Mereological Criteria for Sortals and a Retraction

I said something yesterday that isn't right, as I realized this morning.  I said, ". . . a necessary condition of a term's being a sortal is that it be such that, if it applies to a thing, then it does not apply to the proper parts of the thing."

What I said works for some examples.  'Red thing,' 'physical object,' and 'entity' are not sortals.  A red thing can easily have proper parts that are red things.  The proper parts of a physical object are physical objects.  The proper parts of entities are themselves entities. And so on.

But isn't 'rope' a sortal?  If I have a ten foot rope and cut into two equal pieces, then I have two ropes.  The same goes for 'rubber hose,' 'cloud,' 'amoeba.'  (These latter examples from Nicholas Griffin, Relative Identity, Oxford, 1977, p. 38.)  So it cannot be true that, if 'T' is a sortal, then you cannot divide T into two parts and get two  Ts.

And you thought I never admitted mistakes?

The Modified Leibniz Question, Maitzen’s Critique of its Meaningfulness, and My Response

It is the thesis of Stephen Maitzen's Stop Asking Why There's Anything that the Leibniz question, 'Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all?' is ill-posed as it stands and unanswerable.  Maitzen's point is intended to apply not only to the 'wide-open' formulation just mentioned but also to such other formulations as 'Why are there any concrete contingent beings at all?'  I will discuss only the latter formulation.  It is defensible in ways that the wide-open question is not.  Call it the modified Leibniz question.  For Maitzen it is a pseudo-question.  For me it is a genuine question.  On my classificatory scheme, Maitzen is a rejectionist concerning the modified Leibniz question.  The question is not to be answered but  rejected as senseless, because of an internal semantic defect that renders it necessarily unanswerable and therefore illegitimate as a question.

My defense of the meaningfulness of the modified Leibniz question does not commit me to any particular answer to the question such as the theistic answer.  For there are several possible types of answer, one of them being the 'brutal' answer:  it is simply a brute fact that concrete contingent beings (CCBs) exist.  When Russell, in his famous BBC debate with the Jesuit Copleston, said that the the universe is just there and that is all, he was answering the question, not rejecting it.  His answer presupposed the meaningfulness of the question.

1. Getting a Sense of What the Dispute is About

Maitzen's paper is in the context of a defense of naturalism and an attack on theism.  So I have to be careful not to assume theism or anything that entails or presupposes theism.  Defining 'naturalism' is a tricky business but it suffices for present purposes to say that naturalism entails the nonexistence of God as classically conceived, and the nonexistence of immortal souls, but does not entail the nonexistence of abstracta, many of which are necessary beings. 

To make things hard on theists let us assume (contrary to current cosmology)  that the universe has an actually infinite past. Hence it always existed. Let us also assume that the each total state of the universe at a time is (deterministically) caused to exist by an earlier such state of the universe. A third assumption is that the universe is nothing over and above the sum of its states. The third assumption implies that if each state has a causal explanation in terms of earlier states (in accordance with the laws of nature), then all of the states have an explanation, in which case the universe itself has a causal explanation. This in turn implies that there is no need to posit anything external to the universe, such as God, to explain why the universe exists. The idea, then, is that the universe exists because it causes itself to exist in that later states are caused to exist by earlier states, there being no earliest, uncaused, state. We thereby explain why the universe exists via an infinite regress of universe-immanent causes and in so doing obviate the need for a transcendent cause.

If this could be made to work, then we would have a nice neat self-contained universe whose existence was not a brute fact but also not dependent on anything external to the universe.  We would also have an answer to the modified Leibniz question.  Why are there any CCBs given the (broadly logical) possibility that there not be any?  Because each is caused to exist by other CCBs.

The five or so assumptions behind this reasoning can all be questioned. But even if they are all true, the argument is still no good for a fairly obvious (to me!) reason. The whole collection of states, despite its being beginningless and endless, is (modally) contingent: it might not have existed at all.  So, despite every state's having a cause, we can still ask why there are any states in the first place.

The fact that U always existed, if it is a fact, does not entail that U must exist. If I want to know why this universe of ours exists as opposed to there being some other universe or no universe at all, it does no good to tell me that it always existed. For what I want to know is why it exists at all, or 'in the first place.'   I am not asking about its temporal duration but about its very existence. Why it exists at all is a legitimate question since there is no necessity that there be a universe in the first place.  There might have been no universe, where 'universe' stands for the sum-total of concrete contingent beings all of which, on the assumption of naturalism, are physical or material beings.  And it seems obvious that the fact, if it is a fact, that every state has a cause in earlier states does not explain why there is the whole system of states.

The dispute between Maitzen and me can now be formulated.

BV:  The question 'Why are there any CCBs at all? is a legitimate question ( a meaningful question) that cannot be answered in a universe-immanent or naturalistic way as above where every CCB is causally explained by other CCBs. 

