Theism on Secular Grounds

A reader inquires:

Can one reason from secular premises to a theistic conclusion? Or is any argument that concludes to God's existence non-secular by nature?

The reader liked yesterday's abortion post in which I used non-religious (and in that sense secular) premises to support a conclusion which, though not religious, would be accepted by most religionists and rejected by most secularists.

To answer the reader's question, yes, one can reason from secular premises to a theistic conclusion.  Indeed, the traditional arguments do precisely that.  For example, cosmological arguments proceed a contingentia mundi, from the contingency of the world, and they attempt to show that there must be a necessary being responsible for the world's existence.  That the universe exists and that it exists contingently are secular starting points  — in one of its meanings saecula just means 'world' — and not deliverances of revelation or churchly doctrines to be taken on faith. 

Now the same goes for the rest of the theistic arguments, the ontological, the teleological, the moral, and indeed for all of the twenty or so arguments that Plantinga lists.

The reader has a second question.  Can a person sincerely  pray in a secular way?  Suppose a person comes to believe by some combination of the arguments mentioned that there must be a being, external to the universe, on which it depends for its existence and nature.  Suppose the person prays to this God.  Is the person engaged in a secular act?

No. Prayer is a specifically religious act.  The theistic arguments operate on the discursive plane to satisfy a theoretical need.  Indeed they are often denigrated on the ground that the God they prove is a mere 'God of the philosophers' and not 'the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.'  Even the great Pascal makes this mistake.  See Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers. 

There can't be two or more gods, but there can be two or more ways of approaching one and the same God.  I count four: philosophy (reason), religion (faith), mysticism (intellectual intuition), and morality (conscience).

To sum up.  From secular starting points one can reason to something 'out of this world.'  But to come into relation with this Something requires religious and mystical and moral practices that cannot be called secular. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Simon and Garfunkel, The Dangling Conversation.  A lovely song, if a bit pretentious.  Paul Simon was an English major.

Beatles, We Can Work it Out.  Listen for the time signature change from 4/4 to 3/4.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, You Really Got a Hold on Me

Barbara Lynn, You'll Lose a Good Thing.  Her moves and appearance are reminsicent of Jimi Hendrix — or the other way around.  Check out how she strums that left-handed Telecaster.

EmmyLou Harris, Save the Last Dance for Me.  That's one big guitar.

Marty Robbins, Blue Spanish Eyes.  What a wimpy guitar!

Dalida, O Sole Mio.  Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan!

Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday.  Ditto!

Nana Mouskouri, Farewell Angelina.  One of Bob Dylan's most haunting songs.

Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo.  Tex-Mex version of a very old song.

Marty Robbins, La Paloma.  Another old song dating back to 1861. 

What Does Abortion Have to Do with Religion?

The abortion question is almost always raised in the context of religion.  The Vice-Presidential debate provides a good recent example.  The moderator  introduced the topic with these words: “We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I  would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your  own personal views on abortion.”  Why didn't the moderator just ask the candidates to state their positions on abortion?   Why did she bring up religion?  And why the phrase "personal views"?  Are views on foreign policy and the economy also personal views?  Below the surface lies the suggestion that opposition to abortion can only rest on antecedent religious commitments of a personal nature that have no place in the public square. 

A question that never gets asked, however, is the one I raise in this post:  What does the abortion issue have to do with religion?  But I need to make the question more precise.  Is the abortion question tied to religion in such a way that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises? Or are there good reasons to oppose abortion that are nor religiously based, reasons that secularists could accept?  The answer to the last question is plainly in the affirmative.  The following argument contains no religious premises.

1. Infanticide is morally wrong.
2. There is no morally relevant difference between (late-term) abortion and  infancticide.
Therefore
3. (Late-term) abortion is morally wrong.

Whether one accepts this argument or not, it clearly invokes no religious premise. It is therefore manifestly incorrect to say or imply that all opposition to abortion must be religiously-based. Theists and atheists alike could make use of the above argument. 

And as a matter of fact there are pro-life atheists. Nat Hentoff is one. In The Infanticide Candidate for President, he takes Barack Obama to task:

But on abortion, Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme  Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban  Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a professed humanist, Obama — in the Illinois Senate — also voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on several of those cases when, before the abortion was completed, an alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the doctors' orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of the child.

