The Modified Leibniz Question: The Debate So Far

What follows is a guest post by Peter Lupu with some additions and corrections by BV. 'CCB' abbreviates 'concrete contingent being.'  The last post in this series is here.  Thanks again to Vlastimil Vohamka for pointing us to Maitzen's article, which has proven to be stimulating indeed.
 
 
So far as I can see Steve Maitzen (in Stop Asking Why There's Anything)  holds three theses:
 
A. Semantic Thesis
 
1. As a general rule, dummy sortals such as ‘thing’, ‘object’, ‘CCB’, etc., are not referential terms, unless there is an explicit or implicit background presupposition as to which sortal term is intended as a replacement. This presupposition, if satisfied, fixes the referent of the dummy sortal. In the absence of the satisfaction of such a presupposition, sentences in which they are used (not mentioned) have no truth-conditions and questions in which they are used (not mentioned) have no answer-conditions.
 
2. Examples such as ‘Cats are CCBs’ are no exception. Either this sentence has no truth-conditions because the term ‘CCB’ is merely a place holder for an unspecified sortal or it should be understood along the lines of: ‘Cats are animals’, etc., where ‘animal’ is (one possible) substitution term for the dummy sortal ‘CCB.'
 
BV adds:  Right here I think a very simple objection can be brought against the semantic thesis.  We know that cats exist, we know that they are concrete, and we know that they are contingent.  So we know that 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is true.  Now whatever is true is meaningful (though not vice versa). Therefore, 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is meaningful.  Now if a sentence is meaningful, then its constituent terms are meaningful.  Hence 'CCB' is meaningful despite its being a dummy sortal.  I would also underscore a point I have made several times  before.  The immediate inference from the admittedly true (a) to (b) below is invalid:
 
a. The question 'How many CCBs are there?' is unanswerable, hence senseless
ergo
b. The question 'Why are there any CCBs?' is unanswerable, hence senseless.
 
3. The semantic thesis is the driving force behind Steve M’s view. It is the fallback position in all of his responses to challenges by Bill, Steven, and others. So far as I can tell, Steve M. did not defend the general form of the semantic thesis in his original paper. It is, therefore, surprising that it has been ignored by almost everyone in these discussions and that neither Bill nor Steven challenged the semantic thesis. I have written an extensive comment on this thesis and challenged it on several grounds.
 
 
B.  Explanatory Thesis
  
1. As a general rule, Why-Questions are answered by giving an explanation. ‘Why are there any CCBs?’
is a [explanation-seeking] Why-Question. [It is worth noting that the grammatically interrogative form of words 'Why is there anything at all?' could be used simply to express wonder that anything at all should exist, and not as a demand for an explanation.]  Therefore, it invites an explanation. What sort of explanation? Steve M. holds two theses about this last question:
 
 
(MI) The Adequacy Thesis: empirical explanations typical in science offer (at least in principle) adequate explanations for the Why-CCBs question, provided the Why-CCB questions are meaningful at all (and their meaningfulness is a function of satisfying the semantic thesis);
 
(MII) The Completeness Thesis: Once an empirical explanation is given to Why CCBs?, there is nothing left to explain. And in any case there are no suitable forms of explanation beyond empirical
explanations that could be even relevant to explain Why-CCBs?
 
2. Bill and Steven certainly deny (MII). They may also have some reservations about MI. What is the
basis on which Bill and Steven challenge MII? They maintain that even if we assume that an adequate empirical explanation is offered (i.e., MI is satisfied) to each and every CCB, there is something else left over to explain. What is that “something else” that is left over that needs explaining (Steve M. asks)?
 
3. It is at this juncture that the discussion either reverts back to the semantic thesis or it
needs to be advanced into a new metaphysical realm.
 
C. Metaphysical Thesis
 
Dummy sortals do not pick out any  properties or universals (monadic or relational) except via the mediation of genuine sortals. i.e., there are no properties over and beyond those picked out by genuine sortals.
 
1. Steven attempted to answer the challenge posed by the question at the end of B2 in one of his posts.
His answer is this: what is left over after all empirical explanations favored by Steve M. are assumed to have been given is a very general property, feature, or aspect that all CCBs, and only CCBs, have in common. So why shouldn't ‘Why-CCBs’ questions be understood as inquiring into an explanation of this general feature that all and only CCBs share? Call this alleged general feature ‘X’.
 
