What makes for a good marriage? It is not enough to like your spouse. It is not enough to love her. The partners must also admire one another. There has to be some attribute in your spouse that you don't find in yourself (or not in the same measure) and that you aspire to possess or possess more fully. Must I add that we are not talking mainly about physical attributes?
What is admiration?
To love is not to admire. If God exists, he loves us. But he certainly doesn't admire us. For what does he lack? He doesn't aspire to possess any attribute that we have and that he lacks. Closer to the ground, one can easily love a sentient being, whether animal or human, without admiration.
To value is not to admire. Prudence is a valuable attribute; so if you are prudent, I will value you in respect of your prudence; but if I am as prudent as you, then I don't admire you in respect of your prudence. Admiration is for attributes the admirer does not possess, or does not possess in the measure the admired possesses them.
To respect is not to admire. I can and ethically must respect the rights of those who are inferior to me in respect of admirable attributes.
My suggestion, then, is that a necessary though not sufficient condition of a good marriage is that it be a two-membered mutual admiration society.
When I encountered 'transpicuous' for the first time today, I thought the writer was either neologizing by combining 'transparent' and 'conspicuous,' or else just confused. But the word, though rare, has been in the English language since the 17th century.
I wanted to sound an alarm bell from coast to coast. I wanted everybody to know that our Constitution is precious and that no American should be killed by a drone without first being charged with a crime. As Americans, we have fought long and hard for the Bill of Rights. The idea that no person shall be held without due process, and that no person shall be held for a capital offense without being indicted, is a founding American principle and a basic right.
If the Obama Administration whose Attorney General is Eric Holder can get away with killing by drone an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, without owning up to it, what is to stop such a mendacious and power-hungry administration from killing U.S. citizens in the homeland without due process?
Even the shysters of the ACLU and the bunch at The Nation are on the right side of this issue. It would be nice if we could convince the aforementioned crapweasels that it is the Second Amendment that backs up the others, including the Fifth, but they are too morally corrupt and intellectually obtuse for that.
Is everything in time? Or are there timeless entities? So-called abstracta are held by many to be timeless. Among abstracta we find numbers, (abstract as opposed to concrete) states of affairs, mathematical (as opposed to commonsense) sets, and Fregean (as opposed to Russellian) propositions, where a Fregean proposition is the sense of an indexical-free sentence in the indicative mood. The following items are neither in space, nor causally active/passive, but some say that they exist in time at every time: 7, 7's being prime, {7}, 7 is prime. If an item exists in time at every time, then it is omnitemporal. If an item is 'outside' time, then it is timeless or eternal or, to be helpfully pleonastic in the manner of McCann, timelessly eternal.
Let us agree that a temporalist is one for whom everything is in time, while an eternalist is one for whom some things are not in time.
On p. 55 of his Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Indiana University Press 2012), Hugh McCann argues that the temporalist cannot formulate his thesis without presupposing that there are timeless states of affairs, at least of the negative sort. Here is how I see the argument.
Part of what the temporalist says is that
1. There are no timeless states of affairs.
How is 'there are no' in (1) to be understood? The temporalist must intend it to be taken in a way consistent with temporalism, thus:
2. There never have been, are not now, and never will be any timeless states of affairs.
Unfortunately, the eternalist will agree with the temporalist on the truth of (2). Consider 7's being prime. Both agree that at no time does this state of affairs exist. The agreement is unfortunate because it shows that the bone of contention cannot be formulated in terms of (2). The bone of contention must be formulated in terms of (1) taken tenselessly. But then the temporalist ends up presupposing that there are timeless states of affairs. For he presupposes that there is the timeless state of affairs, There being no timeless states of affairs.
Temporalism, when properly formulated, i.e., when formulated in a way that permits disagreement between temporalist and eternalist, refutes itself by implying its own negation.
Is this 'Mavericked-up' McCann argument a good argument or not? Have at it, boys.
A Parallel with the Problem of Formulating Presentism
We have seen in previous posts that to avoid tautology the presentist must reach for a tenseless sense of 'exists.' He cannot say, tautologically, that whatever exists (present-tense) exists now. For that is not metaphysical 'news.' It is nothing to fight over, and fight we must. He has to say: Whatever tenselessly exists, exists now. But then he seems to presuppose that there are times, as real as the present time, at which temporal individuals such as Socrates tenselessly exist. The upshot is that when presentism is given a nontautological formulation, a formulation that permits disagreement beween presentist and anti-presentist, it refutes itself. For if there are non-present times as real as the present time, then it is not the case that only present items exist.
