Le Mieux est L’Ennemi du Bien

Attributed to Voltaire. "The better is the enemy of the good."  The thought is perhaps better captured by "The best is the enemy of the good."  In an imperfect world it is folly to predicate action upon perfection.  Will you hold out for the perfect spouse?  Then you will remain alone.  And if you yourself are less than perfect, how can you demand perfection in others? 

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.

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.

Each of  the Republican contenders has drawbacks.  But any of them would be better than Obama.  Suppose Romney is nominated.  He's a wishy-washy, flip-flopping pretty boy.  But he's electable and better than Obama. 

Neologisms, Paleologisms, and Grelling’s Paradox

'Neologism' is not a new word, but an old word. Hence, 'neologism' is not a neologism. 'Paleologism' is not a word at all; or at least it is not listed in the Oxford English Dictionary. But it ought to be a word, so I hereby introduce it. Who is going to stop me? Having read it and understood it, you have willy-nilly validated its introduction and are complicit with me.

Now that we have 'paleologism' on the table, and an unvast conspiracy going, we are in a position to see that 'neologism' is a paleologism, while 'paleologism' is a neologism. Since the neologism/paleologism classification is both exclusive (every word is either one or the other )and exhaustive (no word is neither), it follows that 'neologism' is not a neologism, and 'paleologism' is not a paleologism.

Such words are called heterological: they are not instances of the properties they express. 'Useless' and 'monosyllabic' are other examples of  heterological expressions in that 'useless' is not useless and 'monosyllabic' is not monosyllabic. A term that is not heterological is called autological. Examples include 'short' and 'polysyllabic.'  'Short' is short and 'polysyllabic' is polysyllabic. Autological terms are instances of the properties they express.

Now ask yourself this question: Is 'heterological' heterological? Given that the heterological/autological classification is exhaustive, 'heterological' must be either heterological or else autological. Now if the former, then 'heterological' is not an instance of the property it expresses, namely, the property of not being an instance of the property it expresses. But this implies that 'heterological' is autological. On the other hand, if 'heterological' is autological, then it is an instance of the property it expresses, namely the property of not being an instance of the property it expresses. But this implies that 'heterological' is heterological.

Therefore, 'heterological' is heterological if and only if it is not. This contradiction is known in the trade as Grelling's Paradox. It is named after Kurt Grelling, who presented it in 1908.

A New Year’s Resolution

I make it every year and I break it every year: Handle each piece of paper only once!

Let's say you have just come in with the mail. Without pausing to pour coffee or stroke the cat, fire up the shredder and open the trash barrel. Shred the credit card applications, pay the bills, file the financial statements. Deal with each piece of paper on the spot. When in doubt, discard.

For the New Year

One of the elements in my personal liturgy is a reading of the following passage every January 1st. I must have begun the practice in the mid-70s. 

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book Four, #276, tr. Kaufmann:

For the new year. — I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought: hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year — what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn to see more and more as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all and all and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

Nietzsche found it very difficult to let looking away be his only negation. And so shall I.

Gunfire Tonight!

One of the exciting things about living out here in rural Arizona is that all too many local hombres love to greet the the New Year with a hail of gunfire aimed heavenward. It adds a nice Middle Eastern touch to the Copper State.
 
Part of the problem is the sad state of science education in these United States. There are people who do not understand that a falling projectile poses a threat. (I have actually met such people.) They   understand that they cannot catch with their bare hands a round fired at them; but they don't understand that that same round, falling on a human head from a sufficient height, will kill the head's unlucky possessor.

Let's see if we can understand the physics. If I jump from a chair to the floor, no problem. Same if I jump from a table to the floor. But I shrink back from neighbor Bob's suggestion that I jump from my roof to the ground. "Just kick away the ladder, like Wittgenstein, and jump  down." Nosiree Bob! But why should it be any different? The mass of my body remains invariant across the three scenarios. And the gravitational field remains the same. But the longer I remain falling in that field, the faster I move.

A body falling in the earth's gravitational field falls at the rate of 32 feet per second PER SECOND. Thus the body ACCELERATES.*  Now the momentum of a moving object –  which is roughly a measure of the amount of effort it would take to stop it from moving — is the product of its velocity and its mass. So a small mass like a bullet, left falling for a long enough time, will attain a high velocity and thus a high momentum, and so do a lot of damage to anything it comes in contact with, a human skull for example.