2. The dispute has turned to whether X has any content, i.e., Steve M. challenged the contention
that there is any phenomenon described by X that was not already accounted for by his favorite empirical explanations. Bill and Steven tried to articulate the content of X without (apparently) noticing that every such effort was rebutted by Steve M. either by appealing to the semantic thesis or to the explanatory thesis or both.
 
3. So what could X be? I suggest the following: X is the (second-order) property such that the
property of *is a contingent being* is instantiated (or something along these lines).  [I would put it this way:  X is the being-instantiated of the property of being a contingent being.]
 
4. Since the universal/property *is a contingent being* need not be instantiated, the fact that it is in fact instantiated in the actual world (i.e., that X holds) needs explaining (So claim Bill and Steven). And whatever is the explanation (including a “brute-fact” explanation) for this fact, it cannot take the form of an empirical explanation.
 
5. The Metaphysical Thesis I am attributing to Steve M. of course rules out that there is a property
such as X. Why? Two reasons: first, the property *is a contingent being* is not a sortal property; second, the predicate ‘is a contingent being’ (or any of its variants) contains a dummy sortal and therefore it does not pick out a property (nor does it have an extension) in the absence of a specific background presupposition of a specific sortal substituend.
 
D. Conclusion
  
Unless these three theses are clearly separated, the discussion will be going in circles. As one can see, the driving force behind the explanatory and metaphysical theses is ultimately the semantic thesis. No one challenged this thesis directly (except me in a comment that was ignored by everyone with the exception of Bill).

Popcorn Too? Food Fascists Gone Wild

Here.  First soda pop, then popcorn, milkshakes . . . .

The trouble with nanny-state liberals  is that they do not understand or value the liberty of the individual , a liberty which includes the liberty to behave in ways that may be foolish.  If you grant the state the power to order your life there will be no end to it.  Right now, in Germany it is illegal to homeschool one's own children!  Every day brings a new example of governmental overreach.  We do not exist for the state; the state exists for us.  Our wealth is ours, not the state's.  We don't have to justify our keeping; they have to justify their taking. The same goes for such health-related issues as obesity.

Please no liberal nonsense about an 'epidemic' of obesity or obesity as a public health problem.  True, we Americans are a gluttonous people as witness competitive eating contests, the numerous food shows, and the complete lack of any sense among most that there is anything morally wrong with gluttony.  The moralists of old understood something when they classified gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins.

Obesity is not a disease; so, speaking strictly, there cannot be an epidemic of it.  There are two separate issues here.  One is whether obesity is a disease.  Here are some arguments pro et con.  But even  if it is classified as a disease, it is surely not a contagious disease and so not something there can be an epidemic of. 

I know that 'epidemic' is used more broadly than this, even by epidemiologists; but this is arguably the result of an intrusion of liberal ideology into what is supposedly science.   Do you really think that 'epidemic' is being used in the same way in 'flu epidemic' and 'obesity epidemic'?  Is obesity contagious?  If fat Al sneezes in my face, should I worry about contracting the obesity virus? There is no such virus.   

Obesity is not contagious and not a disease.   I know what some will say: obesity is socially contagious.  But now you've shifted the sense  of 'contagious.'    You've engaged in a bit of semantic mischief.  It is not as if there are two kinds of contagion, natural and social.  Social contagion is not contagion any more than negative growth is growth or a decoy duck is a duck. 'Social' in 'socially contagious' is an alienans
adjective.

Why then are you fat?  You are fat because you eat too much of the wrong sorts of food and refuse to exercise.  For most people that's all there is to it.  It's your fault.  It is not the result of being attacked by a virus.  It is within your power to be fat or not.  It is a matter of your FREE WILL.  You have decided to become fat or to remain fat.  When words such as 'epidemic' and 'disease' are used in connection with obesity, that is an ideological denial of free will, an attempt to shift responsibility from the agent to factors external to the agent such as the 'evil' corporations that produce so-called 'junk' food.