Addendum (10 March): Hugh McCann Responds
On the argument from my ch. 3 about timeless states of affairs, I of course stand by it (as of this moment, at least). But I don’t think this argument alone would suffice to show that there is a B-series. It might be, for example, that the only timeless states of affairs that there are pertain to abstracta; things like Seven’s being prime, and so forth. If that were so we would get no B-series, because abstracta exhibit no temporal features at all, whereas entities in a B-series share before and after relations.
BV replies: Well, I didn't claim that McCann's argument suffices to show that there is a B-series, a series of events related by the so-called B-relations: earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. Perhaps my use of 'eternalist' misled him. All I meant by it above, as I stated, is someone who holds that some entities are timeless. I wasn't using it in the more commonly accepted sense in which it implies a commitment to the B-series. So we agree that the above argues does not suffice to show that there is a B-series. It could be that there are timeless entities, and entities in time, but no B-series.
As for the analogous anti-presentist argument you go on to give, I subscribe to it. But all it shows, as far as I can see, is that we have to consider talk of tenseless states of affairs legitimate. But to show that isn’t to show very much. It doesn’t yet follow, for example, that we have to speak of Socrates as existing tenselessly. Socrates is not a state of affairs, and there is nothing paradoxical about saying there neither is, was, nor will be a tenseless Socrates. The question is just whether it is true, and there I am unsure of the answer. Furthermore, I can imagine someone claiming that when it comes to the concrete world, tenseless states of affairs—the B-series, in effect—is just a necessary fiction, something we need in order to be able to keep proper track of our memories. I have no knockdown argument for or against this position. I am inclined to think, however, that it is a vast oversimplification, just as I think presentism is.
BV replies: I think what McCann is getting at here is that an adequate formulation of presentism must presuppose the meaningfulness of talk of tenseless states of affairs, but needn't presuppose that there are tenseless states of affairs involving entities in time. If that is what he means, then my quick little argument seems unsound, and McCann shouldn't have subscribed to it. I'll have to think about it some more. What a miserably difficult topic this is!
More proof, as if we needed it, of the stupidity of liberals. Should we respond respectfully and rationally to fools? Mockery and ridicule are often more effective. Many of the members of Generation Screwed voted for Obama because they perceived him as 'cool.' Rational persuasion is not likely to work on such people. Their perceptions need to be changed from 'cool' to 'uncool' by the ridicule dished out by the likes of Dennis Miller and Adam Carolla.
If you want to win, make the fools look uncool to those who think coolness the criterion, but have solid arguments at the ready for those who can think.
Gail Collins' NYT op-ed gun outburst is another example of liberal stupidity. I won't sully these pages by quoting any of it. Here is an adequate response.
You have enough world success if it enables you to advance the project of self-realization on the important fronts including the moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual. The vita contemplativa cannot be well lived by the grindingly poor, the sick, the politically and socially oppressed, the sorely afflicted and tormented. Boethius wrote his Consolations of Philosophy in prison, but you are not Boethius.
You have too much worldly success when it becomes a snare and a burden and a distraction.
We need some social acceptance and human contact, but fame is worse than obscurity. Reflect for a moment on the character of those who enjoy fame and the character of those whose fickle regard confers it.
We need a modicum of worldly wherewithal to live well, but more is not better. Only the terminally deluded could believe, as the saying goes, that "You can't be too thin or too rich." You could be anorexic or like unto the New Testament camel who couldn't pass through the eye of a needle.
We need health but not hypertrophy.
We need power, but not the power over others that corrupts but the power over oneself that does not.
John of the MavPhil commentariat drew our attention to the analogy between presentism and actualism. An exfoliation of the analogy may prove fruitful. Rough formulations of the two doctrines are as follows:
P. Only the (temporally) present exists.
A. Only the actual exists.
Now one of the problems that has been worrying us is how to avoid triviality and tautology. After all, (P) is a miserable tautology if 'exists' is present-tensed. It is clear that no presentist thinks his thesis is a tautology. It is also clear that there is a difference, albeit one hard to articulate, between presentism and the the various types of anti-presentism. There is a substantive metaphysical dispute here, and our task is to formulate the dispute in precise terms. This will involve clarifying the exact force of 'exists' in (P). If not present-tensed, then what?
