission of guilt on the part of the one who is forgiven.

Each limb of the triad is plausible. But the limbs cannot all be true: the conjunction of ( 1) and (2) entails the negation of (3). Indeed, the conjunction of any two limbs entails the negation of the remaining limb.

To solve the problem, we must reject one of the limbs.

(1)-Rejection. One might maintain that cases of self-forgiveness are not instances of genuine forgiveness. One might hold that 'forgiveness' in 'self-forgiveness' and 'other-forgiveness' is being used in different ways, and that the difference between the two phenomena is papered over by the sameness of word.

(2)-Rejection. I would say that (2) is self-evident and cannot be reasonably rejected.

(3)-Rejection. One might maintain that genuine forgiveness need not be unconditional, that there are cases when it depends on the satisfaction of the condition that the one forgiven admit his guilt.

I would solve the problem by rejecting both (1) and (3). As I see it at the moment, genuine forgiveness is an interpersonal transaction: it involves at least two distinct persons. Self-forgiveness, however, remains intra-personal. What is called self-forgiveness is therefore a distinct, albeit related, phenomenon. It is not genuine forgiveness the paradigm case of which is one person forgiving another for an action or omission that is in some sense wrong, that injures the first person, and that the second person admits is wrong.

I also maintain that forgveness cannot be unconditional. For forgiveness to transpire as between A and B, B must accept the forgiveness that A offers. But B cannot do this unless he admits that he has done something (or left something undone) that is morally or legally or in some other way (e.g., etiquette-wise) censurable. Thus B must admit guilt. That is a condition that must be met if forgiveness is to occur.

One who accepts both (1) and (3) will, via (2), land himself in a contradiction.

David Albert Disinvited from Nothingness Conference

Here.