Return to the above argument.  Suppose someone demands to know why one should accept the first premise.  Present this argument:

4. Killing innocent human beings is morally wrong.
5. Infanticide is the killing of innocent human beings.
Therefore
1. Infanticide is morally wrong.

This second argument, like the first, invokes no specifically religious premise.  Admittedly, the general prohibition of homicide – general in the sense that it admits of exceptions — comes from the Ten Commandments.  But if you take that as showing that (4) is religious, then the generally accepted views that theft and lying are morally wrong would have to be adjudged religious as well.

But I don't want to digress onto the topic of the sources of our secular moral convictions, convictions that are then codified in the positive law.  My main point is that one can oppose abortion on secular grounds. A second point is that the two arguments I gave are very powerful.  If you are not convinced by them, you need to ask yourself why.

Some will reply by saying that a woman has the right to do what she wants with her own body.  This is The Woman's Body Argument:

1. The fetus is a part of a woman's body.
2. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with any part of her body.
Therefore
3. A woman has the right to do whatever she wants with the fetus, including having it killed.


For this argument to be valid, 'part' must be used in the very same sense in both premises. Otherwise, the argument equivocates on a key term.  There are two possibilities. 'Part' can be taken in a wide sense that includes the fetus, or in a narrow sense that excludes it.

 If 'part' is taken in a wide sense, then (1) is  true. Surely there is a wide sense of 'part' according to which the fetus is part of its mother's body. But then (2) is reasonably rejected. Abortion is not relevantly like liposuction. Granted, a woman has a right to remove unwanted fat from her body via liposuction. Such fat is uncontroversially part of her body. But the fetus growing within her is not a part in the same sense: it is a separate individual life. The argument, then, is not compelling. Premise (2) is more reasonably rejected than accepted.

If, on the other hand, 'part' is taken in a narrow sense that excludes the fetus, then perhaps (2) is acceptable, but (1) is surely false: the fetus is plainly not a part of the woman's body in the narrow sense of 'part.'

I wrote "perhaps (2) is acceptable" because it is arguable that (2) is not acceptable. For a woman's body is an improper part of her body; hence if a woman has a right to do anything she wishes with her body, then she has a right to kill her body by blowing it up, say. One who has good reason to reject suicide, however, has good reason to reject (2) even when 'part' is construed narrowly. And even if we substitute 'proper part' for 'part' in the original argument, it is still not the case that a woman has a right to do whatever she wishes with any proper narrow part of her body. Arguably, she has no right to cut out her own heart, since that would lead to her death.

I am making two points about the Woman's Body Argument.  The first is that  my rejection of it does not rely on any religious premises.  The second is that the argument is unsound. 

Standing on solid, secular ground one has good reason to oppose abortion as immoral in the second and third trimesters (with some exceptions, e.g., threat to the life of the mother).  Now not everything immoral should be illegal.  But in this case the objective immorality of abortion entails that it ought to be illegal for the same reason that the objective immorality of the wanton killing of innocent adults requires that it be  illegal.

Of course it follows that you should not vote for the abortion party, a.k.a. the Dems.  And if you are a Catholic who votes Democratic then you are as foolish and confused as the benighted Joe Biden.

Asceticism

A reader writes,

I am a philosopher and a conservative (in many ways) and I enjoy your blog very much. One thing I find rather puzzling (and interesting), though, is your extreme asceticism. Recently, you said:
"Well, we know that drinking and dancing won't get us anywhere.  But it is at least possible that thinking and trancing will."
I guess I wonder just _where_ it is that you are trying to get and what is so great about being there such that it is better than enjoying some drinking and dancing (in moderation, of course).
Well, if I am an extreme ascetic, then what was Simeon Stylites?  I am not now, and never have been, a pillar-dweller exposed to the elements.
 
'Asceticism' is from the Greek askesis meaning 'self-denial.'  On a spectrum from extreme self-indulgence on the left to extreme self-denial on the right, I would place myself somewhere in the middle, moving on my better days right-ward and on the others left-ward.  So you could say that I am a mild-to-moderate ascetic.  I believe in the value of self-denial and self-control in thought, word, and deed.  That self-control with respect to words and deeds are essential to human flourishing I take to be well-nigh self-evident.  Control of thought, however, is also essential to happiness which is why one ought so spend some time each day in formal meditation.  (More on this in Meditation and Spiritual Exercises categories.)
 
