David Brightly’s Weblog and a Punctilio Anent Predication and Inclusion

The unduly modest David Brightly has begun a weblog entitled tillyandlola, "scribblings of no consequence."   In a recent post he criticizes my analysis of the invalidity of the argument: Man is a species; Socrates is a man; ergo, Socrates is a species.  I claimed that the argument equivocates on 'is.'  In the major premise, 'is' expresses a relation of conceptual inclusion: the concept man includes the subconcept species.  In the minor premise, however, the 'is' is the 'is' of predication: Socrates falls under man, he doesn't fall within it.

I am afraid that my analysis is faulty, however, and for the reasons that David gives.  There is of course a difference between the 'is' of inclusion and the 'is' of predication.  'Man is an animal' expresses the inclusion of the concept animal within the concept man.  'Socrates is a man,' however, does something different: it expresses the  fact that Socrates falls under the concept man. 

But as David notes, it is not clear that species is included within the concept man.  If we climb the tree of Porphyry we will ascend from man to mammal to animal; but nowhere in our ascent will we hit upon species. 

‘Institutionalized Racism’

Liberals love the phrase, 'institutionalized racism.'  A  racist society it is in which so many blacks achieve high political office despite the fact that blacks are a small minority of the population.  Indeed, we have a black president.  What better proof that racism is inscribed into our institutional structure?  But then again, Obama is only half black.  If George Zimmerman of Trayvon Martin fame is a 'white Hispanic' as maintained in the Solomonic pages of the New York Times, then, by parity of reasoning, Barack Obama is a 'white black.'  Is that perhaps the proof of institutional racism?  You see, if the USA were not institutionally racist, then we would have a black-black president by now.

Of course I am being sarcastic.  In dealing with notions as preternaturally idiotic as those of liberals, mockery, derision, sarcasm and the like are more effective than patient argument.  Reason and argument are effective only with those who inhabit the plane of reason. There is no point in talking sense to the denizens of the planet Unsinn.   Or if you are not in the mood to mock and deride them, if you are feeling charitable, then offer your help and therapy.  Those who are beneath reason do not need refutation; they need therapy.  They need care.  And we conservatives do care.  We want you liberals to be happy and successful and less stupid.  Of course we are honest enough to admit that our motive is partially selfish: the less stupid and unsuccessful and unhappy you are, the better it will be for us.

Actually, what we need is a 'proctology' of the liberal.  We need to understand how so many heads can inhabit that region where the sun doesn't shine.  But understanding is not enough: we need practical methods of extraction.  My fear, however, is that even an army of proctologists, each member of which enjoys the life span of a Methuselah, would not be able to bring the shrunken pate of even one liberal into the light of day.

And that's a pity. (I have successfully resisted the temptation to engage in scatological alliteration.)

For an example of the sort of idiocy I am excoriating, see here; for an antidote, go here.

Arguments and Proofs in Philosophy

London Ed writes:

Philosophers always refer to their arguments as 'arguments' and never as 'proofs'. This is because there is nothing in the entire, nearly three thousand year history of philosophy that would count as a proof of anything. Nothing.

This obiter dictum illustrates how, by exaggerating and saying something that is strictly false, one can still manage to convey a truth.  The truth is that there is very little in the history of philosophy that could count as a proof of anything.  But of course some philosophers do refer to their arguments as proofs.  Think of those Thomists who speak of proofs of the existence of God.  And though no Thomist accepts the ontological 'proof,' there are philosophers who refer to the ontological argument as a proof.  The Germans also regularly speak of der ontologische Gottesbeweis rather than of das ontologische Argument.  For example, Frege in a famous passage from the Philosophy of Arithmetic writes,  Weil Existenz Eigenschaft des Begriffes ist, erreicht der ontologische Beweis von der Existenz Gottes sein Ziel nicht. (sec. 53)

These quibbles aside, an argument is not the same as a proof.  'Prove' is a verb of success.  The same goes for 'disprove' and 'refute.'  But 'argue' is not.  I may argue that p without establishing that p.  But if I prove that p, then I establish that p.  Indeed, I establish it as true. 

Why has almost nothing ever been proven in the history of philosophy? 

It is because for an argument to count as a proof in philosophy — I leave aside mathematics which may not be so exacting — certain exceedingly demanding conditions must be met.  First, a proof must be deductive: no inductive argument proves its conclusion.  Second, a proof must be valid: it must be a deductive argument such that its corresponding conditional is a narrowly-logical truth, where an argument's corresponding conditional is a conditional proposition the protasis of which is the conjunction of the argument's premises, and the apodosis of which is the argument's conclusion.

Third, although a valid argument needn't have true premises, a proof must have all true premises.  In other words, a proof must be a sound argument.  Fourth, a proof cannot commit any infomal fallacy such as petitio principii.  An argument from p to p is deductive, valid, and sound.  But it is obviously no proof of anything.