A similar problem arises for the actualist. One is very strongly tempted to say that to exist is to be actual. If 'exists' in (A) means 'is actual,' however, then (A) is a tautology. But if 'exists' in (A) does not mean 'is actual,' what does it mean?
We seem to have agreed that Disjunctive Presentism is a nonstarter:
DP. Only the present existed or exists now or will exist.
That is equivalent to saying that if x existed or exists or will exists, then x presently exists. And that is plainly false. Now corresponding to the temporal modi past, present, and future, we have the modal modi necessary, actual, and merely possible. This suggests Disjunctive Actualism:
DA. Only the actual necessarily exists or actually exists or merely-possibly exists.
This too is false since the merely possible is not actual. It is no more actual than the wholly future is present.
We must also bear in the mind that neither the presentist nor the actualist intends to say something either temporally or modally 'solipsistic.' Thus the presentist is not making the crazy claim that all that every happened or will happen is happening right now. He is not saying that all past-tensed and future-tensed propositions are either false or meaningless and that the only true propositions are present-tensed and true right now. The presentist, in other words, is not a solipsist of the present moment.
Similarly wth the actualist. He is not a solipsist of this world. He is not saying that everything possible is actual and everything actual necessary. The actualist is not a modal monist or a modal Spinozist who maintains that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world which, in virtue of being actual and the only one possible, is necessary. The actualist is not a necessitarian.
There is no person like me, but I am not the only person. There is no place like here, but here is not the only place. There is no time like now, but now is not the only time.
In sum, for both presentism and actualism, tautologism, disjunctivism, and solipsism are out! What's left?
To formulate presentism it seems we need a notion of tenseless existence, and to formulate actualism we need a notion of amodal existence (my coinage).
We can't say that only the present presently exists, and of course we cannot say that only the present pastly or futurally exists. So the presentist has to say that only the present tenselessly exists. I will say more about tenseless existence in a later post.
What do I mean by amodal existence? Consider the following 'possible worlds' definitions of modal terms:
Necessary being: one that exists in all possible worlds Impossible being: one that exists in no possible world Possible being: one that exists in some and perhaps all possible worlds Contingent being: one that exists in some but not all possible worlds Merely possible being: one that exists in some possible worlds but not in the actual world Actual being: one that exists in the actual world Unactual being: one that exists either in no possible world or not in the actual world.
In each of these definitions, the occurrence of 'exists' is modally neutral analogously as 'exists' is temporally neutral in the following sentences:
It was the case that Tom exists It is now the case that Tom exists It will be the case that Tom exists.
My point, then, is that the proper formulation of actualism (as opposed to possibilism) requires an amodal notion of existence just as the proper formulation of presentism requires an atemporal (tenseless) notion of existence.
But are the atemporal and amodal notions of existence free of difficulty? This is what we need to examine. Can the requisite logical wedges be driven between existence and the temporal determinations and between existence and the modal determinations? If not then presentism and actualism cannot even be formulated and the respective problems threaten to be pseudoproblems.
Here is an important interview with Lars Hedegaard, Denmark's Salman Rushdie, whose life is in danger because he speaks the truth as he sees it. Hedegaard is a man of the Left, but do they come to his defense? Excerpt:
DP: Where are the attacks on you being racist coming from? What part of the ideological spectrum?
LH: I would say almost exclusively from the left. (Of course, also from Muslims. Not all Muslims, but some.) I seem to be very unpopular with my old friends. I think the problem is that I know what it's all about to be left-wing; I used to be a leading Marxist in this country. But I've held to the opinion that we first of all have to fight for free speech and freedom and equality between the sexes and the rule of law; and also, that we should not bow before religious fanatics of any type, regardless of where they come from. This seems to me what was the essence of being left-wing back in the days. No longer.
The left now seems to have reverence for fanatics — as long as they are Muslim. Of course, they can criticize Christianity all they want. But when somebody threatens with violence — if you criticize me, I'll come and kill you — then all of a sudden they become soft. They become understanding. They talk about tolerance; we have to show respect. I don't want to show respect for people who say that men are worth more than women, that women can be killed if they are adulterers; that apostates from Islam should be killed; that people should be stoned, etc. I mean, I don't like that. I want to fight that. I want to describe it. And I don't think the left does.