But not only is control of thought conducive to, and indeed a necessary condition of, happiness, it is morally obligatory to control and in some cases eliminate some thoughts.  I argue that out in Can Mere Thoughts be Morally Wrong? and Thoughts as Objects of Moral Evaluation: Refining the Thesis.
 
Moderate asceticism is good and is enjoined by all the major religions and wisdom traditions.  It is perfectly obvious that many of the problems we face today result from the lack of self-control.  Obesity, for example.  Debt, both at the personal level and at the level of government, is fundamentally a moral problem with at least one of its roots sunk deep in lack of self-control.
 
 
If you are running credit card debt, you are doing something very foolish.  Why do you buy what you can't afford with money you don't have?  You must know that you are wasting huge amounts of money on interest.  Why doesn't this knowledge cause you to be prudent in your expenditures?  Because you never    learned how to control yourself.  Perhaps you were brought up by liberals who think the summum bonum is self-indulgence and 'getting in touch with your feelings.'  By the way, this in another powerful argument against liberalism.  There is no wisdom on the Left.  The last thing you will learn from liberals are the virtues and the vices and the seven deadly sins.  For liberals, these are topics to joke about.

No one preaches self-denial anymore. We have become a nation of moral wimps. We need a taste of
the strenuosity of yesteryear, and who better to serve it up than our very own William James, he of the Golden Age of American philosophy:

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of
concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation.

Back to drinking and dancing and the reader's question.  Everything depends on what one considers to be the purpose of life.  To me it is clear that we are not here to have a 'good time.'  For me philosophy is not an academic game but a spiritual quest for the ultimate truth.  The quest involves rigorous, technical philosophy, but it also involves non-discursive spiritual exercises.  These are impossible without a certain amount of moral purification and ascesis.  They are also best pursued in the early hours before dawn.  So right here  is an excellent reason not to waste the evening hours in idle talk, drinking and dancing.  These activities are not conducive to spiritual progress.  That is why some of us avoid them. 

The New Jim Crow Again

Daniel M. writes:

Coincidentally, I'm currently a TA for a class in which significant portions of this book have been assigned (a philosophy of law class, focusing on legal punishment).  Alexander's main focus in the book is not incarceration (and related phenomena) in general, but the War on Drugs in particular.  An important part of her case for the racially discriminatory nature of "mass incarceration" (a phrase by which she means (a) the entire system of state-control over offenders, whether prison, parole, probation, etc., as well as (b) the post-punishment effects on offenders such as barriers to voting, employment, public housing) in the U.S. is the claim that black Americans are no more likely to use/deal illegal drugs than are white Americans, and yet law enforcement have disproportionally targeted black Americans.  She thinks that this discrimination largely results from the great procedural discretion which law enforcement have in prosecuting this War (both at the level of police forces and individual officers in deciding where/whom to search, and at the level of prosecutors in deciding what kind of sentences to seek).  This discretion, along with the need to be proactive in order to bust people for drug offenses, creates the opportunity for racial biases, whether conscious or unconscious, to shape how the War is prosecuted.

When I read the bit you did, my first thought was that it was ridiculous to compare Cotton's political "disenfranchisement" to his KKK-killed great-grandfather's political disenfranchisement.  I still think that about this case (homicide/robbery…), but I did become more sympathetic to the idea that there were interesting connections between Jim Crow and "mass incarceration."  The main difference is that the "New Jim Crow" is officially "colorblind," not a result of overt racism (at least by and large).  The official aim is to maintain "law and order," not to sweep black Americans into the state's control.  The alleged parallel is that you have a class of people largely characterized along racial lines who are shut out of mainstream society in various ways (voting, public housing,employment).  The new reason, having a felony on your record, is very different – and, one might think, much more justified than the old reasons.  But I was struck by (a) the claim that black Americans are not more likely to be guilty of drug crimes and yet are more likely to be targeted by law enforcement for them, and (b.) the severity of punitive measures attached to drug offences (including the felony label for many such offences, with all the ensuing ramifications).

