No Resting Place in Any Earthly Desire

Paul Brunton, Notebooks, Vol. 15, Part 2, p. 58, entry #179:

In the end man has to arrive at this conclusion: that there is no resting place for him in any earthly desire, and that the satisfying and enduring peace of desirelessness is immensely superior to the always partial and transient fulfullment of such desire.

Some have the religious sensibility (inclination, predisposition, call it what you will) and some don't.  Here is one of several possible tests to see if you have it.  Get hold of Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you at all, if they do not move you, if they leave you cold, if they do not in any measure inspire you to reform your life, then it is a good bet that you don't have a religious bone in your body. It is not matter of intelligence but of sensibility.

The same goes for the Brunton passage.  If you can 'relate' to it, then you are probably religiously inclined; if not, you probably aren't.

Moral Responsibility in Dreams

I had a lucid dream the other night in which I lost my cool to an extent I would consider morally reprehensible in waking life.  But was there any moral failure in the dream?  And then there are the dreams in which I am having sexual intercourse with a woman not my wife.  I'm aware I am dreaming and I think to myself: "Well, this is just a dream; I may as well enjoy it."  So on occasion I grant nocturnal permission to a nocturnal emission. 

Was there real, not merely dreamt, moral failure in the dream?      (Augustine discusses this or a cognate question somewhere in his pelagic pennings, but I have forgotten where.)

Lucid dreaming while asleep is not the same as fantasizing while awake.  But they are similar.  Suppose I am entertaining (with hospitality) thoughts about having sex with my neighbor's wife.  That sort of thing, I have argued, is morally objectionable.  I mean the thinking, whether or not it results in any doing.  Jesus just says it (MT 5:28).  I argue it here and here.  (Of course if he is God, he doesn't need to argue it, and because I am not God, I do.)  Does the similarity support the claim that the nocturnal permission is as morally impermissible as the diurnal permission?

True Detachment

True detachment requires a certain indifference to, and thus a certain detachment from, one's success or failure at achieving detachment.  There is a  paradox here inasmuch as one cannot be detached entirely from the project of attaining detachment.  Otherwise there would be no difference between the seeker of wisdom and the worldling who is quite satisfied with his current moral condition and does not seek to better himself.   The trick is to pursue detachment detachedly.  I try to succeed, but if I fail it's no big deal and if I succeed it's also no big deal and certainly nothing to crow about or feed my ego on. One has to be aware of one's various moral failings and work to overcome them, all the while not worrying too much about the outcome.  One has to avoid the mistake of thinking that one can rely entirely upon oneself while also avoiding the equal but opposite mistake of just letting oneself go.

Photo ID: Voter Suppression or Liberal Projection?

If it is racist to demand photo ID at polling places, what does that say about how liberals view black people? They must view you black folk as utterly incompetent nonentities incapable of taking part in modern life, as pimps, whores, drug addicts, carjackers, hoodie-wearing thugs, smash & grab artists, troglodytes, total losers  . . . .  Time to rise up and move off the liberal plantation.

The Left-leaning Los Angeles Times ran a  piece the other day with the risible subheading: "The evidence is overwhelming that recent photo ID laws are politically motivated."  This is a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black.  It is also a good example of psychological projection.  After all, it is liberals and leftists whose motivations are purely political.  Their sole motivation for opposing photo ID laws is to win at all costs and by any means including voter fraud.  I say this because they do not have one single cogent argument against such laws. Liberals project  unsavory motivations into their opponents.  This defense mechanism keeps them from having to acknowledge that is they who have unsavory motivations.

Anyone with common sense ought to be able to appreciate that voting must be conducted in an orderly manner, a manner to inspire confidence in the citizenry, 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.  Is this why our liberal pals oppose it?  Liberals are not famous for their common sense.

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. 

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!

Metaphysical Grounding and the Euthyphro Dilemma

The locus classicus of the Euthyphro Dilemma (if you want to call it that) is Stephanus 9-10 in the early Platonic dialog, Euthyphro. This aporetic dialog is about the nature of piety, and Socrates, as usual, is in quest of a definition. Euthyphro proposes three definitions, with each of which Socrates has no trouble finding fault. According to the second, "piety is what all the gods love, and impiety is what all the gods hate." To this Socrates famously responds, "Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?" In clearer terms, do the gods love pious acts because they are pious, or are pious acts pious because the gods love them?
 