There is no such thing as junk food.

There are public health problems, but obesity is not one of them.  It is a private problem resident at the level of the individual and the family.

The Problem of First-Person identity Sentences

0. Am I identical to my (living) body, or to the objectively specifiable person who rejoices under the name 'BV'?  Earlier I resoundingly denied this identity, in (rare) agreement with London Ed, but admitted that argument is needed.  This post begins the argument.  We start with the problem of first-person identity sentences.

1. 'I am I' and 'BV is BV' are logical truths.  They have the logical form a = a. They are not particularly puzzling.  But 'I am BV' presents a puzzle, one reminiscent of Frege's puzzle concerning informative identity statements.  'I am BV' is not true as a matter of logic, any more than it is true as a matter of logic that the morning star is the evening star. And yet it is  presumably true that I am BV where 'am' expresses strict numerical identity. It is not as if 'I' and 'BV' refer to two different entities.  Or at least this is not a view we ought to begin by assuming.  The proper procedure is to see if we can make sense of 'I am BV' construed as an identity statement.  Dualism comes later if it comes at all.

2. Here is a theory.  When I say 'I am BV' I am referring to one and the same thing in two different ways, just as, when I say 'The morning star is the evening star' I am referring to  one and the same thing (the planet Venus) in two different ways.  Expressions have sense and they have reference.  Difference of sense is compatible with sameness of reference.  The difference in sense of 'morning star' and 'evening star' explains why the identity statement composed of them is informative; the sameness of reference explains the identity statement's truth.

In Frege's famous example, the common referent is the planet Venus.  What is the common referent of 'I' and 'BV'?  Presumably the common referent is the publicly identifiable person BV.  But when BV designates himself by means of the thought or utterance of 'I,  he designates BV under the aspect, or via the sense, expressed by 'I,' a semantically irreducible sense that cannot be captured by any expression not containing 'I.'

Here then we seem to have a solution to our problem.  In general, one can refer to the same thing in different ways, via different modes of presentation (Darstellungsweisen, in Frege's German).  So apply that to the special case of the self.  What I refer to when I say 'I' is the same entity that I refer to when I say 'BV' and the same entity that Peter refers to when he says 'BV.'   It is just that I refer to the same thing in different ways, a first-person way and third-person way.  There is no need to suppose that 'I and 'BV' have numerically distinct referents.   There is no need to deny the numerical identity of me and BV. Unfortunately, this Fregean solution is a pseudo-solution.  I have two arguments.  I'll give one today.

3. Consider the sentence 'I am this body here' uttered by the speaker while pointing to his body.  If, in this sentence, 'I' refers to this body here (the body of the speaker), albeit via a Fregean sense distinct from that of 'this body here,' then the sense of 'I,' whatever it might be, must be the sense of a physical thing inasmuch as it must be the mode of presentation of a physical thing.  Note that the 'of' in the italicized phrases is a genitivus objectivus.  Somehow this 'I'-sense must determine a reference to a physical thing, this body here.  But that it is the sense of a physical thing is no part of the sense of 'I.'  We understand fully the sense of this term without understanding it to be the sense of a physical thing, a sense that presents or mediates reference to a physical thing.  Indeed, considerations adduced by Anscombe and Castaneda show that the 'I'-sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing.  For if the sense of 'I' cannot be captured by 'this body here,' then a fortiori it cannot be captured by any other expression designating a physical thing.

The analogy with the morning star/evening star case breaks down.  One cannot use 'morning star' and 'evening star' with understanding unless one understands that they refer to physical things, if they refer at all.  It is understood a priori that these terms designate physical things if they designate at all; the only question is whether they designate the same physical thing.  But one can use the first-person singular pronoun with understanding without knowing whether or not it refers to a physical thing.

In other words,  there is nothing in the sense of 'I' to exclude the possibility that it refer to a nonphysical thing, a res cogitans, for example.  Descartes' use of 'ego' to refer to a thinking substance did not violate the semantic rules for the use of this term.  What's more, if 'I' is a referring term and refers via a Fregean sense, then that sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing.