SM:  The question 'Why are there any CCBs at all?' is not a legitimate question (not a meaningful question) except insofar as it can be reformulated as a question whose answer can take a universe-immanent or naturalistic form.

2. Maitzen's Argument For the Meaninglessness of the Modified Leibniz Question

The argument begins with considerations about counting.  Maitzen arrives at a result that I do not question.  We can counts pens, plums and penguins, but we cannot count things, entities, or concrete contingent beings.  Or at least we cannot count them under those heads.  The reason is quite simple.  The first trio of terms is a trio of sortals, the second of dummy sortals. Sortals encapsulate individuative criteria that make possible the counting of the items to which the sortals apply.  Thus it makes sense to ask how many cats are on my desk.  The answer at the moment is two.  But it makes no sense to ask how many CCBs are on my desk at the moment. For to answer the question I would have to  be able to count the CCBs, and that is something I cannot do because of the semantic indeterminacy of 'CCB.'  When one counts cats one does not count the proper parts of cats for the simple reason that the proper parts of cats are not cats. (Pre-born babies inside a mother are not proper parts of the mother.)  In fact, it occurs to me now that a necessary condition of a term's being a sortal is that it be such that, if it applies to a thing, then it does not apply to the proper parts of the thing.  When I set out to count CCBs, however, I get no guidance from the term: I don't know whether to count the proper parts of the cat as CCBs or not.  It is not that I or we contingently lack the ability to count them, but that the semantic indeterminateness of 'CCB' makes it impossible to count them.  Things get even hairier — you will forgive the pun — when we ask about undetached arbitrary parts (e.g., Manny minus his tail) and mereological sums (e.g., Manny + the cigar in the ashtray).

All of this was discussed in greater detail in earlier posts. For now the point is simply that the question 'How many CCBs are there?' cannot be answered due to the semantic indeterminateness of 'CCB.'  And since it cannot be answered for this semantic reason, the question is senseless, a pseudo-question.

So far, so good.  But then on p. 56  of Maitzen's paper we find the following sudden but crucial move: "These considerations, I believe, also show that the question ‘Why is there anything?' (i.e., ‘Why is there any thing?’) confuses grammatical and logical function and hence necessarily lacks an answer . . . . "  The main weakness of Maitzen's paper, as I see it, is that he doesn't adequately explain the inferential connection between the counting question and the explanation question, between the 'How many?' question and the 'Why any?' question.  I cheerfully concede that it is senseless to ask how many CCBs there are if all we have to go on is 'CCB' as it is commonly understood.  (Of course there is a difference between 'thing,' say, and 'concrete contingent being.'  The first is a bit of ordinary English while the second is a term of art (terminus technicus).  But this difference does not make a difference for present purposes.)  But why should the fact that 'CCB' is a dummy sortal also make the 'Why any?' question senseless?  For that is precisely what Maitzen is claiming.  'Why is there anything?' is senseless because "the question's reliance on the dummy sortal 'thing' leaves it indeterminate what's being asked." (p. 56)

But wait a minute.  What is being asked about CCBs in the second question is not how many, but why they exist at all.  Why should the fact that we cannot assign a precise number to them render the second question senseless?  I know that there are at least two CCBs.  Here is one cat, here is another (he said Mooreanly).  Each is a concrete contingent being.  So there are at least two.  If there are at least two, then there are some. If there are some, then 'CCBs exist' is true.  Since it is true, it is meaningful. (Not every meaningful proposition is true, but every true proposition is meaningful.) 

To put it another way, 'CCBs exist' is a (closed) sentence.  It expresses a complete thought, a proposition.  It is not an open sentence like 'Xs exist.'  The latter is no more a sentence than a dummy sortal is a sortal.  Unlike 'CCBs exist,' it cannot be evaluated as either true or false.  So, while 'CCB' lacks the semantic determinacy of a sortal, it is not wholly semantically indeterminate like the variable 'X.'  It makes a semantic contribution to the sentence 'CCBs exist.'

Now if it is meaningful to assert that CCBs exist, despite their number being indeterminate, then it is also meaningful to ask why CCBs exist, despite their number being indeterminate.  Now it is meaningful to assert that CCBs exist.  Therefore, it is meaningful to ask why they exist, despite their number being indeterminate.

Although the uncountability of CCBs is a good reason to think that 'How many CCBs are there?' is senseless, it is not a good reason to think that 'Why are there any CCBs?' is also senseless.

My point is that it is a non sequitur for Maitzen to move from

a. 'How many CCBs are there?' is  a senseless question

to

b. 'Why are there any CCBs?' is a senseless question.

(a) is true.  But one can hold (a) consistently with holding the negation of (b).

How might Maitzen respond?