I concede to London Ed that it is not clear what exactly the thesis of presentism is. There is no point in considering objections to it until we are sure what the thesis comes to. The rough idea is of course easy to convey: only temporally present items exist. This is more plausible under restriction to items 'in time' where the eternal God and abstracta such as Fregean propositions are not 'in time.' The rough idea, then, is that only present contingent concreta exist. This implies that a wholly past contingent concretum such as Socrates does not exist.
But how are we to take 'exist' in the last two sentences? As present-tensed? Then both sentences are trivially true. Surely no philosopher who calls himself a presentist intends
Tautological Presentism: Only present contingent concreta exist at present.
And of course he doesn't intend
Timeless Presentism: Only present contingent concreta exist timelessly.
For that implies that if x is a timeless contingent concretum, then x is temporally present.
But the clear-headed presentist must also, in his formulation of his thesis, avoid giving aid and comfort to the absurdity that could be called 'solipsism of the present moment.' (I borrow the phrase from Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Simon and Schuster 1948, p. 181.) To wit,
SPM Presentism: Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter; nothing existed and nothing will exist.
The idea behind (SPM) is decidedly counterintuitive if not insane. To illustrate, consider James Dean who died on September 30th, 1955. It is a Moorean fact that Dean existed but no longer exists. (Alter the example to Dean's car if you hold to the immortality of the soul.) It is a Moorean fact that there actually was this actor, that he was not a mere possibility or a fictional being or nothing at all. But this plain fact is incompatible with SPM-Presentism.
Another possibility is
Disjunctive Presentism: Only present contingent concreta existed or exist or will exist.
Disjunctive Presentism seems objectionable because, e.g., Scollay Square existed, but does not now.
What about
Tenseless Presentism: Only present contingent concreta tenselessly exist.
Now the problem is to explain that 'tenselessly exist' means if it does not mean 'timelessly exist' or 'did exist, does exist, or will exist.'
Ned Markosian defines presentism as the view that, "necessarily, it is always true that only present objects exist." (here, fn 1) This is not helpful since we are not told how to read 'exist.' The Triviality Objection threatens to kick in. And how are we to understand, "it is always true"? If this involves quantifying over times, then anti-presentism is let in through the back door. If there is a manifold of equally real/existent times, then presentism cannot be true of these times.
Many liberals feel that civilian gun ownership is unnecessary because adequate protection against the criminal element is afforded by the police. I advise them to think through the following considerations:
Misinformed people oppose self-defense objections to gun ban laws, urging victims to instead rely on police. This misunderstands what policing is and does. Accordingly, when criminals rob or injure them, misinformed victims try to sue the police for not protecting them. Whereupon the police send forth lawyers invoking the universal US rule that the police duty is to discourage crime only indirectly by patrolling the streets and by apprehending criminals after their crimes.
While police should stop crimes they observe, criminals take care to strike when police are not present. In fact, police almost never (less than 3 percent of cases) arrive in time to help victims. For that reason, the statutory or common law of every state exonerates police from suit for non-protection, e.g. California Government Code §§ 821, 845 and 846: “[A police department and its officers are] not liable for an injury caused by … failure to enforce an enactment [nor for] failure to provide police protection service or … provide sufficient police protection service [nor for] the failure to make an arrest or [the] failure to retain an arrested person in custody.”
Misinformed persons also urge victims to depend on restraining orders instead of self-defense. But restraining orders are just pieces of paper. A five-year study [PDF] in Massachusetts found that almost 25 percent of domestic murderers were under a restraining order when they killed.
President Obama on Sunday said he would make gun control a priority in his new term, pledging to put his “full weight” behind passing new restrictions on firearms in 2013.
“I'm going to be putting forward a package and I'm going to be putting my full weight behind it,” Obama said in an interview aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I'm going to be making an argument to the American people about why this is important and why we have to do everything we can to make sure that something like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary does not happen again.”
Question: Does any clear-thinking person seriously believe that steps can be taken to prevent such events from ever happening again? Of course not. Then why the empty utopian rhetoric? The "everything we can" is equally silly. There is a way to severely reduce the likelihood of another Sandy Hook type shooting. And that is to to secure every school like a prison. That would be much more effective that any tightening of gun laws. So if we must do "everything we can," then we ought to secure every school, every church, every college campus, etc. like a prison or a military installation.
What comes out of Obama's mouth is just feel-good liberal-left blather, thoughtless verbiage, without contact with facts or evidence, and without consequence for the solution of any real problem. The only real consequence is a further erosion of liberty and an expansion of the state.