Fifth, a proof must have premises that are not only true, but known to be true by the producers and the consumers of the argument.  This is because a proof is not an argument considered in abstracto but a method for generating knoweldge for some cognizer.  For example, if I do not know that I am thinking,then I cannot use that premise in a proof that I exist. 

Sixth,  a proof in philosophy must have premises all of which are known to be true in a sense of 'know' that entails absolute impossibilty  of mistake.  Why set the bar so high?  Well, if you say that you have proven the nonexistence of God, say, or that the self is but a bundle of perceptions, or that freedom of the will is an illuison, or whatever, and one of your premises is such that I can easily conceive its being false, then you haven't proven anything. You haven't rationally compelled me to accept your conclusion. You may have given a 'good' argument in the sense of a 'reasonable' argument where that is one which satisfies my first four conditions; but you haven't given me a compelling argument, an argument which is such that, were I to reject it I would brand myself as irrational.  (Of course the only compulsion here at issue is rational compulsion, not ad baculum (ab baculum?) compulsion.)

Given my exposition of the notion of proof in philosophy, I think it is clear that very little has ever been proven in philosophy. I am pretty sure that London Ed, as cantankerous and contrary as he is known to be, will agree.  But he goes further: he says that nothing has ever been proven in philosophy.

But hasn't the sophomoric relativist been refuted?  He maintains that it is absolutely true that every truth is relative.  Clearly, the sophomoric relativist contradicts himself and refutes himself.  One might object to this example by claiming that no philosopher has ever been a sophomoric relativist.  But even if that is so, it is a possible philosophical position and one that is provably mistaken. Or so say I.

Or consider a sophist like Daniel Dennet who maintains (in effect) that consciousness is an illusion.  That is easily refuted and I have done the job more than once in these pages.  But it is such a stupid thesis that it is barely worth refuting.  Its negation — that consciousness is not an illusion — is hardly a substantive thesis.  A substantive thesis would be: Consciousness is not dependent for its existence on any material things or processes.

There is also the stupidity of that fellow Krauss who thinks that nothing is something.  Refuting this nonsense hardly earns one a place in the pantheon of philosophers.

Nevertheless, I am in basic agreement with London Ed:  Nothing of any real substance has ever been proven in philosophy.  No one has ever proven that God exists, that God does not exist, that existence is a second-level property, that there is a self, that there is no self, that the will is free, that the will is not free, and so on.

Or perhaps you think you have a proof of some substantive thesis?  Then I'd like to hear it.  But it must be a proof in my exacting sense. 

The Illiberalism of Contemporary Liberals

When I attack liberals it is always contemporary liberals that I have in my sights.  I myself am in several ways a classical liberal.  What I object to in contemporary liberals, or 'progressives' as they like to call themselves, is their extremism and their illiberalism.  Peter Berkowitz has an excellent article on progressive illiberalism.

There is more true liberalism in today's conservatives than in today's 'liberals.' 

Can Things Be Counted?

From the mail:

I saw your blog post the other day titled Saying and Showing  where you talked about Wittgenstein's exchange with Russell on 'things', along with his Kantian perspective. Toward the end you say this: "What goes for 'world' also goes for 'thing.'  You can't count things. How many things on my desk?  The question has no clear sense.  It is not like asking how many pens are on my desk.  So Wittgenstein is on to something.  His nonsense is deep and important."

In fact, E. J. Lowe says something similar toward the beginning of his book The Possibility of Metaphysics. However, I have never entirely understood the motivation behind this claim. It seems to me that, as a matter of fact, a man *can* count the number of things on his desk. There will certainly be very *many* things (the composite objects, their parts down to the atoms, and so forth), but what stops them from being *in principle* counted?  [. . .]

Let's begin by clearing up an ambiguity.  I can count the cats in my house; cats are things (in the very broad sense in which the term means the same as: object, entity, existent, being, item); and so one might think that one can count things.  I'll grant that.  But what we cannot do — and this was my claim –is count things as things.  I can sensibly ask how many cats, cat whiskers, unicorns, pachyderms, and bottles of tequila are presently in my house, and I can sensibly give the following answers: 2, <40, 0, 0, 1.  What I cannot do is sensibly ask how many things or existents are in my house.

Why is this? Well, when I count Fs, what I am doing is counting instances of the concept F.  To count I need a concept, a classificatory device.   To count the spatulas in a drawer I have to have the concept spatula.  I have to know what 'counts' as a spatula.  I have to know WHAT a spatula is to know whether there are any and how many there are.  I have to be able to identify a particular item as a spatula (as opposed to, say, a ladle) and I have to be able to re-identify it — so that I don't count it twice.  To count three spatulas and two ladles I need the concepts spatula and ladle.  That makes five utensils.  How many electrical appliances? Zero.  In each of these cases, what we are counting are the instances of a concept.   