____________________

*Velocity is a vector, hence has a scalar and a directional component.  So it is possible that an object accelerate without 'speeding up.'  Consider a satellite orbiting the earth.  The scalar component of the velocity stays constant (more or less) but the object accelerates.  This sort of falling toward the earth  is not relevant to the case I am considering.

Searle, Subjectivity, and Objectivity

John Searle is a marvellous critic of  theories in the philosophy of mind, perhaps the best.  He makes all sorts of excellent points in his muscular and surly way.  But his positive doctrine eludes me, assuming it is supposed to be a coherent doctrine.  The problem may reside with me, of course.  But I am not ready to give up.

So I take yet another stab at making sense of Searle. (The exegetical equivalent of squaring the circle?) His aim is to find a via media between the Scylla of dualism and the Charybdis of materialism.   Dualism, whether a dualism of (kinds of) substances or a dualism of (kinds of) properties, makes of mind something mysterious and supernatural and therefore intolerable to naturalists. But materialism, as Searle understands it, issues in the conclusion that "there really isn't such a thing as as consciousness with a first-person, subjective ontology." (Mind, Language, and Society, Basic Books, 1998, p. 45)

What Searle wants to say is that there can be a natural science of consciousness, but one that does not end up by denying its existence, a natural science that is adequate to consciousness in its very   subjectivity. But (1) science is objective: it aims at an underlying reality 'beneath' subjective appearances. (2) Consciousness, however, is essentially subjective. It seems, therefore, that (3) there can be no natural science of consciousness.

To defeat this argument, Searle makes a distinction between epistemic subjectivity and ontological subjectivity, and a distinction between epistemic objectivity and ontological objectivity. Compare a pain and  a mountain. A pain has a subjective mode of existence whereas a mountain has an objective mode of existence. The difference is that the appearing of the pain is identical to the being of the pain unlike the mountain whose appearing and being are distinct. A pain cannot exist unless it is experienced, whereas a mountain can exist without being experienced. So far, so good.  But then Searle maintains that what is ontologically subjective can be studied by a science that is epistemically objective. If this is right, then the argument above falls victim to a failure to distinguish the two senses of 'subjectivity' and the two senses of 'objectivity.'   Here is the argument again:

1. Science is objective:  it aims at an underlying reality 'beneath' subjective appearances.
2. Consciousness is essentially subjective.
Therefore
3. There can be no natural science of consciousness.

Searle's contention is that there is nothing to prevent a science that is epistemically objective from studying consciousness which is ontologically subjective. Here is the crucial passage (ML&S, pp. 44-45):

     The pain in my toe is ontologically subjective, but the statement
     "JRS now has a pain in his toe" is not epistemically subjective. It
     is a simple matter of (epistemically) objective fact, not a matter
     of (epistemically) subjective opinion. So the fact that
     consciousness has a subjective mode of existence does not prevent
     us from having an objective science of consciousness.

Searle's argument goes like this:

   4. The pain in JRS's toe is ontologically subjective.
   5. That JRS has a pain in his toe is a matter of epistemically
   objective fact.
   Therefore
   6. That consciousness has a subjective mode of existence is consistent
   with there being an epistemically objective science of it.

Although both premises are true, the conclusion does not follow from them. Searle is confusing the objective reality of his pain with its objective accessibility to science. This confusion is aided and
abetted by the ambiguity of 'object' and 'objective.' From the fact that the pain exists in itself and is in that sense objective, it does not follow that the pain is exhaustively knowable by science, that it
is an object of scientific knowledge.

Consider a different example. Mary says, "The room is cold!" Bill says, "The room is not cold." Clearly, there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not the room is cold or the opposite. It is a matter of perception: Mary feels cold, while hot-blooded Bill does not. The objective fact is that the room temperature is 68 degrees Fahrenheit, a fact  perceived differently by Bill and Mary.

Note that it is also an objective fact that Mary feels cold and that Bill does not. But how is it supposed to follow that Bill's sensation, or Mary's, are exhaustively understandable in natural-scientific terms? The fact that the sensations themselves exist in reality and not relative to perceivers does not show that they are wholly accessible to science.  It is precisely their "first-person ontology"  that keeps them from being wholly accessible to science. 

The mistake Searle is making is to think that what is objectively real (in the sense of that which exists in itself and not relative to perceivers) is exhausted by what is natural and therefore accessible to natural science. He mistakenly identifies reality with nature. It is undoubtedly true that sensations (and mental data generally) exist in observer-independent fashion: they are not mere appearances but   appearances in which appearance and reality coincide. Thus Searle is right to say that they are ontologically subjective. Searle is also right to say that this ontological subjectivity is consistent with mental data's existing in themselves and not merely for an observer.