What interests me at the moment is the notion of metaphysical grounding which I want to defend against London Ed and other anti-metaphysical types.  (For it is his failure to understand metaphysical grounding that accounts for Ed's failure to appreciate the force of my circularity objection to the thin theory of existence.)  Thus I will not try to answer a question beyond my pay grade, namely:
 
Q. Does God command X because it is morally obligatory, or is X morally obligatory because God commands it?
 
My concern is with the preliminary question whether (Q) is so much as intelligible.  It is intelligible only if we can make sense of the 'because' in it.   Let' s start with something that we should all be able to agree on (if we assume the existence of God and the existence of objective moral obligations), namely:
 
1.  Necessarily, God commands X iff X is morally obligatory.

(1) expresses a broadly logical equivalence and equivalence is symmetrical: if p is equivalent to q, then q is equivalent to p.  But metaphysical grounding  is asymmetrical: if M metaphysically grounds N, then it is not the case that N metaphysically  grounds M.  For example, if fact F is the truth-maker of sentence s, then it is not the case that s is the truth-maker of F.  Truth-making is a type of metaphysical grounding: it is not a causal relation and its is not a logical relation (where a logical relation is one that relates propositions, examples of logical relations being consistency, inconsistency, entailment, and logical independence.)

(1) leaves wide open whether God is the source of the obligatoriness of moral obligations, or whether such obligations are obligatory independently of divine commands.  Thus the truth of (1) does not entail an answer to (Q).

The 'because' in (Q) cannot be taken in a causal sense if causation is understood as a relation that connects physical events, states, or changes with other physical events, states, or changes.  Nor can the 'because' be taken in a logical sense.  Logical relations connect propositions, and a divine command is not a proposition.  Nor is the obligatoriness of the content of a command a proposition.

So I say this:  if the content of a command is morally obligatory because God issued the command, then the issuing of the command is the metaphysical ground of the the moral obligatoriness of the content of the command.  If, on the other hand, the content of the command is morally obligatory independently of the issuing of the divine command, then the moral obligatoriness of the command is the metaphysical ground of the correctness of the divine command.

Either way, there is a relation of metaphysical grounding.

My argument in summary:

1. (Q) is an intelligible question.

2. (Q) is not a question about a causal relation.

3. (Q) is not a question about a logical relation.

4. There is no other ordinary (nonmetaphysical) candidate relation such as a temporal relation or an epistemic relation for (Q) to be about.

5. (Q) is an intelligible question if and only if 'because' in (Q) expresses metaphysical grounding.

Therefore

6. 'Because' in (Q) expresses metaphysical grounding.

Therefore

7. There is a relation of metaphysical grounding.

OK, London Ed, which premise will you reject and why? 

The Story of Oh: the Terrible Price of a Korean Defection

By Richard Fernandez (HT: Bill Keezer):

The BBC tells the melancholy story of Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean man who, convinced by his Marxist education that North Korea was a worker’s paradise, decided to defect there with his wife and two children in 1986. Oh, who had just completed his PhD in Germany in Marxist economics and who “had been active in left-wing groups” had no reason to doubt the beckoning invitation of North Korean officials who promised him free health care and a government job, like certain other people you may know.

He chose poorly.

Aged and broken, Oh now concludes that his “life was ruined by his decision to defect to North Korea. Seventy years old, he still does not know the fate of his wife and daughters – either dead or imprisoned in a labour camp.” His wife, who lacked the benefit of a European education, suspected something was amiss from the first. She was aghast when he told her of his plan to defect.

In Loco Parentis

When parents, teachers, clergy and others in the private sector abdicate authority, the authority of the state takes their place.  Time was when universities were in loco parentis.  No longer.  Now it is the nanny state that is in loco parentis.

Can a Thin Theorist Experience Wonder at Existence?

Existence elicited nausea from Sartre's Roquentin, but wonder from Bryan Magee:

 . . . no matter what it was that existed, it seemed to me extraordinary beyond all wonderment that it should. It was astounding that anything existed at all. Why wasn't there nothing? By all the normal rules of expectation — the least unlikely state of affairs, the most economical solution to all possible problems, the simplest explanation — nothing is what you would have expected there to be. But such was not the case, self-evidently. (Confessions of a Philosopher, p. 13)

We find something similar in Wittgenstein:  Wie erstaunlich, dass ueberhaupt etwas existiert.  "How astonishing that anything at all exists." (Geheime Tagebuecher 1914-1916, p. 82.)