So that's my first argument against the Fregean approach to the problem of first-person identity sentences.  The argument rests on the assumption that 'I' is a referring term.  That assumption has been denied by Wittgenstein, and more rigorously, by Anscombe.  That denial deserves a separate post.  And in that post we ought to rehearse the reasons why 'I' cannot be replaced salva significatione by any such word or phase as 'the person who is now speaking.' 

On the Logical Possibility of Reincarnation

London Ed says that reincarnation is logically possible.  I agree.  For my use of the first-person singular pronoun does not refer to my (animated) body alone.  Surely I am not identical to my body.  If I were, then reincarnation would be logically impossible.  As Ed says, there is nothing in the sense or reference of 'I' that entails such an identity.  But then Ed says this:

That's not to countenance disembodied egos or anything like that.  The possibility of reincarnation does not require there to be a disembodied referent for 'I'.  But if there are no disembodied egos, and if reincarnation takes place some time after the death of the previous body, there has to be a time when the 'I' does not exist.

There is a problem here.  Suppose I existed 100 years ago with body B1, but I now exist with a numerically different body B2. After B1 ceased to exist, I ceased to exist, but then I began to exist again when B2 came into existence.  It would follow that I had two beginnings of existence.  But it is not plausible to suppose that any one thing could have two beginnings of existence.  John Locke famously maintained (emphasis added):

When therefore we demand whether anything be the same or no, it refers always to something that existed such a time in such a place, which it was certain, at that instant, was the same with itself, and no other. From whence it follows, that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same thing in different places.

The problem can be cast in the mold of an aporetic triad:

1. It is logically possible that one and the same self (ego, I) have two consecutive but non-overlapping numerically distinct bodies.

2. There are no unembodied or disembodied referents of uses of the first-person singular pronoun.

3. It is not logically possible that one and the same thing have two beginnings of existence.

Each of the limbs of the triad is plausible and yet they cannot all be true.  Any two, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one.  Thus (2) and (3), taken in conjunction, entails the negation of (1).

If Ed wants to hold both (1) and (2), then he must reject (3).  I would hold (1) and (3) and reject (2).

But is there any good reason to prefer my solution over Ed's? 

(1) makes a very weak claim, merely one of logical possibility.  So I don't see that it can be reasonably denied.  Admittedly, this needs further arguing.

Both 'I' and 'ego' are pronouns.  Both both Ed and I are using them as nouns.  Is there are problem with that? 

Subprime College Educations

Another chapter in the decline of the West.  Excerpts (emphasis added):

In his Encounter Books Broadside "The Higher Education Bubble," Reynolds says this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices — and lowered standards — to siphon up federal money. A recent Wall Street Journal headline: "Student Debt Rises by 8% as College Tuitions Climb."

[. . .]

The budgets of California’s universities are being cut, so recently Cal State Northridge students conducted an almost-hunger strike (sustained by a blend of kale, apple and celery juices) to protest, as usual, tuition increases and, unusually and properly, administrators' salaries. For example, in 2009 the base salary of UC Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion was $194,000, almost four times that of starting assistant professors. And by 2006, academic administrators outnumbered faculty.

The Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald notes that sinecures in academia's diversity industry are expanding as academic offerings contract. UC San Diego, while eliminating master's programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate "a student's understanding of her or his identity." So, rather than study computer science and Cervantes, students can study their identities — themselves. Says Mac Donald, "'Diversity,' it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism."

She reports that UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a Vice Chancellorship for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. UC Davis has a Diversity Trainers Institute under an Administrator of Diversity Education, who presumably coordinates with the Cross-Cultural Center. It also has: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; a Sexual Harassment Education Program; a Diversity Program Coordinator; an Early Resolution Discrimination Coordinator; a Diversity Education Series that awards Understanding Diversity Certificates in "Unpacking Oppression"; and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in "Understanding Diversity and Social Justice." California's budget crisis has not prevented UC San Francisco from creating a new Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Outreach to supplement UCSF's Office of Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and the Diversity Learning Center (which teaches how to become "a Diversity Change Agent"), and the Center for LGBT Health and Equity, and the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution, and the Chancellor's Advisory Committees on Diversity, and on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, and on the Status of Women.

Are we in Cloud Cuckoo Land yet?