What is time? Don't ask me, and I know. Ask me, and I don't know. (St. Augustine) This post sketches, without defending, one theory of time.
On the B-Theory of time, real or objective time is exhausted by what J. M. E. McTaggart called the B-series, the series of times, events, and individuals ordered by the B-relations (earlier than, later than, simultaneous with). If the B-theory is correct, then our ordinary sense that events approach us from the future, arrive at the present, and then recede into the past is at best a mind-dependent phenomenon. For on the B-theory, there are no such irreducible monadic A-properties as futurity, presentness and pastness. There is just a manifold of tenselessly existing events ordered by the B-relations. Time does not pass or flow, let alone fly. There is no temporal becoming. My birth is not sinking into the past, becoming ever more past, nor is my death approaching from the future, getting closer and closer. Tempus fugit does not express a truth about reality. At best, it picks out a truth about our experience of reality.
If there is no temporal becoming in reality, then change is not a becoming different or a passing away or a coming into being. When a tomato ripens, it doee not become ripe: it simply is unripe at certain times and is ripe at certain later times. And when it cease to exist, it doesn't pass away: it simply is at certain times and is not at certain later times.
Employing a political metaphor, one could say that a B-theorist is an egalitarian about times and the events at times: they are all equal in point of reality. Accordingly, my blogging now is no more real (but also no less real) than Socrates' drinking the hemlock millenia ago. Nor is it more real than my death which, needless to say, lies in the future. Each time is present at itself, but no time is present, period. And each time (and the events at it) exists relative to itself, but no time exists absolutely.
This is not to say that the B-theorist does not have uses for 'past,' 'present,' and 'future.' He can speak with the vulgar while thinking with the learned. Thus a B-theorist can hold that an utterance at time t of 'E is past' expresses the fact that E is earlier than t. An old objection is that this does not capture the meaning of 'E is past.' For the fact that E is earlier than t, if true, is always true; while 'E is past' is true only after E. This difference in truth conditions shows a difference in meaning. The B-theorist can respond by saying that his concern is not with semantics but with ontology. His concern is with the reality, or rather the lack of reality, of tense, and not with the meanings of tensed sentences or sentences featuring A-expressions. The B-theorist can say that, regardless of meaning, what makes it true that E is past at t is that E is earlier than t, and that, in mind-independent reality, nothing else is needed to make 'E is past' uttered at t true.
Compare 'BV is hungry' and 'I am hungry' said by BV. The one is true if and only if the other is. But the two sentences differ in meaning. The first, if true, is true no matter who says it; but the second is true only if asserted by someone who is hungry. Despite the difference in meaning, what makes it true that I am hungry (assertively uttered by BV) is that BV is hungry. In sum, the B-theorist need not be committed to the insupportable contention that A-statements are translatable salva significatione into B-statements.
The B-theorist, then, denies that the present moment enjoys any temporal or existential privilege. Every time is temporally present to itself such that no time is temporally present simpliciter. This temporal egalitarianism entails a decoupling of existence and temporal presentness. There just is no irreducible monadic property of temporal presentness; hence existence cannot be identified with it. To exist is to exist tenselessly. The B-theory excludes presentism according to which there is a genuine, irreducible, property of temporal presentness and existence is either identical or logically equivalent to this property. Presentism implies that only the temporally present is real or existent. If to exist is to exist now, then the past and future do not exist, not jusdt now (which is trivial) but at all.
Please note that the B-theory is incompatible not only with presentism, but with any theory that is committed to irreducible A-properties. Thus the B-theory rules out 'pastism,' the crazy theory that only the past exists and 'futurism,' the crazy view that only the future exists. It also rules out the sane view that only the past and the present exist, and the sane view that the past, present, and future exist.
Why be a B-theorist? McTaggart has a famous argument according to which the monadic A-properties lead to contradiction. We should examine that argument in a separate post.
Without a doubt, the philosophy of time. The philosophy of mind is a piece of cake by comparison. According to a story, possibly apocryphal, Peter van Inwagen was once asked why he didn't publish on time. "Too hard," was his reply. If it is too hard for van Inwagen, it is hard. According to Hugh McCann, "Few subjects in philosophy are as difficult, as exasperating even, as the subject of time, for few elements in our experience are so inherently enigmatic." (Creation and the Sovereignty of God, p. 68)
This puts me in mind of perhaps the stupidest commercial of the '80s: "Man invented time. Seiko perfected it." Stupid but stimulating: how many fallacies can you spot?