Thank you for that, Dan. A few brief remarks:

1.  Are black Americans no more likely to use/deal illegal drugs than are white Americans?  I rather doubt that.  We know that blacks commit proportionately more crimes than whites in general, so one would expect that to be true for drug dealing in particular.  This is of course an empirical question, but it is exceedingly difficult to get to the truth of the matter because of the 'hot button' nature of the question and because fields such as sociology and criminology are heavily infected with ideology.  For example, how many conservative sociologists are there in universities as compared to leftists?  A very small number.  What does that say about universities and about sociology?  Given the leftist bias of most sociologists, it is reasonable to be skeptical about anything they claim is a result of 'research.'

2. Leftists conflate the world with the world as they wish it to be.  And they wish to believe that we are all equal.  And so they cannot accept the notion that blacks have a greater natural propensity to commit crimes than whites. This leads them to think that blacks are disproportionately 'targeted' and 'labeled' felons.  The truth, I suspect, is that blacks commit more crimes proportionately, which is why their rates of incarceration are proportionately  higher. 

3. This is consistent with a frank admission that there is plenty of injustice in the criminal justice  system.  There are corrupt judges, vicious cops, and ambitious prosecutors willing to sacrifice human lives to their careers. Needless to say, I am against all that.

4.  Why would anyone want to single out blacks for especially harsh treatment?  This is a question that needs answering, and 'racism' is no answer to it.  That word is well-nigh meaningless: it is is used by leftists as an all-purpose  semantic bludgeon to beat down conservatives.  It means anything leftists  want it to mean.  What is racism?  If I argue against ObamaCare, leftists call me a racist.  But ObamaCare is a policy, and policies, last time I checked, have no race.  So for leftists 'racism' and cognates mean everything and nothing.  Do people dislike blacks because of their skin color?  Perhaps a few do. But dislike of blacks is not for most people based on skin color but on black behavior. This brings us back to the empirical question whether blacks as a group behave worse than whites as a group.  If they do, then this would explain why they are incarcerated in greater numbers.

5. Should felons have the right to vote?  First of all, how many criminals want to vote?  The typical criminal is someone whose only concern is himself and the immediate gratification of his basest desires.  Such people have contempt for civil society.  They are not interested in participating in it.  For them it's a joke.  These are not people who think about the common good.  If you mentioned civic duties to them they would laugh their heads off.

So we need to ask: who is it that wants felons to vote?  Not felons for the most part.  But leftists!  Leftists want felons to vote to expand their base.  Leftists have a an exceedingly casual attitude toward criminal behavior.  They are by nature lenient and forgiving.  So if criminals are allowed to vote, they will of course vote for leftists, in the USA, for the Democrats.

That is why leftists want to extend the franchise to felons.

Whether or not they want to vote, should criminals have the right to vote?  Of course not.  Criminals can't even order their own lives, why should have a say in how society is ordered?   Furthermore, removal of the right to vote is part of the punishment that they deserve for raping and drunk driving and drug dealing and murdering and for being the generally worthless individuals that they are.

6. Finally, I am open to the idea that drug laws need to be carefully examined.  I am opposed to draconian 'zero tolerance' laws that make a felon of some harmless hippy who grows marijuana for his own use.  But if he drives while stoned, or sells the stuff to school kids, then I want the law to come down on his shggy head like a ton of bricks.

The Losertarian Party

Politics is a practical business: it is about the gaining and maintaining of power for the purpose of implementing programs and policies that one believes to be beneficial, and for opposing those whose policies one believes to be deleterious. As the Converse Clausewitz Principle has it, it is war conducted by other means.  For this very reason, I stay clear of it except for voting and blogging: I am by inclination and aptitude a theoretician, a "spectator of all time and existence" to borrow a marvellous phrase from the  Plato's Republic. But part of the theoretician's task is to understand the political. And if I understand it, I understand that the Libertarian Party, though it might be a nice debating society, is a waste of time practically speaking. That's why I approve of and borrow Michael Medved's moniker, 'Losertarian Party.' These adolescents will never get power, so what's the point? It's a party of computer geeks, sci-fi freaks, and adolescents of all ages, the sort that never outgrow Ayn Rand.  Open borders, legal dope, ACLU-type extremism about freedom of expression.  Out of the mainstream and rightly so.