3. 'Concrete Contingent Being' as a Mere Covering Term

For Maitzen, 'CCB' is "only a covering term for pens, plums, penguins . . . ." (p. 57)  and other instances of sorts.  It doesn't refer to anything distinct from pens, plums, penguins, cats, human births, explosions, and so on. In other words, 'CCB' does not pick out a special sort — an uber-sort, if you will — the instances of which are distinct from the instances of genuine sorts.  And so 'CCB' does not pick out a sort whose instances elude natural-scientific explanation and therefore EITHER require some special explanation by God or some other entity transcendent of the physical universe OR are such that their existence is a brute fact.  As Maitzen puts it, "there aren't any contingent things whose explanations outstrip the explanations available for the individuals covered by the covering term 'contingent things.'" (p. 58)  The 'Why any?' question "has no content until we replace referentially indeterminate words with genuine sortals." (p. 59) 

If Maitzen is telling us that CCBs are not a sort of thing distinct  from ordinary sorts, then he is right, and I agree.      Suppose we we have a complete list of all the sorts of thing in the universe: pens, plums, pussycats, penguins, and so on.  It would be absurd if someone were to object: "But you forgot to list the concrete contingent beings!"  That would be absurd since each pen, plum etc. is a CCB, and there is no CCB that is not either a pen or a plum or, etc. But it doesn't follow that a sentence in which 'CCB' occurs is without content. 

It is simply false to say that the 'Why any?' question "has no content until we replace referentially indeterminate words with genuine sortals." (p. 59)   Right here is where Maitzen makes the mistake that invalidates the move from (a) to (b).  He conflates the partial semantic indeterminacy of dummy sortals with the total semantic indeterminacy of variables. Compare:

  • Why are there any penguins?
  • Why are there any concrete contingent beings?
  • Why are there any Xs?

 The first two questions are genuine, despte the fact we can count only penguins.  The third question is pseudo since it has no definite sense.

Note finally that we cannot replace the second question with a long disjunctive question like 'Why are there either penguins or plums or pussycats or pens, or . . . ?'  For suppose you had a complete naturalistic answer to the latter question.  You could still meaningfully ask why there are any CCBs at all as opposed to none at all, and why these rather than some other possible set.

There is more to say, but tomorrow's another day, and brevity is the soul of blog.

Jerry Fodor’s Idiosyncratic Understanding of ‘Scientism’

Jerry Fodor's "Is Science Biologically Possible?" (in Beilby, ed. Naturalism Defeated? Cornell UP 2002, pp. 30-42) begins like this:

I hold to a philosophical view that, for want of a better term, I'll call by one that is usually taken to be pejorative: Scientism.  Scientism claims, on the one hand, that the goals of scientific inquiry include the discovery of objective empirical truths; and, on the other hand, that science has come pretty close to achieving this goal at least  from time to time.  The molecular theory of gasses is, I suppose, a plausible example of achieving it in physics; so is the cell theory in biology; the theory, in geology, that the earth is very old; and the theory, in astronomy,that the stars are very far away . . . .

I'm inclined to think that Scientism, so construed, is not just true but obviously and certainly true; it's something that nobody in the late twentieth  century who has a claim to an adequate education and a minimum of common sense should doubt.

Up to this point one might get the impression that Fodor is simply stipulating that he will use 'scientism' in his own perverse and idiosyncratic way.  But then he goes on to say that scientism is under attack from the left and from the right: "on the left, from a spectrum of relativists and pragmatists, and on the right, from a spectrum of Idealists and a priorists."

At this point I threw down the article in disgust and went on to something worthwhile.

If you want to take a term in widespread use, a term the meaning of which is more or less agreed upon by hundreds of philosophers, and use it in our own crazy-headed way, that, perhaps, may be forgiven.  But it is utterly unforgivable to  use one and same term with both the received meaning and your crazy-headed arbitrarily stipulated meaning.

What is scientism?  I expect some bickering over the particulars of the following definition, but I believe the following captures in at least broad outline what most competent practioners understand by 'scientism.'

Scientism is a philosophical thesis that belongs to the sub-discipline of epistemology. It is not a thesis in science, but a thesis about science.  The thesis in its strongest form is that the only genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge, the knowledge generated by the (hard) sciences of physics, chemistry, biology and their offshoots. The thesis in a weaker form allows some cognitive value to the social sciences, the humanities, and other subjects, but insists that scientific knowledge is vastly superior and authoritative and is as it were the 'gold standard' when it comes to knowledge. On either strong or weak scientism, there is no room for first philosophy, according to which philosophy is an autonomous discipline, independent of natural science, and authoritative in respect to it. So on scientism, natural science sets the standard in matters epistemic, and philosophy’s role is at best ancillary.  Not a handmaiden to theology in this day and age; a handmaiden to science.

One problem with strong scientism is that it is self-vitiating, as the following argument demonstrates:

a. The philosophical thesis of strong scientism is not an item of scientific knowledge.
b. All genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge.
Therefore
c. The philosophical thesis of strong scientism is not an item of genuine knowledge.

Hence one cannot claim to know that scientism is true if it is true.  Scientism falls short of the very standard it enshrines.  It is at most an optional philosophical belief unsupported by science. It also has unpalatable consequences which for many of us have the force of counterexamples.