Stanislav Sousedik and the Circularity Objection to the Thin Theory

Daniel Novotny writes,

I have discovered (something like) the circularity objection in Sousedik's translation of Frege's "Dialog with Punjer on Existence" into Czech. It's about two pages; here are some snippets (very rough translation):

First we might find difficulties with the assertion that existence is a property of the second order, i.e. the property of "falling under a concept". This is not incorrect but we need to take notice of something that — as far as I know — has gone unnoticed, namely that this "property" is under closer scrutiny a relation. "To fall under" is evidently a two-place predicate expressing not the relation of the concept to the thing (as it seems from Frege's exposition) but rather of the thing to the concept.  …"

. . . If we accept that "falling under" (or more precisely: "to have under") is a name of the relation, a sentence [e.g., "Men exist"] speaks not only of the concept of "men" but also of something that falls under this concept. . . . .

In order to say truthfully that the concept  F has under itself the individual x, the condition of x's existence needs to be satisfied. This seems obvious but the question arises what does this word "exist" express in this case? … it cannot be the second-order property, since it is, as we have seen a relation; we ask here about existence which is presupposed by this second-order relational propery as its necessary condition.

Now I have never read anything by Professor Sousedik, and I would be very surprised if he has ever read anything by me.  So it is particularly gratifying to find that he is making points that are almost exactly the same as points I have made in published papers, my existence book, earlier posts and in a forthcoming manuscript, copies of which I sent to London Ed, Peter L., and a few others.  I will couch the points in my own preferred jargon.

1. The second-level property of being instantiated is a relational property, one logically  parasitic upon the  two-place relation  *___ instantiates —* or *___ falls under —*.  Being instantiated is like being married.  Necessarily, if a first-level concept is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an individual, just as, necessarily, if a person is married, then he is married to someone (distinct from himself), the Fargo, North Dakota woman who 'married' herself notwithstanding. (We won't speculate on the question how such a self-marriage is consummated.)

2. It follows from #1 that the grammatical form of a sentence like 'Men exist' is not the same as its logical form.  Grammatically, it has a subject-predicate form.  Logically, however, it is relational: the concept man is instantiated by one or more individuals.  So not only is the sentence not about men, but about a concept; it is also refers — with "studied ambiguity" to cop a phrase from Quine — to one or more individuals.

3.  Now if concept F is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an individual that exists.  This is obvious, as Sousedik remarks.  What is less obvious, but still quite clear, is that the instantiating individuals cannot exist in the sense of being instantiated.  Obviously, no individual is instantiable; only concepts are instantiable.  If you insist that existence is the second-level relational property of being instantiated, then you obviously cannot say that the existence of Socrates is the second-level relational property of being instantiated.

4.  What this shows is that the 'Fressellian' attempt to reduce existence to instantiation fails miserably.  It ends up presupposing as irreducible what it tries to reduce, namely, genuine (pound the lectern, stamp the foot!) existence.  Another way of saying that the account presupposes what it tries to reduce is by saying that it is circular.  We want to know what existence is.  We are told that existence is a  property of concepts, the property of being instantiated.  Reflection on this property, however, reveals it to be relational and thus parasitic upon the dyadic relation of instantiation.  For this relation to hold, however, its terms must exist, and not in the sense of being instantiated.  So we are brought back to what we were trying to reduce to instantiation, namely, the existence that belongs to individuals.

Despite the clarity of the above, Peter L. balks, and London Ed baulks.  It is high time for both of them to cry 'uncle' and admit that I am right about this. Or must I sic the Czech contingent on them? [grin]

My Position on Free Will

This from a Norwegian reader:
I have been enjoying your blog for a couple of years now, and I have to say that I like how your mind works. There are a lot of issues I am thinking about currently regarding philosophy and that didn't change after reading Angus Menuge's book Agents Under Fire. If you haven't read that, I strongly recommend you to. He has some very interesting arguments regarding reason, intentionality, agency, reductionism, materialism etc.  One issue is bugging me particularly these days, and it is the ever-lasting question of free will. I hope I am not asking too much, but would you be able to tell me what your position about free will is and briefly explain why you hold that position?
My position, bluntly stated, is that we are libertarianly free.  As far as I'm concerned the following argument is decisive:
 
1. We are morally responsible for at least some of our actions and omissions.
2. Moral responsibility entails libertarian freedom of the will.
Therefore
3. We are libertarianly free.
 