What elicited Magee's and Wittgenstein's wonderment was the self-evident sheer existence of things in general: their being as opposed to their nonbeing. How strange that anything at all exists! Now what could a partisan of the thin conception of Being or existence make of  this wonderment at existence? Or at Sartre's/Roquentin's nausea at existence?  I will try to show that no thin theorist qua thin theorist can accommodate  wonderment/nausea at existence, and that this fact tells against the thin theory.

 

I have already exposited the thin theory ad nauseam, if you will forgive the pun.  So let's simply consider what the head honcho of the thin theorists, Peter van Inwagen, has to say about wonder at existence in "Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment" (in Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, eds. Chalmers et al., Oxford 2009, pp. 472-506) He begins by pointing out (478) that everything we say using 'exists' and its cognates can be said without using 'exists'and its cognates.  'Dragons do not exist' can be put by saying 'Nothing is a dragon,' or 'Everything is not a dragon.'  'God exists' can be put in terms of the equivalent 'It is not the case that everything is not (a) God.' 'I think, therefore I am' is equivalent to 'I think, therefore not everything is not I.'  Here are some further examples of my own.  'An honest politican does not exist' is equivalent to 'No politician is honest.'  'A  sober Irishman does  exist'  is equivalent to 'Some Irishman is sober.'  'An impolite New Yorker does not exist' is equivalent to 'Every New Yorker is polite.'

From examples like these it appears that every sentence containing 'exists' or 'is' (used existentially) or cognates, can be be replaced by an equivalent sentence in which 'exists' or  'is' (used existentially), or cognates does not appear.

Now let's see how this works when it comes to the sentences we use to express our wonder at our own existence or at the existence of things in general.

Suppose I am struck by a sudden sense of my contingency.  I exclaim, 'I might never have existed.'  That is equivalent to 'I might never have been identical to anything' or, as van Inwagen has it, 'it might have been the case that everything was always not I.' (479)

To wonder why there is anything at all is to wonder "why it is not the case that everything is not (identical with) anything." (479)

Now I could mock these amazing contortions whereby van Inwagen tries to hold onto his thin theory, but I won't.  Mockery and derision have a place in polemical writing, as when I am battling the lunkheads of the Left, but they have no place in philosophy proper.  But really, has anyone  ever expressed his wonder at the sheer existence of the world using the sentence I just quoted from PvI?  But of course I need a more substantial objection that this, and I have one.

When I wonder at the sheer existence of things I am not wondering at the fact that everything is identical to something, or  wondering  at its not being the case that everything is not identical with anything.

Why not? Well, the truth of 'Everything is identical to something' presupposes a domain of quantification the members of which are existing items.  Surely what I find wonder-inducing is not the fact that every item x in that presupposed domain is identical to some item y in that very same presupposed domain! That miserable triviality is not what I am wondering at.   I am wondering at the  existence of anything at all including the domain and everything in it.

What I am wondering at is that there is something and not nothing.  How can a Quinean such as PvI express that something exists?  Is 'Something exists' equivalent to 'For some x, x = x'?  No.  Existence is not self-identity.  For x to exist is not for x to be self-identical.  Otherwise, for x not to exist would be for x to be self-diverse — which is absurd.  My possible nonexistence is not my possible self-diversity.

Suppose there is only only one  thing, a, and that I am wondering at the existence of a.  Why is there a and not rather nothing?  Am I wondering at a's self-identity?  Obviously not.  I am wondering at a's sheer existence, that it is 'there,' that it is not nothing, that is it, that it has Being. 

And so I conclude that a thin theorist qua thin theorist cannot experience wonder at the sheer existence of things.  All he can experience wonder at — if you want to call it wonder — is that things presupposed as existing are self-identical — which is surely not all that marvellous.  Of course they are self-identical!  Necessarily if a thing exists, it is self-identical. But existence is not self-identity. If existence were self-identity, then nonexistence would be self-diversity and possble existence would be possible self-diversity. 

Some of us experience wonder at the sheer existence of things.  As old Ludwig puts it, Ich staune dass die Welt existiert!  When I experience this wonder I am not experiencing wonder at the trivial fact that each of the things presupposed as existing is identical to something or  other.  I am wondering at the existence of everything including the presupposed domain of existents.  This then is yet another argument against the thin theory.  The thin theory cannot accommodate wonder at existence, or Sartrean nausea at existence either. 