If scientism is true, then none of the following can count as items of knowledge: That torturing children for fun is morally wrong; that setting afire  a sleeping bum is morally worse than picking his pockets; that raping a woman is morally worse than merely threatening to rape her; that verbally threatening to commit rape is morally worse than entertaining (with pleasure) the thought of committing rape; that 'ought' implies 'can'; that moral goodness is a higher value than physical strength; that might does not make right; that the punishment must fit the crime; that a proposition and its negation cannot both be true; that what is past was once present; that if A remembers B's experience, then A = B; and so on.  In sum: if there are any purely rational insights into aesthetic, moral, logical, or metaphysical states of affairs, then scientism is false.  For the knowledge I get when I see (with the eye of the mind) that the punishment must fit the crime is not an item of scientific knowledge.

Back to Fodor.  His definition of scientism has nothing to so with scientism as commonly understood.  The latter is a highly dubious philosophical thesis as I have just demonstrated.  But what he calls scientism is but a platitude that most of us will accept while rejectiong scientism as commonly understood.

Could the Universe Cause Itself to Exist?

I recently considered and rejected the suggestion that a universe with a metrically infinite past has the resources to explain its own existence.  But what if, as the cosmologists tell us, the universe is only finitely old? Could a variant of the first argument be nonetheless mounted?  Surprisingly, yes.  Unsurprisingly, it fails.

The following also fleshes out a version of what I called Cosmologism and listed recently as one possible type of response to the Leibniz question, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?'

BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Written in the summer of 1999. Submitted to The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 25 January 2000. The acceptance letter is dated 14 February 2000. Published in Philosophy 75 (2000), pp. 604-612. Copyright held by The Royal Society of Philosophy,  London.  Philosophy pagination is provided  in brackets, e.g., [P 604]. Endnote numbers are also given in brackets, e.g., [1].

ABSTRACT: This article responds to Quentin Smith's, "The Reason the Universe Exists is that it Caused Itself to Exist," Philosophy 74 (1999), 579-586. My rejoinder makes three main points. The first is that Smith's argument for a finitely old, but causally self-explanatory, universe fails from probative overkill: if sound, it also shows that all manner of paltry event-sequences are causally self-explanatory. The second point is that the refutation of Smith's  argument extends to Hume's argument for an infinitely old causally self-explanatory universe, as well as to Smith's two 'causal loop'  arguments. The problem with all four arguments is their reliance on Hume's principle that to explain the members of a collection is ipso facto to explain the collection. This principle succumbs to counterexamples. The third point is that, even if Hume's principle were true, Smith's argument could not succeed without the aid of a theory of causation according to which causation is production (causation of existence).

Continue reading “Could the Universe Cause Itself to Exist?”

New PC Expression: ‘Customers of Size’

Or at least it was new when I first ran an ancestorof  this post on the old blog back in 2008 (26 July).

……………..

No doubt you have heard of 'people of color' not to be confused with 'colored people.' (But what exactly is the difference in reality?) Just this morning I discovered that some airlines are now referring to fat passengers as 'customers of size.' I am not making this up.

A 'customer of size' is defined by Southwest Airlines as one who is "unable to lower the armrests  (the definitive boundary between seats) and/or who compromise[s] any portion of adjacent seating . . . ."

As one who has been 'compromised' by obese flyers on more than one occasion, I can only applaud the policy if not the PC expression.

The tort against the English language is similar to that of dropping qualifiers. Thus a high quality journal is referred to as a 'quality' journal. But  since every journal has some quality, high, low, or middling, why should 'quality' get to stand in for 'high quality'? Why should 'intercourse' get to go proxy for 'sexual intercourse'?  Similarly for 'chauvinism' and 'male chauvinism.'  Since we all have some color or other, why are only some of us 'people of color'?  And since all of us have some size or other, why do some bear the distinction of being 'customers of size'?  Just because I'm not fat, I don't have a size?

Just because my body is not misshapen, I don't have a shape?

'Fat' is perhaps rude. But what is wrong with 'obese'? 

It is interesting to note the difference between 'sexual intercourse' and 'male chauvinism.'  'Male' here functions as an alienans adjective: it shifts or 'alienates' the sense of the term it qualifies: a male chauvinist is not a chauvinist.  'Sexual,' by contrast, in this context is a specifying adjective: sexual intercourse is a species of intercourse in the way that male chauvinism is not a species of chauvinism.

Recent talk of dummy sortals occasions the observation that 'dummy' here is an alienans adjective.  It is not as if sortals come in two kinds, dummy and non-dummy.

If I were to write a book, Sortals for Dummies, that would be a point I'd make early on.

For more fun with alienans adjectives see my Adjectives category.