So Ron Paul made a smart move when he joined the Republicans, and his son Rand seems more conservative than libertarian. 

As I said, politics is a practical business. It's about winning, not talking. It's not about ideological
purity or having the supposedly best ideas; it's about gaining the power to implement good ideas.  The practical politician understands that quite often  Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien, the best is the enemy of the good.  (Voltaire's maxim explained here.)

Addendum 11/1.  The 'open borders' idea is foolish in itself, but it is foolishness on stilts when note is taken of the plain fact that we have a welfare state here in the U.S., one whose expansion can perhaps be contained, but one which will always be with us until we collapse, most likely, under its weight.  Either a welfare state with strictly controlled borders, or open borders and no welfare state.  One or the other. 

Sinatra’s Epitaph

Sinatra grave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The epitaph on Frank Sinatra's tombstone reads, "The best is yet to come." That may well be, but it won't be booze and broads, glitz and glamour, and the satisfaction of worldly ambitions that were frustrated this side of the grave. So the believer must sincerely ask himself: would I really want eternal life?

At funerals one hears pious claptrap about the dearly departed going off to be with the Lord. In many
cases, this provokes a smile. Why should one who has spent his whole life on the make be eager to meet his Maker? Why the sudden interest in the Lord when, in the bloom of life, one gave him no thought? If you have loved the things of this world as if they were ultimate realities, then perhaps you ought to hope that death is annihilation.

The Academic Job Market in the ‘Sixties

Robert Paul Wolff tells it like it was:

. . . I reflect on the ease and endless rewards of my career, moving from comfortable position to comfortable position, and compare it with the terrible struggles of young academics trying to gain some sort of security and time for their own scholarship in an increasingly hostile job market.  The sixties, when my career was being launched, was a time of explosive growth of higher education in America.  Spurred by the G. I. Bill and the post-war economic boom, and fed by an endless stream of young men avoiding the Viet Nam draft, colleges and universities virtually metastasized.  State universities, which had existed ever since the Land Grant Acts of the 1860's, suddenly sprouted satellite campuses.  State colleges plumped themselves up into universities, and Community Colleges became State Colleges.  There were so many new teaching positions to be filled that in the sixties and seventies graduate students were being offered tenure track positions before they had become
ABD.

BV: I'm  a generation younger than Professor Wolff.  By the time I began applying for jobs at the end of the '70s things had become grim and the gravy days of the '60s were a thing of the past.  But I lucked out and got a tenure track job in '78 right out of graduate  school at the University of Dayton.  Lucky me, I had no other offer.  I later learned that in the '60s there were four philosophy hires in one year at UD, some of them sight unseen: no interview.  One of these gentlemen couldn't even speak English!  And of course the quality of the people hired was relatively low.

It is also worth pointing out that the '60s and early '70s were also a time when what William James in 1903 called the "Ph.D Octopus"  acquired many more tentacled arms.  New graduate programs started up and new philosophy journals as well.  Another Harvard man, Willard van Orman Quine, cast a jaundiced eye on the proliferation of journals in his delightful "Paradoxes of Plenty" in Theories and Things (Harvard UP, 1981):

Certainly, then, new journals were needed: they were needed by authors of articles too poor to be accepted by existing journals.  The journals that were thus called into existence met the need to a degree, but they in turn preserved, curiously, certain minimal standards; and so a need was felt for further journals still, to help to accommodate the double rejects.  The series invites extrapolation and has had it. (196)

At the same time, the Cold War and the Sputnik scare triggered a flood of federal money into universities. Most of it, of course, funded defense-related research or studies of parts of the world that America considered inimical to its interests [Russian Research Institutes, East Asia Programs, language programs of all sorts], but some of the money slopped over into the Humanities, and even into libraries and university presses.  For a time, commercial publishers found that they could not lose money on an academic book, since enough copies would be sold to newly flush university libraries to enable them to break even.  Those were the days when a philosopher willing to sell his soul [and who among us was not?] could get a contract on an outline, a Preface, or just an idea and a title.  The professor introducing me at one speech I gave said, "Professor Wolff joined the Book of the Month Club, but he didn't realize he was supposed to read a book a month.  He thought he was supposed to publish a book a month."  Well, we all thought we were brilliant, of course.