Existence, Circularity, and Metaphysical Grounding

London Ed must have known by some paranormal means  that I was talking about him over Sunday breakfast with Peter Lupu.  For his post upon return from sunny Greece is about the alleged circularity of the thin conception of existence.  Peter and I were discussing Peter van Inwagen's  "Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment" (in Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, eds. Chalmers et al., Oxford 2009, pp. 472-506.)  Van Inwagen is a Quinean about existence and perhaps the most prominent and formidable of the contemporary thin theorists.  Me, I'm a thick-head: existence is not (identical to) what so-called 'existential' quantification  expresses, and existence comes in modes.  The negations of these convictions I reject as two dogmas of analysis (from the title of a forthcoming paper).

I was lamenting to Peter that I couldn't get London Ed to see my point about circularity.  I now think I understand why Ed doesn't accept it.  It has to do with his not accepting a different notion, that of metaphysical grounding.

Let's start with a Quinean explication of a sentence such as 'Peter exists.'  It goes like this:

1. Peter exists =df for some x, x = Peter.

What does (1) accomplish?  Well, it shows how one can get rid of 'exists' as a first-level predicate, and with it a reason for thinking that existence is a property of individuals.  For it is clear (assuming that there are no nonexistent objects) that the sentences flanking '=df' are equivalent, indeed logically equivalent: there is no possible situation in which  one is true (false) and the other false (true).

Now in one sense of 'circular' I want to concede to Ed that (1) is not circular:  the definiens — the RHS of (1) — does not contain 'exists.'  In other words, (1) is not circular in the way the following are circular:

X is a human being =df x has human parents.
Knowledge is the state one is in when one knows something.
Knowledge is cognition.
A book of pornography is one that contains pornographic material.

The following, whether correct or incorrect,  are not circular definitions in the above sense:

Knowledge is justified true belief.
Justice is whatever is advantageous to the stronger.
A circle is a locus a points in the same plane equidistant to some common point.

(1) is clearly not circular in the manner of the above examples: the definiendum is not repeated in the definiens.  So in what sense is (1) circular? (1) is true iff the following is true

1a. Peter exists =df for some existing x, x = Peter.

(1a), however, is plainly circular.  After all, (1) is  not equivalent to

1b. Peter exists =df for some x, whether existent or nonexistent, x = Peter.

For if (1) were equivalent to (1b), then (1) would be false.

One response I anticipate Ed making is to say that there is no difference between 'x' and 'existing x': whatever is a value of the one is a value of the other, and vice versa.  If so, then perhaps (1a) collapses into (1) and there is no circularity in the sense in which the examples above are circular.

I would insist, however, that (1) is circular in a different and deeper  sense.  A presupposition of (1)'s truth is that the domain of quantification — the domain over which the variable 'x' ranges — is a domain of existents.  Therefore, if I want  to know what it is for x to exist, you have not given me any insight by telling me that for x to exist is for x to be identical to something that exists.  For of course x is identical to something that exists, namely x!

Suppose we distinguish between semantic and metaphysical circularity.  I am willing to concede that (1) is not semantically circular.  But I do maintain that (1) is metaphysically circular: its truth presupposes that the domain of quantification is a domain of existing items.  To put it another way, the truth of (1) has an ontological or metaphysical ground, namely the existence of the items over which we quantify.

Consider a domain consisting of just three items: Peter, Paul, and Mary. Peter exists iff one of these items is identical to Peter.  Paul exists iff one of these items is identical to Paul.  Mary exists iff one of these items is identical to Mary.  Perfectly true and perfectly trivial.  Although we learn something necessarily true about Peter, about Paul, and about Mary, we do not learn what it is for Peter or Paul or Mary to exist in the first place. 

I want to know that is is for Peter (who stands in here for any individual) to exist. You tell me that for Peter to exist is for Peter to be identical to something.  But in giving this true but trivial answer you have helped yourself to the existence of the thing to which Peter is identical.  You have evaded my question by assuming that we are just given existing individuals.

What form could an answer take?  One answer is that the existence of the items in the domain of quantification is a brute fact and thus inexplicable.  To exist is just to be there inexplicably.  That would at least be an honest answer as opposed to the silly triviality that to exist is to be identical to something.  A radically different answer is to say that for a concrete contingent ndividual to exist is for it to be a divine creation.  Both the brute fact answer and the theistic answer are consistent with Quine's triviality.