A Prime Instance of Political Correctness: The Blackballing of Nat Hentoff

Nat Hentoff  is a civil libertarian and a liberal in an older and respectable sense of the term.  He thinks for himself and follows the arguments and evidence where they lead.  So what do contemporary politically correct liberals do?  They attack him.  His coming out against abortion particularly infuriated them.  Mark Judge comments:

Hentoff's liberal friends didn't appreciate his conversion: "They were saying, 'What's the big fuss about? If the parents had known she was going to come in this way, they would have had an abortion. So why don't you consider it a late abortion and go on to something else?' Here were liberals, decent people, fully convinced themselves that they were for individual rights and liberties but willing to send into eternity these infants because they were imperfect, inconvenient, costly. I saw the same attitude on the part of the same kinds of people toward abortion, and I thought it was pretty horrifying."

The reaction from America's corrupt fourth estate was instant. Hentoff, a Guggenheim fellow and author of dozens of books, was a pariah. Several of his colleagues at the Village Voice, which had run his column since the 1950s, stopped talking to him. When the National Press Foundation wanted to give him a lifetime achievement award, there was a bitter debate amongst members whether Hentoff should even be honored (he was). Then they stopped running his columns. You heard his name less and less. In December 2008, the Village Voice officially let him go.

When journalist Dan Rather was revealed to have poor news judgment, if not outright malice, for using fake documents to try and change the course of a presidential election, he was given a new TV show and a book deal — not to mention a guest spot on The Daily Show. The media has even attempted a resuscitation of anti-Semite Helen Thomas, who was recently interviewed in Playboy.

By accepting the truth about abortion, and telling that truth, Nat Hentoff may be met with silence by his peers when he goes to his reward. The shame will be theirs, not his.

HentoffRelated posts:

Hats Off to Hentoff: Abortion and Obama

Hats Off to Hentoff: "Pols Clueless on Ground Zero Mosque"

Nat Hentoff on 'Hate Crime' Laws

Helen Thomas Disgraces Herself

Hentoff thinks that one cannot consistently oppose abortion and support capital punishment.  I believe he is quite mistaken about that.

Fetal Rights and the Death Penalty: Consistent or Inconsistent?

The ‘How Many?’ and the ‘Why Any?’ Questions and Their Connection

This post continues the ruminations begun here which were inspired by Stephen Maitzen's intriguing paper Stop Asking Why There's Anything (Erkenntnis 77:1 (2012), 51-63).

Let 'CCB' abbreviate 'concrete contingent being.'  For present purposes, the 'How many?' question is this: How many CCBs are there?  And for present purposes the 'Why any?' question is this: Why are there any CCBs?  There might have been none, but there are some, so why are there some?  (I take that to be equivalent to asking why there are any.)

What I want to get clear about is the connection between these two questions.  In particular,  I want to see if the senselessness of the first, if it is senseless, entails the senselessness of the second.

I think it is clear that 'CCB,' like 'thing,' 'entity,' 'existent,' object,' etc. is not a sortal expression.  There are different ways of explaining what a sortal is, but for present purposes a sortal

  • supplies a criterion for counting the items to which the term applies
  • provides a criterion of identity and non-identity among the items to which the term applies
  • gives a criterion for the continued existence of the items to which the term applies.

'Pen' and 'penguin' are examples of sortals.  I can count the pens and penguins on my desk.  There are five pens and zero penguins. (It's a tad warm for penguins here in the Sonoran desert.)  The penguins in Antartica are countable as well, in principle if not in practice.  (This use of 'countable' is not to be confused with its use in set theory.  A countable (uncountable) set is an infinite set the members of which can be (cannot be) placed in one-to-one correspondence with the natural numbers.)

'CCB' is not a sortal because it does not provide a criterion for counting the items to which it applies, say, the things on my desk.  Is a pen together with its cap one CCB  or two?  And what about the particular blackness of the cap?  Presumably it too is a CCB. Are we now up to three CCBs?  And so on.

Maitzen concludes that the 'How many?' question is a pseudo-question because ill-formed, and its is ill-formed because   it features a dummy sortal, a term that functions grammatically like a sortal, but is not a sortal.  As senseless, the question is to be rejected, not answered.

From this result Maitzen straightaway (without any intermediate steps) infers that the 'Why any?'' question is also senseless and for the same reason, namely, that it harbors a dummy sortal.  It is not clear, however, why the fact that the second question features the dummy sortal 'CCB' should render the second question senseless.  We need an argument to forge a link between the two questions.  Perhaps the following will do the trick.

1. If it makes sense to claim that penguins exist, then it makes sense to claim that there is in reality some definite number of penguins.  (It cannot  be true both that there are penguins and that there is no definite number of penguins.) Therefore:
2. If it makes sense to claim that CCBs exist, then it makes sense to claim that there is in reality some definite number of CCBs.  But:
3. It makes no sense to claim that there is in reality some definite number of CCBs. Therefore:
4. It makes no sense to claim that CCBs exist. (2, 3, Modus Tollens)
5. If it makes no sense to claim that CCBs exist, then it makes no sense to ask why CCBs exist.  Therefore:
6. It makes no sense to ask why CCBs exist. (4, 5 Modus Ponens)

I suspect that some such argument as the foregoing is running behind the scenes of Maitzen's text.  The crucial premise is (3).  But has Maitzen established (3)?  I agree that WE cannot count CCBs.  We cannot count them because 'CCB' is not a sortal.  And so FOR US the number of CCBs must remain indeterminate.  But from a God's Eye point of view — which does not presuppose the actual existence of God –  there could easily be a definite number (finite or transfinite) that is the number of CCBs.