How many utensils in the drawer? Five.  How many entities?  This question has no clear sense.  The question presupposes that some definite answer is possible in terms of a finite or even a transfinite cardinal. But any answer given, whether 5 or 50 or aleph-nought will be arbitrary.  Do we count the handle of the ladle as distinct from the rest of it?  Is one ladle two entities?  But of course, parts themselves have parts, and they have parts, etc.  Suppose the ladle is ultimately composed of simple (indivisible) bits of matter.  Suppose there are n such bits.  In the region of space occupied by the ladle are there n entities or n + 1 entities?  Is the whole ladle countably distinct from its parts?  Or is the whole ladle just those parts?  (Compare van Inwagen's denial of artifacts.)  And what about the space occupied by the ladle?  It is not nothing! So do we count it too when we count the entities in the drawer?  And the time during which it exists?

And then there are properties and relations and relational properties and perhaps also property-instances.  Do I count the properties of the spatula and the relations in which it stands to the other things in the drawer when I (try to) count the entities in the drawer? 

Suppose in the drawer there is a triangular piece of mental.  Now everything triangular is trilateral, and vice versa.  And this is true as a matter of broadly-logical necessity.  So, when I count (or try to count) the entities in the drawer, do I count triangularity and trilaterality as two properties or as one property?

From considerations like these one can see that the question How many entities? has no clear sense.  We can give a sense to it, but that would involve the arbitrary imputation of conceptual content into 'entity.'  Suppose I define:

X is an entity df= x is either a feral cat or a piece of cooked seaweed.

That 'definition' would allow me to count the entities in my house.  And the answer is . . . (wait for it): zero. 

To count is to count the instances of a concept.  Existence is not a concept that has instances.  Therefore, one cannot count existents as existents.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Death and Resurrection

Johnny Cash, Ain't No Grave
Johnny Cash, Redemption
Mississippi John Hurt, You've Got to Walk that Lonesome Valley
B. B. King, See That My Grave is Kept Clean
Blind Boy Grunt (Bob Bylan), Gospel Plow
Bob Dylan, Fixin' to Die
Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus
Johnny Cash, Hurt
Johnny Cash, Final Interview.  He speaks of his faith starting at 5:15.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 45e: "Go on, believe! It does no harm."

Good Friday Meditation: Wittgenstein on Christianity

From Culture and Value, p. 32e, tr. Peter Winch:

Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a (historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this narrative with the belief that is appropriate to a historical narrative, rather: believe, through thick and thin, which you can do only as the result of a life. Here you have a narrative!–don’t treat it as you would another historical narrative! Make a quite different place for it in your life.–  There is nothing paradoxical about that!

The "nothing paradoxical" may be an allusion to Kierkegaard who is discussed in nearby 1937 entries.  For Kierkegaard, it is is absurd that God should become man and die the death of a criminal, but this absurdity or paradox is precisely what  the Christian believer must embrace.  Wittgenstein appears to be rejecting this view, but also the view that S. K. also rejects, namely, that Christianity is grounded in verifiable historical facts such as that Jesus Christ was crucified by the Romans, died, was buried, and on the third day rose from the dead. 

I interpret Wittgenstein to be saying that Christianity is neither an absurd belief nor an historically grounded one.  It is a groundless belief, but not groundless in the sense that it needs, but lacks, a ground, but in the sense that it is a framework belief that cannot, because it is a framework belief, have a ground and so cannot need one either.  Christianity is a form of life, a language-game, self-contained, incommensurable with other language-games, under no threat from them, and to that extent insulated from logical, historical, and scientific objections, as well as from objections emanating from competing religious language-games.

But is it true?

When Jesus told Pontius Pilate that he had come into the world to bear witness to the truth, Pilate dismissed his claim with the cynical, "What is truth?"  Presumably, the Wittgensteinian fideist cannot likewise dismiss the question of the truth of Christianity.  If it is true, it is objectively true; it corresponds to the way things are; it is not merely a set of beliefs  that a certain group of people internalize and live by, but has an objective reference beyond itself. 

Here is where  the Wittgensteinian approach stops making sense for me.  No doubt a religion practiced is a form of life; but is it a reality-based form of life?  And no doubt religions can be usefully viewed as language games.  But Schachspiel is also a Sprachspiel.  What then is the difference between Christianity and chess?  Chess does not, and does not purport to, refer to anything beyond itself.  Christianity does so purport.

Here is an extended post on Wittgensteinian fideism.

Social Justice or Subsidiarity?

Just over the transom from James Anderson:

I appreciated your recent posts on "social justice." I agree that the phrase is a mendacious rhetorical device and that conservatives should refuse to use it. But what should we use instead? In one post you asked what's wrong with "plain old 'justice.'"  One problem is that the phrase "social justice" has now become so depressingly commonplace that many folk, unaware of this conceptual revisionism, understand "justice" as shorthand for "social justice". So conservatives need their own distinctive qualifier. Fight fire with fire. What would be your suggestion?