Is this a compelling argument?  By no means.  (But then no argument for any substantive philosophical thesis is compelling. Nothing substantive in philosophy has ever been proven to the satisfaction of all competent practioners.)  One could, with no breach of logical propriety, deny the conclusion and then deny one or both of the premises.  As we say in the trade, "One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens."  Any valid argument can be thrown into 'inferential reverse,' the result being a valid argument.
 
I of course acccept both premises. That I am morally (as opposed to causally, and as opposed to legally) responsible for at least some of what I do and leave undone I take to be more evident than its negation.  And, like Kant, I see compatibilism as a shabby evasion, "the freedom of the turnspit." 
 
Some will say that free will and moral responsibility are illusions.  I find that incoherent for reasons supplied here.  Other posts in the Free Will category touch upon some of the more technical aspects of the problem.
 
There is a lot of utter rubbish being scribbled by scientists these days about philosophical questions.  Typically, these individuals, prominent in their fields, don't have a clue as to the nature, history, or proper exfoliation of these questions.  Recently, biologist Jerry Coyne has written a lot of crap about free will that I expose in these posts:
 
 
 
This stuff is crap in the same sense in which most of Ayn Rand's philosophical writings are crap.  The crappiness resides not so much in the theses themselves but in the way the theses are presented and argued, and the way  objections are dealt with.  But if I had to choose between the scientistic crapsters (Krauss, Coyne, Hawking & Mlodinow, et al.) and Rand, I would go with Rand.  At least she understands that what she is doing is philosophy and that philosophy is important and indispensable.  At least she avoids the monstrous self-deception of the scientistic crapsters who do philosophy while condemning it.

Nonsense about Descartes from the Science Page of the New York Times

This is an old post from the Powerblogs site.  Now seems an opportune time to give it a home here.  One of the purposes of this weblog is to combat scientism.
……………..

Here we read:

But as evolutionary biologists and cognitive neuroscientists peer ever deeper into the brain, they are discovering more and more genes, brain structures and other physical correlates to feelings like empathy, disgust and joy. That is, they are discovering physical bases for the feelings from which moral sense emerges — not just in people but in other animals as well.

The result is perhaps the strongest challenge yet to the worldview summed up by Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who divided the creatures of the world between humanity and everything else. As biologists turn up evidence that animals can exhibit emotions and patterns of cognition once thought of as strictly human, Descartes’s dictum, “I think, therefore I am,” loses its force.

People often question the utility of philosophy. One use of philosophy is to protect us from bad philosophy, pseudo-philosophy, the 'philosophy' of those who denigrate philosophy yet cannot resist philosophizing themselves and as a result philosophize poorly. Man is a philosophical animal whether he likes it or not. Philosophize we will — the only question being whether we will do it poorly or well.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Performers Who Ditched Their Italian Surnames, Part II

Part I is here.

But first one  who didn't.  An early manager suggested to Frank Sinatra that he adopt the stage name 'Frankie Satin.'  Sinatra would have none of that bullshit.  He did things his way.  That's Life. 

Joseph Di Nicola (Joey Dee and the Starlighters), Peppermint Twist, with an intro by Dwight D. Eisenhower!  This video shows what the dude looked like. Resembles a super short Joe Pesci.  What Kind of Love is This?

Margaret Battavio (Little Peggy March), I Will Follow Him.

Frank Castelluccio (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons), Can't Take My Eyes Off of You. Deer Hunter version.  Dawn. Walk Like a Man.   

Anthony Dominic Benedetto (Tony Bennett), The Way You Look Tonight

Alfred Arnold Cocozza (Mario Lanza), O Sole Mio.  Here is what Elvis made of the tune.

Francis Thomas Avallone (Frankie Avalon), Venus.

Fabiona Forte Bonaparte (Fabian), his songs are too schlocky even for my catholic tastes.

Addendum 6/10):  London Ed repots that there is nothing too musically schlocky for his place, so go there to hear one of Fabian's numbers.