On can conceive of an ideally rational spectator (IRS) who knows the true ontology and so knows what all the categories of entity are and knows the members of each category.  What is to stop the IRS from computing the number of CCBs?  We can't do the computation because we are at sea when it comes to the true ontology.  All we have are a bunch of competing theories, and the English language is no help: 'CCB' does not supply us with a criterion for counting.

In short, we must distinguish the question whether the number of CCBs is indeterminate in reality or only indeterminate for us.  If the latter, then we cannot move from the senselessness of the 'How many?' question to the senselessness of the 'Why any?' question.  If the former, the move is valid, but as far as I can see, Maitzen has not given any reason to think that the former is the case.

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Doc Watson

The Grim Reaper is gaining speed as he picks off the makers of the music that so impressed us in our impressionable years.  In recent weeks Levon Helm of The Band and Robin Gibb of The Bee Gees have passed on. And just a few days ago, Doc Watson, master of the flat pick.  So pour yourself a drink and enjoy some great guitar playing as the sun sets on another Saturday.

Tom Dooley
Last Thing on My Mind.  Tune written by Tom Paxton.  Paxton's 1966 version. 2008 version.
Cat Came Back
Tennessee Stud
Settin' on Top of the World

If you don't like my peaches
Don't you shake my tree
Get out of my orchard
Let my peaches be
And now she's gone
And I don't worry
Lord I'm settin'
On top of the world.

A Little Nugget from Martial

There have always been serious writers and there have always been low-rent scribblers. You should not imagine that it was any different in the ancient world.  Here is a little something from Martial.

Cui legisse satis non est epigrammata centum,
nil illi satis est, Caediciane, mali.
  

Caedicianus, if my reader
After a hundred epigrams still
Wants more, then he's a greedy feeder
Whom no amount of swill can fill.

(tr. James Michie)

Cat Blogging Friday: Atheist Cat

Atheist CatBecause I'm a rational animal.

Because, unlike you, I was made in the image and likeness of God.

Max the cat responds: Because I'm a logical positivist.  The God question is devoid of cognitive significance.  Meaningful questions pertain to such matters as mice, cheese, birds, and catnip.  And now I think I'll go take a long nap, a car nap.

Must We Stop Asking Why There’s Anything?

1. A Pseudo-Question:  How Many Things are There?

A while back, in response to a reader's question, I argued that one cannot count things as things.  I can count the cats in my house, the tiles on my roof, and 'in principle' the subterranean termites within two feet of my foundation.  What I cannot do is count things (entities, beings, existents, items, objects, etc.) as things. The reason, briefly, is that 'thing,' unlike 'cat,' is not a sortal.  It is a dummy sortal.  It is a term that functions grammatically like a sortal, and can serve as a placeholder for a sortal, but is logically unlike a sortal in that it supplies no criteria of identification and re-identification for the things to which it applies.  I can count the cats in my house because I know what it is to be a cat; I know what 'counts' as a cat and what does not 'count' as a cat: the lifespan of a cat is not a cat; the location of a cat is not a cat; the posture of a cat is not a cat; the parts of a cat are not cats; the properties and relations of a cat are not cats, etc.

But I can't count the things in my house because I don't know what all counts as a thing, and what all doesn't.  Are only middle-sized specimens of dry goods things?  Or are persons also things?  Are my cats things?  Is their blackness a thing? Everything black is colored.  So do I count the cat as one thing, its blackness as a second thing, the being colored of the cat as a third thing?  If I have a cat on my lap, do I have at least three things on my lap, or only one, or perhaps a countable or (heaven forbid) an uncountable infinity of things on my lap?  And what about the parts of the cat, and the parts of the parts, and how far do we go with that?  To the molecular level. the atomic level. the quark level?

I trust the point is clear: one cannot count things (entities, etc.) as things.  It seems to follow that the question 'How many things are there?' is a pseudo-question.  It is a pseudo-question because it is unanswerable in principle.  'Many' and 'more than one' are not answers.  A Parmenidean monist might insist that there is exactly one thing, and a nihilist that there are none.

2. Why is There Anything at All?  A Pseudo-Question?

But now a vexing question arises:  does the fact that 'thing' is a dummy sortal, hence not a sortal, constitute a reason for holding that the question 'Why is there anything (any thing) at all?' is also a pseudo-question?  Stephen Maitzen answers in the affirmative in his paper, Stop Asking Why There's Anything. (Thanks to Vlastimil Vohanka for alerting me to the article.)