Getting back to London Ed, why doesn't he accept my circularity objection to the thin theory?  He doesn't accept it because he is operating with an exclusively semantic notion of circularity which remains at the level of sentences and does not descend to the level of the truth-makers (ontological grounds) of sentences.  (In earlier discussions it became clear that Ed has no clue as to what a truth-maker is supposed to be.) The thin theory, as expressed in (1), however, is not obviously semantically circular: 'exists' is not found on the RHS. All one finds there is a quantifier, a variable bound by the quantifier, the identity sign, and a name that functions in this context as an arbitrary constant.  My claim, however, is that (1) is metaphysically or ontologically circular.  This notion is one that Ed does not understand.

Metaphysical grounding, one of whose forms is truth-making, is for Ed a wholly unintelligible notion.  For Peter and me, however, it is an intelligible notion .  Here I think we can locate the ultimate root of our disagreement.

What say you, gentlemen?

Political Action and the Principle of Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The best is the enemy of the good."

Meditation on this truth may help conservatives contain their revulsion at their lousy choices. Obama, who has proven that he is a disaster for the country, got in in part because of conservatives who could not abide McCain.  And he may stay in office in part because of disgusted conservatives who fail to heed Voltaire's principle.

Politics is a practical business. It is always about the lesser of evils, except when it is about the least of evils. It is not about being ideologically pure. It is about accomplishing something in a concrete situation in which holding out for the best is tantamount to acquiescing in the bad. Political choices are forced options in roughly William James' sense: he who abstains chooses willy-nilly. Not choosing the better amounts to a choice of the worse.

Don't let the best or the better become the enemy of the good.  Try to achieve something achievable.  Don't pine after the unattainable.  Impossible dreams are for liberals, not reality-anchored conservatives.  It did not surprise me when I learned that Ted Kennedy's favorite song was The Impossible Dream.  Figures!

Related post: Can What is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for us? 

Journal Notes on Ed Abbey from May 1997

Ed_abbey_tvI purchased Edward Abbey’s posthumous collection of journal extracts entitled Confessions of a Barbarian (ed. Petersen, Little, Brown & Co., 1994) in April of 1997. Here are some journal jottings inspired by it.

From the notebooks of Paul Brunton to the journals of Ed Abbey – from one world to another. Each of us inhabits his own world. You're damned lucked if in a lifetime you meet two or three kindred souls who can enter, even if only a few steps, into one's own world.  The common world in which we meet with many is but the lowest common denominator of our private spheres of meaning.

Abbey bears the marks of an undisciplined man, undisciplined in mind and in body. A slovenly reasoner, a self-indulger.

Paul Brunton, Ed Abbey, Whittaker Chambers, Gustav Bergmann . . . mysticism, nature, politics, ontology . . . . The wild diversity of human interests and commitments.  It never ceases to fascinate and astonish me.

Ed Abbey: a romantic, the makings of a quester, but swamped by his sensuality. Held down by the weight of the flesh. The religious urge peeps out here and there in his journals, but his crudity is ever-ready to stifle any upward aspirations.

Abbey: the sex monkey rode him hard night and day. But did he want to throw him off? Hell no! Augustine wanted to be chaste, but not right away. Abbey did not want to be chaste. Can an incontinent man gain any true and balanced insight into the world and life? Lust, like pride, dims the eyes of the mind, and eventually blinds them.

The sex monkey in tandem with the booze monkey, a tag team tough to beat.

Which is more manly, to battle one’s sensuality like Augustine, or to wallow in it like Abbey? Is it cock and balls that make the man? Clothes? Social status? Money? Political power?  Big truck? (Abbey: "The bigger the truck the smaller the penis.") Or is it that weak little Funklein, the fragile germ of divine lght that we carry within?

The crudity of Abbey, the elevation of Thoreau.

Abbey: a tremendous sensitivity to the beauties of nature and music, but larded over with an abysmal
crudity. Half-educated, self-indulgent, willful. But he knows it, and a tiny part of him wants to do something about it, but he can’t. His base soul is too strong for his noble soul. Goethe’s Faust complained, “Zwei Seelen, ach, wohnen in meiner Brust, und der einer will sich von den anderen trennen!” Abbey could have made the same complaint about two incompatible souls in one breast.

Abbey: proud of his sensuality, his big dick, his five children whom he thinks are just darlings while meanwhile holding that others should not be allowed to procreate. A misanthrope – but not when it comes to himself, his family, and his friends. A tribalist of sorts.

The battle between the noble and the base. In Ed Abbey, the base usually wins.

Ed Abbey made a false god of nature. There is no god but Nature, and Abbey is her prophet.

As for his writing, I'll take it over the social phenomenology of suburban hank-panky served up by East Coast  establishmentarians such as John Cheever and John Updike.