Then the bubble burst.  First the good jobs disappeared.  Then even jobs we would never have deigned to notice started drying up.  Universities adopted the corporate model, and like good, sensible business leaders, started cutting salaries, destroying job security, and reducing decent, hard-working academics to the status of itinerant peddlers.  Today, two-thirds of the people teaching in higher education are contract employees without good benefits or an assured future.  Scientists do pretty well, thanks to federal support for research, but the Humanities and non-defense related Social Sciences languish.  The arts are going the way of high school bands and poetry societies.

The truth is that I fell off the cart onto a nice big dung heap, and waxed fat and happy, as any self-respecting cockroach would.  My career happened to fit neatly into the half century that will, in future generations, be looked back on as the Golden Age of the American University.  There is precious little I can do for those unfortunate enough to come after me.  But at least, I can assure them that their bad luck is not a judgment on the quality of their work.  And, of course, I can write increasingly lavish letters of recommendation in a desperate attempt to launch them into the few remaining decent teaching jobs.  I would have liked to do better by them.  They deserve it.

Are Blacks Labeled Felons to Keep Them from Voting?

This from a reader:

I have been a fan of your blog for a long time. In fact you helped to establish my first wary steps into the discipline of philosophy. I struggled through your entries, persistent and confused, ultimately rewarded for my efforts. Your scathing, surly, incisive political commentary is a great alternative to my usual news consumption habits. Now, I admit that I am left-leaning, and so your perspective is refreshing. I understand that you have a particular interest, but your motto, "Study everything, join nothing," as led me to believe that you might approach my book suggestion with an open mind: "The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."  Alas, the title is sensational but the information and research seems solid. I suggest the work in hopes that you might begin a running critique or dialogue upon the subject.

I thank the reader for his kind words and I find it gratifying that letters like his roll in at regular intervals, suggesting to me that my pro bono efforts are of some value. 

If I were to find the book the reader suggests at the local library I would check it out and read at least portions of it.  But I am not inclined to go out of my way to acquire it based on the following description from the Amazon page which I quote verbatim:

"Jarvious Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole."

As the United States celebrates the nation's "triumph over race" with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status–much like their grandparents before them.

In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community–and all of us–to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

Before commenting on the above description, let me say that, first of all, 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 destribed 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.


Jarvious-Cotton_mugshot_140x140Now let's consider the first paragraph of the above description.  Mention is made of one Jarvious Cotton.  His mugshot is to the left.  This dude was convicted of two offenses, homicide/murder and armed robbery.  According to Michelle Alexander, author of the book in question, Cotton "has been labeled a felon."

So he was merely labeled a felon but is not a felon?  Or was the label properly applied?  Alexander is suggesting the former.  The suggestion, from the context of the first paragraph, is that blacks get 'labeled' felons to prevent them from voting.

But that is absurd.  Apart from the occasional wrongful conviction, blacks who are labeled felons are correctly  so-labeled because they have committed felonies.  Now should felons have the right to vote?  Of course not.  First of all, if you commit a felony, that shows you are pretty stupid: you don't know your own long-term best self-interest.  It shows that you have terrible judgment.  Murder and armed robbery are not elements in a life well-lived. A person like that should not be given a say on matters of public concern.  That should be obvious.  Second, part of the punishment for being a felon is removal of the right to vote.

No one is interested in disenfranchising blacks by 'labeling' them felons, but some blacks disenfranchise themselves by committing felonies.

There is also the misuse of language in the title of the book.  The New Jim Crow?  Nonsense.  Jim Crow is a thing of the past.

Does the U. S. criminal justice system "target black men" and "decimate communities of color"?  Is Atty Gen'l Eric Holder — who is black — in on this too?  What motive could they have?  The antecedent likelihood of this claim is so low that I cannot take it seriously.  It is on a level with the wild claims of the 9/11 'truthers' and the allegation that the CIA in the '80s dumped cocaine into South Central Los Angeles.