Maitzen seems to be reasoning along the following lines.  We can sensibly ask why there are apples, trees, plants, living things, and sensibly expect a natural-scientific answer.  But we cannot sensibly ask why there are things (existents, beings, etc.).  The same goes for the restricted question why there are any contingent beings.  This is because 'contingent being' is just as much a dummy sortal as 'being.'   Dummy sortals are referentially indeterminate unless replaced by a genuine sortal such as 'penguin.' 

Maitzen's point could be put as follows.  There are various sorts of thing, and of each sort we can sensibly ask: why are there things of this sort?  But we cannot sensibly ask: why are there things at all, or contingent things at all?  Things that are are not a sort of thing. And the same goes for things that are contingently.

So perhaps the point is simply this.  'Why is there anything at all?' is a pseudo-question because (a)  things that are are not a sort of thing, and (b) we can sensibly ask the 'why' question only about sorts of things.

3. Tentative Evaluation

Well, I think it is perfectly clear that things that are are not a sort of thing.  Aristotle said essentially that long ago when he said that being is not a genus (Metaph. 998b22, Anal Prior. 92b10).  We could put the point in formal mode by saying that 'being,' ens, das Seiende, are not sortal expressions.  (I am thinking of Heidegger's question, Warum ist das Seiende und nicht vielmehr nichts? )  But who ever said they were?

Maitzen's explanation of why people fall for the pseudo-question 'Why is there anything at all?' is because they confuse dummy sortals with genuine sortals.  But it seems to me that we can avoid the confusion and still sensibly ask the question.

Consider the question, 'Does anything exist?'  The question makes sense and has an obvious answer: 'Yes, things exist.'  Both the question and the answer make sense despite the presence in them of the dummy sortal 'thing.'  So why shouldn't it also make sense to ask why things exist?

Maitzen mistakenly assimilates the question 'Why does anything exist?' to the obviously senseless question 'How many things exist?'  This is the central weakness of his paper.  He never adequately explains the connection between the 'how many?' question and the 'why?' question.  The former is senseless and precisely for the reason that 'thing' is not a sortal.  But from the fact that 'thing' is not a sortal, how is it supposed to follow that the 'Why?' question is also senseless? 

The Thin Theory is Circular!

London Ed demands that I reduce my circularity objection to a sound bite.  No can do.  But at least I can combat this travesty he ascribes to me:

The thin conception of 'exists' is that 'An F exists' means the same as 'The concept *F* is instantiated'
But if *F* is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an individual that exists
Therefore the thin conception of 'exists' is circular.

So let me try once more.  I will try to be succinct.  But there is no way I can get my point across in just a few sentences.  Philosophy cannot be reduced to sound bites!

1. On the thin theory, 'An F exists' means the same as 'The concept *F* is instantiated.'
2. If a first-level concept such as *F* is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an individual.
3. Let the arbitrary constant 'a' denote an individual that instantiates *F.*

We now ask whether a exists, does not exist, both, or neither.  These are the only options.

4. By LNC, a cannot both exist and not exist.
5. By LEM, a must either exist or not exist.
6. If a does not exist, i.e., if a is a Meinongian nonexistent object, then the link expressed in (1) between existence and instantiation is broken.
Therefore
7. If  *F* is instantiated, then *F* is instantiated by an individual that exists.
Therefore
8. On the thin theory, 'An F exists' means the same as 'The concept *F* is instantiated by an individual that exists.'
9. A definition (analysis, account, theory, explanation ) is circular iff the term to be defined occurs in the defining term.
10. 'Exists' occurs both in (8)'s definiendum and its definiens.
Therefore
11. The thin theory is circular.

Summary:  Our question is: What is existence?  The thin theory maintains that existence reduces to instantiation.  The whole point of the theory is that existence is in no sense a property of individuals; what it is is a property of concepts, the property of having an instance.  But if a first-level concept is instantiated, it is instantiated by an individual that exists. Therefore, the attempt to reduce existence to instantiation ends up presupposing what was to be reduced, namely existence, and is a failed theory for this reason.

Objection.  (5) is false. Individual a neither exists nor does not exist.  To exist = to be instantiatiated, and no individual is either instantiated or not instantiated. 

Reply.  This objection begs the question.  The question is whether existence can be reduced to instantiation.  One cannot just assume that it can be so reduced.  Furthermore,it is a plain fact that individuals exist.  I exist. This cat exists.  And of course the existence of this cat is not its being instantiated.  Since I exist, and my existence is not my being instantiated, existence cannot be reduced to instantiation.

The point could be put as follows.  The thin theory tries to reduce singular existence to general existence.  But general existence presupposes singular existence: there cannot exist cats in general unless this or that individual is a cat and exists.  Therefore, singular existence cannot be reduced to general existence.

It may  that what London Ed is doing is simply stipulating that 'exist(s)' shall mean 'is instantiated.'  But an arbitrary stipulation gratuitously made can be gratuitously rejected.  That individuals exist is a plain fact, innocent until proven guilty.  The question about existence cannot be answered by any mere stipulative definition.