Farewell to Krauss, A Universe From Nothing

The book is due back at the library today, and good riddance.  A few parting shots to put this turkey to bed.  The book is a mishmash of bad philosophy, badly written, and popularization of contemporary cosmology.  I cannot comment on the accuracy of the popularization, but the philosophy is indeed bad and demonstrates why we need philosophy: to debunk bad philosophy, especially the scientistic nonsense our culture is now awash in.  I am tempted once more to quote some Kraussian passages and pick them apart.  But besides being a waste of time, that would be the literary equivalent of beating up a cripple or rolling a drunk.

In my post of 29 April I put my finger on the central problem with the book: the 'bait and switch.'  Krauss baits us with the old Leibniz question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' (See On the Ultimate Origin of Things, 1697.)  Having piqued our interest, he switches to a different question, actually to several different questions, one of which is: "Why is there ‘stuff’, instead of empty space?" (Click on above link for reference.)  Apparently our man forgot that empty space is not nothing.

Bait and switch.  I recall an old Tareyton cigarette commercial  from the '60s:  I'd rather fight than switch.  Apparently Krauss would rather switch than fight an intellectually honest fight.

Here are links to my more substantial, but no less polemical, Krauss posts.

Ed Feser picks up on the 'bait and switch' theme in his cleverly titled First Things review, Not Understanding Nothing.

Causation, Existence, and the Modified Leibniz Question

Letting 'CCB' abbreviate 'concrete contingent beings,' we may formulate the modified Leibniz question as follows: Why are there any CCBs at all?  We have been discussing whether this question is a pseudo-question.  To be precise, we have been discussing whether it is a pseudo-question on the assumption that it does not collapse into one or more naturalistically tractable questions: questions that can be answered by natural science.

My thesis is that the modified Leibniz question is a genuine question that does not collapse into one or more naturalistically tractable questions.

I

Consider a universe that consists of a beginningless actually infinite series of contingent beings. Let us assume that each CCB in this universe is (deterministically)  caused by a preceding CCB.  The beginninglessness of the series insures that every CCB has a cause.  Since every CCB has a cause, each has a causal explanation in terms of an earlier one. And since each has a causal explanation, the whole lot of them does. (Some may smell the fallacy of composition in this last sentence, but let's assume arguendo that no fallacy has been committed.)  Accordingly, the totality of CCBs, the universe, has an explanation in virtue of each CCB's having an explanation. 

Some will say that on this scenario the modified Leibniz question has received a naturalistic  answer.  Why are there CCBs as as opposed to no CCBs?  Because each CCB is causally explained by other CCBs, and because explaining each of them amounts to explaining the whole lot of them.  And since the question has this naturalistic or universe-immanent answer, the specifically philiosophical form of the question, the question as Leibniz intended it, is a pseudo-question.

Others, like me, will insist that on the scenario sketched the question has not been answered.  We will insist that a legitimate question remains:  why is there this whole infinite system of contingent beings?  After all, it is contingent, just as its parts are contingent whether taken distributively or collectively.  There might not have been any concrete contingent beings at all, in which case there would not have been any CCBs to cause other CCBs.  And nothing is changed by the fact that the series of CCBs is actually  infinite in the past direction.  The fact that the series always existed does not show that it could not have failed to exist.  The temporal 'always' does not get the length of the modal 'necessarily.'  If time is infinite in both directions, and the universe exists at every time, it does not follow that the universe necessarily exists.  But if it contingently exists, then we are entitled to ask why it exists.

It is no answer to be told that each member of the universe, each CCB, is caused by others.  I may cheerfully grant that but still sensibly ask: But what accounts for the whole causal system in the first place?

Please note that a possible answer here is: nothing does.  The existence of the universe is a brute fact.  Nothing I have said entails a theistic answer. My point is simply  that the modified Leibniz question is a genuine question that cannot be answered by invoking causal relations within the universe.

II

There another line of attack open to me, one that focuses on the connection between causation and existence.  It seems to me that the naturalist or 'immanentist' must assume that if x causes y, then x causes y to exist.  The assumption, in other words, is that causation is existentially productive, that the cause brings the effect into existence.  But on what theory of causation that the naturalist is likely to accept is  causation productive?