Aquinas Meets Frege: Analysis of an Argument from De Ente et Essentia

The other day I expressed my reservations as to the coherence of the Thomistic notion of a common nature.  Let's plunge a little deeper by considering the argument from Chapter 3 of Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence (tr. Robert T. Miller, emphasis added):

The nature, however, or the essence thus understood can be considered in two ways.
First, we can consider it according to its proper notion, and this is to consider it absolutely. In this way, nothing is true of the essence except what pertains to it absolutely: thus everything else that may be attributed to it will be attributed falsely. For example, to man, in that which he is a man, pertains animal and rational and the other things that fall in his definition; white or black or whatever else of this kind that is not in the notion of humanity does not pertain to man in that which he is a man. Hence, if it is asked whether this nature, considered in this way, can be said to be one or many, we should concede neither alternative, for both are beyond the concept of humanity, and either may befall the conception of man. If plurality were in the concept of this nature, it could never be one, but nevertheless it is one as it exists in Socrates. Similarly, if unity were in the notion of this nature, then it would be one and the same in Socrates and Plato, and it could not be made many in the many individuals. Second, we can also consider the existence the essence has in this thing or in that: in this way something can be predicated of the essence accidentally by reason of what the essence is in, as when we say that man is white because Socrates is white,
although this does not pertain to man in that which he is a man.

The argument may be set forth as follows:

1. A nature can be considered absolutely or according to the being it has in this or that individual.

2. If a nature is considered absolutely, then it is not one.  For if oneness were included in the nature of humanity, e.g., then humanity could not exist in many human beings.

3. If a nature is considered absolutely, then it is not many. For if manyness were included in the nature of humanity, e.g., then humanity could not exist in one man, say, Socrates.

Therefore

4. If a nature is considered absolutely, then it is neither one nor many, neither singular nor plural.

I find this argument intriguing because I find it extremely hard to evaluate, and because I find the conclusion to be highly counterintuitive.  It seems to me obvious that a nature or essence such as humanity is one, not many, and therefore not neither one nor many!

The following is clear.  There are many instances of humanity, many human beings.  Therefore, there can be many such instances. It follows that there is nothing in the nature of humanity to preclude there being many such instances.  But there is also nothing in the nature of humanity to require that there be many instances of humanity, or even one instance.  We can express this by saying that the nature humanity neither requires nor precludes its being instantiated. It allows but does not entail instantiation.  This nature, considered absolutely, logically allows multiple instantiation, single instantiation, and no instantiation.  It logically allows that there be many men, just one man, or no men.

That much is crystal clear.  But surely it does not follow that the nature humanity is neither one nor
many.  What Aquinas is doing above is confusing what Frege calls a mark (Merkmal) of a concept with a property (Eigenschaft)  of a concept.  (See Foundations of Arithmetic, sec. 53, first publ. 1884)  The marks of a concept are the subconcepts which are included within it.  Thus man has animal and rational as marks.  But these are not properties (Eigenschaften) of the concept man since no concept is an animal or is rational.  Being instantiated is an example of a property of man, a property that cannot be a mark of man.   If being instantiated were a mark of man, then the concept man could not fail to be instantiated.  In general, the marks of a concept are not properties thereof, and vice versa. 

A couple more examples.  Three-sided is a mark of the concept triangle, but is is not a property of this concept for the simple reason that no concept is three-sided. Male is a mark of the concept bachelor, but not a property of it since no concept is male.

Aquinas has an insight which can be expressed in Fregean jargon as follows.  Being singly instantiated — one in reality –  and being multiply instantiated — many in reality — are not marks (Merkmale) of the nature humanity.  But because he (along with everyone else prior to 1884) confuses marks with properties (Eigenschaften), he concludes that the nature itself cannot be either one or many.  But surely the nature itself is one, nor many.  That is consistent with holding that the nature admits of single instantiation, multiple instantiation, or no instantiation.

To put it another way, Aquinas confuses the 'is' of predication ('Socrates is a man') with the 'is' of subordination ('Man is an animal').  Man is predicable of Socrates, but animal is not predicable of man, pace Aristotle, Categories 3b5: no concept or nature is an animal.  Socrates falls under man; Animal falls within man.  Falling-under and falling-within are different relations.  Animal is superordinate to man while man is subordinate to animal. But that is not to say that animal is predicable of man.  Both animal and man are predicable of Socrates, which is to say: Socrates falls under both concepts.  But man does not fall under animal, animal falls within man.  If man fell under animal, then the concept man would be an animal, which is absurd.