Robert Paul Wolff: “The Left Has Had All the Good Songs”

Anarchist philosopher Robert Paul Wolff, over at The Philosopher's Stone, writes,

While I was making dinner, Susie put on a CD of Pete Seegar [sic] songs. I was struck once again by the oft-remarked fact that for half a century, the left has had all the good songs. That cannot be irrelevant.

By the way, the old commie's name is 'Seeger' not 'Seegar.'  In the ComBox, some guy confuses him with Bob Seger! The Left has had all the good songs over the last 50 years?  Nonsense.  Here are 50 counterexamples.

The really interesting case is Bob Dylan.  The Left can of course claim the early topical songs such as Only a Pawn in Their Game and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.  (Not that we contemporary conservatives don't take on board all that was good in these critiques of racism and Jim Crow.)  But it wasn't long before Dylan distanced himself from politics and leftist ideology, a distancing documented in My Back Pages.  And then came the absurdist-existentialist-surrealist phase represented by the three mid-'sixties albums, Bring It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde.  After that, the motorcycle accident and another attitude adjustment culminating in a couple of masterful albums, John Wesley Harding and New Morning, in which religious and conservative themes come to the fore.

I'll give just one example, Sign on a Window, from the October 1970 album, New Morning.  The song concludes:

Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife, catch  rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me 'Pa'
That must be what it's all about
That must be what it's all about.

To appreciate the full conservative flavor of this song, listen to it in the context of  "Masters of War" from the protest period and It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) from the absurdist-existentialist-surrealist period.

Voter Identification and Voter Suppression

Voter ID

The controversy over voter ID is a fascinating  one because it highlights the deep divide between contemporary conservatives and contemporary liberals.  That this non-issue is debated at all shows that the Left is bereft of common sense.

Anyone with common sense ought to be able to appreciate that voting must be conducted in an orderly manner, and that only citizens who have registered to vote and have satisfied the minimal requirements of age, etc., are to be allowed into the voting booth. Given the possibility of fraud, it is therefore necessary to verify the identities of those who present themselves at the polling place. To do this, voters must be required to present a government-issued photo ID card, a driver's license being only one example of such. It is a reasonable requirement and any reasonable person should be able to see it as one.

Too many liberals, however, see these common-sense requirements as acts of voter suppression, as witness this astonishing outburst from Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan:

In November, five million eligible voters will find it harder to exercise their rights in America — 150 voter suppression laws have been introduced in 30 state legislatures across the country.

The most common tactics: requiring photo ID, restricting registration drives, limiting early voting and imposing onerous residency requirements. Who do these laws most directly affect? The poor, the elderly, minorities and the young. And how do those groups typically vote? Democratic.

Let's consider photo ID.  For Granholm, requiring such ID is a form of voter suppression.  How's that for hyperbole?  Does she call it bank withdrawal suppression when check cashers are required to produce ID?  The other day I withdrew a sum of money from a checking account in excess of what is obtainable from an ATM machine.  I was asked to show my driver's license.  Was that an infringement of my right to access my own funds?  Of course not.  The demand was eminently reasonable even though I am known at the bank in question.  Similarly with the photo ID requirement at the polling place.  Examples like this can be multiplied indefinitely.  See the above graphic.

Some liberals say that voter fraud is rare.  Maybe, maybe not.  In any case, irrelevant.  There is a principle at stake.  Besides, how many people lack ID?  Without ID one simply cannot function in society.  To exploit and adapt a slogan of the Harvard logician, Willard Quine, "No [social] entity without [social] identity."  You're a nonentity without  ID.  So when a liberal says that voter fraud is rare, reply, "So is lack of ID.  Since almost everyone has it, almost no one is excluded from voting by the ID requirement."

Since liberals don't have even one cogent argument against photo ID, we are justified in psychologizing their opposition to common-sense requirements.  Their opposition is rooted in a desire to win by any means, including fraud.  As lefties, they believe the end justifies the means.  They see themselves as the noble standard-bearers of equality against their disgusting, evil, SIXHRB opponents.  (SIXHRB: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted. HT: Dennis Prager.)

By the way, Governor Granholm is now on the faculty at University of California, Berkeley.  Surprise! 

Companion post:  I Was Forced to Show My Papers!

Does My Front Page Take Too Long to Load?

A reader complains that my front page takes too long to load, on one of his machines, as long as five minutes.  That must be one Jurassic machine running some superannuated browser.  I am wondering if others are experiencing similar difficulties.  A while back I made some additions, including a Facebook button, and I am wondering if these add-ons are slowing things down.  The Facebook button, though, is a nifty utility: when conditions are right, the thing 'goes viral'  and I get an avalanche of page views.

I am open for comments regarding technical aspects of this site.  If, on the other hand, you have a beef about the content of these pages, then I invite you to fill out the following:

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