This is a huge topic and I can only begin to explore it in this post.  Suppose our naturalist, good empiricist that he is, subscribes to a Humean or regularity theory of causation along the following lines:

RT. x (directly) causes y =df (i) x and y are spatiotemporally contiguous; (ii) x occurs earlier than y; (iii) x and y are subsumed under event types X and Y that are related by the de facto empirical generalization that all events of type X are followed by events of type Y.

 If this is what causation is, it is is not existentially productive: the cause does not produce, bring about, bring into existence the effect.  On the contrary, the holding of the causal relation presupposes the existence of the cause-event and the effect-event.  It follows that causation as understood on (RT) merely orders already existent events and cannot account for the very existence of these events. 

Of course, the naturalist needn't be a Humean about causation.  But then he ought to tell us what theory of causation he accepts and how it can be pressed into service to explain the very existence of CCBs.

For details and a much more rigorous development, see my article "The Hume-Edwards Objection to the Cosmological Argument," Journal of Philosophical Research, vol. XXII, 1997, pp. 425-443.  

Jonathan Haidt on Why Working-Class People Vote Conservative

When a working-class person votes conservative, isn't he voting against his economic interests?  That's what many lefties think and it puzzles them.  Why would the workers do such a thing?  This gives rise to the duping hypothesis: "the Republican party dupes people into voting against their economic interests by triggering outrage on cultural issues."

Jonathan Haidt demolishes the hypothesis.

According to Haidt, conservatives have a broader "moral palate" than liberals.  Liberals have only three concerns to the conservative's six (emphasis added):

. . . we have identified six moral concerns as the best candidates for being the innate "taste buds" of the moral sense: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Across many kinds of surveys, in the UK as well as in the USA, we find that people who self-identify as being on the left score higher on questions about care/harm. [. . .]

But on matters relating to group loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity (treating things as sacred and untouchable, not only in the context of religion), it sometimes seems that liberals lack the moral taste buds, or at least, their moral "cuisine" makes less use of them. [. . .]

In America, it is these three moral foundations that underlie most of the "cultural" issues that, according to duping theorists, are used to distract voters from their self-interest. But are voters really voting against their self-interest when they vote for candidates who share their values? Loyalty, respect for authority and some degree of sanctification create a more binding social order that places some limits on individualism and egoism. [. . .]

Despite being in the wake of a financial crisis that – if the duping theorists were correct – should have buried the cultural issues and pulled most voters to the left, we are finding in America and many European nations a stronger shift to the right. When people fear the collapse of their society, they want order and national greatness, not a more nurturing government.

Even on the two moral taste buds that both sides claim – fairness and liberty – the right can often outcook the left. The left typically thinks of equality as being central to fairness, and leftists are extremely sensitive about gross inequalities of outcome – particularly when they correspond along racial or ethnic lines. But the broader meaning of fairness is really proportionality – are people getting rewarded in proportion to the work they put into a common project? Equality of outcomes is only seen as fair by most people in the special case in which everyone has made equal contributions. [. . .]

Similarly for liberty. Americans and Britons all love liberty, yet when liberty and care conflict, the left is more likely to choose care. This is the crux of the US's monumental battle over Obama's healthcare plan. Can the federal government compel some people to buy a product (health insurance) in order to make a plan work that extends care to 30 million other people? The derogatory term "nanny state" is rarely used against the right (pastygate being perhaps an exception). Conservatives are more cautious about infringing on individual liberties (eg of gun owners in the US and small businessmen) in order to protect vulnerable populations (such as children, animals and immigrants).

In sum, the left has a tendency to place caring for the weak, sick and vulnerable above all other moral concerns. It is admirable and necessary that some political party stands up for victims of injustice, racism or bad luck. But in focusing so much on the needy, the left often fails to address – and sometimes violates – other moral needs, hopes and concerns. When working-class people vote conservative, as most do in the US, they are not voting against their self-interest; they are voting for their moral interest. They are voting for the party that serves to them a more satisfying moral cuisine. The left in the UK and USA should think hard about their recipe for success in the 21st century.