For these reasons I do not find the argument from De Ente et Essentia compelling.  It is based on confusions that the great logician Gottlob Frege was the first to sort out. But perhaps there is a good Thomist response.

Does Government Create Jobs?

In their last presidential debate, President Obama strangely agreed with Governor Romney when the latter said that "Government does not create jobs."

But of course government does create jobs.  There are all sorts of government jobs.  That perfectly obvious point was underscored in a recent NYT op-ed piece.  So both the president and the governor were wrong to claim that government does not create jobs.

But, as one would expect, the NYT piece missed the real point, which is what the governor had in mind but did not clearly state, namely, that government does not create economically productive jobs.

Where does the money come from to pay government workers?  From taxes and loans.  Such money is not available for consumption.  The economy expands, and jobs are created, when people buy things.  The point is made well by Robert Samuelson in Flat-Earth Economics.

So if the Obama Administration claims that it has created x jobs, ask yourself: what sort of jobs?  The ones that count, the ones that will have a real effect on expanding the economy, are not government jobs.  Private sector jobs are what we need and these are precisely the ones that government cannot create.

So if you have any sense, you will vote for Romney-Ryan.

Forty Years Ago Today

My journal  entry for 29 October 1972 was just this: "To live a philosophical life in a tumultuous, uncertain world is my goal."

I pulled it off.  I found my niche.  I achieved my goal.   But to achieve goals one must first posit them, and herein lies another reason to maintain a journal.  One plans and projects.  And then, years later, one enjoys the fruition of those long past projections. 

What is Reason? How Did it Arise? Nagel and Non-Intentional Teleology

This is the sixth in a series of posts, collected here, on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012).  In my last post I suggested that Nagel needs a principle of plenitude in order to explain the actual existence, as opposed to the mere possibility, of rational organisms.  But maybe not, maybe teleology will turn the trick for him.  So we need to see what he says about teleology.

Nagel distinguishes "constitutive" from "historical" questions.  What is reason? is an example of the former; How did reason arise? of the latter.  Now one might wonder whether reason is the sort of thing that could arise.  I am tempted to say that reason could no more arise than truth could arise, but then I'm a theist.  Nagel, however,  must hold that reason arises given his monism. As a monist, he maintains that there is exactly one world, this natural world.

Off the top of my head, I suggest we have at least six options concerning the nature and origin of reason.

A. Interventionist Theism.  Reason didn't arise, but always existed.  God is its prime instance and source.  Reason in us did not arise or emerge from irrational or pre-rational elements but was implanted by God in us.  It is part of what makes us of  higher origin, an image and likeness of God.

B. Noninterventionist Deism.  Reason didn't arise, but always existed.  God is its prime instance and source.  But God did not infuse or implant reason in certain animals at any point in the evolutionary process; what he did is rig up the world in such a way that rational animals would eventually emerge.  Nagel mentions something like this possibility on p. 95.

C. Transcendental Subjectivism.  Reason didn't arise, but neither is God its prime instance and source. Reaon is an a priori structure of our subjectivity, a transcendental presupposition without which we cannot carry out our cognitive operations.   A view like this could be read out of Kant.  A transcendental idealism as opposed to the Hegelian objective idealism that Nagel supports.  (17) 

D. Reason is a fluke.  Reason arose, but it was a cosmic accident.  That there are rational beings is simply a brute fact.  Nagel rightly rejects this view.

E. Materialist evolutionary naturalism operating by "directionless physical law." (p. 91)

F. Nature-immanent non-intentional teleology.

Nagel rejects all of these options except the last.  Unfortunately, Nagel's proposal is so sketchy it is  hard to evaluate.  To get a handle on it we need to study Nagel's final chapter on value in a separate post.  According to natural teleology, the world has an in-built propensity to give rise to beings for whom there is a difference between what is good for them and what is bad for them.  There is no agent who intends that such beings should arise; there is just this tendency toward them in nature below the level of mind.  And so the explanation of the existence of such beings is not merely causal but teleological: there is is a sort of axiological requiredness in rerum natura that pulls as it were from the future these beings into existence. (See p. 121)  This is my way of putting it.