One possibility is "natural justice". Not only does it tip its hat toward the venerable natural law tradition, it also communicates the idea that justice is inextricably tied to the intrinsic nature of things (specifically, the nature of human beings) as opposed to being a mere social construction (as, perhaps, "social justice" suggests). And like "social justice" it has the virtue of being unobjectionable on the face of it. To adapt the opening sentence of one of your posts: "How could any decent person be opposed to natural justice?" What would be the alternative? Unnatural justice?

I'd love to read your own thoughts on this, if you're inclined to share them.

I wish I had a worked-out theory and I wish I had a good answer for Professor Anderson.  But I won't let the absence of both stop me from making a few remarks. Nescio, ergo blogo.

As a sort of joke I might suggest that 'subsidiarity' be used by conservatives instead of 'social justice.'  The trouble with that word, of course, is that it conveys no definite idea to the average person whereas 'social justice' seems to convey a definite idea, one that the average person is inclined to embrace.  It sounds so good!  Who could be opposed to social justice and a just society?   But once one understands what 'social justice' means in the mouth of a leftist, then one has excellent reason to oppose it.  The Left has hijacked the phrase and now they own it; it would be quixotic for a conservative to try to infuse it with a reasonable meaning and win it back.  Let the Left have it!

Anderson and I therefore  agree that we conservatives should never use 'social justice,' or 'economic justice' for that matter.  Beyond that, we might take to using 'socialist justice' as an informative and accurate  way of referring to what leftists call social justice.  But what word or phrase should we use?   How about 'local justice'?  That's not very good, but at least it points in the the subsidiarist direction. Plain old 'justice' is better.  Anderson's 'natural justice' is serviceable.  It has the virtue of combating the notion that justice is a social construct.  But it doesn't combat the top-down control model of socialists and collectivists.  This brings me to subsidiarity.

David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity:

One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity which can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom. It conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State.

The principle of subsidiarity strikes a reasonable balance between statism and collectivism as represented by the Obama administration and the libertarianism of those who would take privatization to an extreme.  By the way, one of the many mistakes Rick Santorum made in his campaign was to attack all government-sponsored education.  He was right to question whether the Federal government has any role to play in education, but to question the role of state and local government in education was a foolish extremism that befits a libertarian, not a conservative.

I take it that subsidiarity is easily detachable from other Catholic doctrines.  Professor Anderson needn't fear that he will be driven in the direction of papal infallibility or Transubstantiation.  In any case, Catholics don't own subsidiarity.  In the ComBox to this excellent post, we find:

"SPHERE SOVEREIGNTY: A principle of Reformed Christian social ethics, usually associated with the thought of Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper*, that identifies a number of God- ordained creational spheres, which include the family, the state, culture, and the church. These spheres each have their own organizing and ruling ordinances, and each maintains a measure of authority relative to the others. Just social and political structures, therefore, should be ordered so that the authority of each sphere is preserved (see Limited Government and Subsidiarity, The Principle of)."

Subsidiarity also fits well wth federalism, a return to which is a prime desideratum and one more reason not to vote for Obama come November.  By the way, 'federalism' is another one of those words that does not wear its meaning on its sleeve, and is likely to mislead.  Federalism is not the view that all powers should be vested in the Federal or central government; it is the principle enshrined in the 10th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Permit me to coin 'malaptronym.'  If an aptronym is a name that suits its bearer, then 'federalism' is a malaptronym, a name that not only does not suit its bearer, but misleads as to the nature of said bearer.   And the same, of course, is true in spades of 'social justice.'

I say we consign it to the dreaded index verborum prohibitorum!

Obama on Constitutional Law: Did He Lie or Is He Just Ignorant?

Asked recently whether SCOTUS would uphold the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) or strike it down as unconstitutional, President Obama replied, "I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress."  Strong majority?   Unprecedented?  As a former law professor, Obama must know that what he said was false.  Now a false statement is not the same as a lie.  For a false statement to be a lie it must be made with the intention to deceive.  But since the statement in question is one that one would reasonably expect a former law professor to know is false, then it is reasonable to suspect a lie on Obama's part.  Thomas Sowell concludes that "he is simply lying."

James Taranto rather more charitably maintains that "The president is stunningly ignorant about constitutional law."

Peter Wehner in a seeming synthesis of Sowell and Taranto opines that Obama "jumped the shark."

Daniel Henninger piles on.

According to John Fund, "There appear to be few limits on how far President Obama will distort the facts."

Obama is a disaster for the country.  He is ignorant/dishonest not only with respect to constitutional law, but also about the debt crisis.