But as far as I can see it is a howling non sequitur to conclude that mental data are objects of scientific knowledge. To be objectively real (in the sense of existing an sich and not merely for observers) is not the same as being an object of scientific knowledge. Beware the ambiguity of 'object'!  It appears that Searle has fallen victim to it.

But why does Searle mistakenly identify reality with the objects of scientific knowledge — especially given his clear insight into the ontological subjectivity of mental data? Because he is in the grip of
the IDEOLOGY of scientific naturalism. This prevents him from properly exploiting his insight. But to make this allegation stick will require further citations and considerations.

My Searle posts are in the aptly-named  Searle category.

Articles by Alvin Plantinga

Here are twenty articles by Alvin Plantinga, a philosopher who needs no introduction to the readers of this weblog. (HT: Mark Anderson) 

A Response To Pope John Paul II's Fides Et Ratio
Advice To Christian Philosophers
An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism
Augustinian Christian Philosophy
Christian Philosophy at the End of the 20th Century
Christian Scholarship: Nature
Christian Scholarship: Need
Darwin, Mind and Meaning
Evolution, Neutrality, and Antecedent Probability
Intellectual Sophistication and Basic Belief in God
Methodological Naturalism: Part 1
Methodological Naturalism: Part 2
Naturalism Defeated
On Christian Scholarship
On Rejecting the Theory of Common Ancestry
Theism, Atheism, and Rationality
Truth, Omniscience, and Cantorian Arguments
Two Dozen or so Theistic Arguments
Two (Or More) Kinds of Scripture Scholarship
When Faith and Reason Clash: Evolution and the Bible

More on Naturalism and Nihilism

A reader comments:

You say: "I would argue that a naturalist/physicalist/materialist ought to be a moral nihilist, and that when these types fight shy of moral nihilism that merely shows an inability or unwillingness on their part to appreciate the logical consequences of their own doctrine, or else some sort of psychological compartmentalization. "
 
I agree with you that the naturalist/materialist/physicalist ought – intellectually ought – to be a moral nihilist. Of course, that's not a very popular position. So aren't we left with the case where the naturalist/materialist/physicalist 'ought' to pretend to be otherwise? In other words, when we see someone like Hitchens talking about moral oughts, is this necessarily a case of either compartmentalization or contradiction? What about the other option: they're lying, because what's important is advancing an agenda. After all, moral nihilism doesn't compel one to be up front about one's moral nihilism.
The reader agrees that naturalism logically requires moral nihilism.  That it does is not obvious and requires argument. A naturalist might try to argue that objective values either supervene upon, or emerge from, pure natural facts.  A huge topic!  For one thing, it depends on exactly what sort of naturalism is under discussion.  A nonreductive naturalist might escape the entailment, assuming he can make sense of nonreductivism, and good luck with that.   But surely an eliminativist naturalist would not.  So it seems obvious that eliminativist naturalism does entail moral nihilism.  We can raise our question with respect to a naturalist of this stripe.
 
So, assuming that some versions of naturalism do entail moral nihilism, what ought we say about the naturalist proponent of one of these versions who refuses to accept the consequence?
 
I suggested that there are two options:  either he is simply being logically inconsistent, something I wouldn't put past a 'public intellectual,'  or he is compartmentalizing.  (I saw a show last night on TV about one 'Mad Dog' Sullivan, mafia hit man.  He was a good husband and father when he wasn't gunning people down in cold blood.  He'd walk into a bar, shoot his victim through the head, and calmly walk out.  He has about 20-30 murders to his 'credit.'  He pulled off the compartmentalization by telling himself that his crimes were just 'business.'  The most depressing bit came at the end when his wife and two sons insisted that Sullivan was "a good man.")
 
My reader suggests a third option: (some) naturalists are just lying. They see what their naturalism entails, and they are not compartmentalizing.  They are lying to forward their agenda.  After all, a fully self-aware moral nihilist would not consider truth to be a an objective value, and so could not have any moral scruples about lying.
 
I think my reader made a good point.  If you are an eliminativist naturalist, and do not accept  moral nihilism as a logical consequence of your naturalism, then you are either being logically inconsistent, or you are a self-deceived compartmentalizer, or you are a lousy no good liar!
 
You can guess what my strategy will be with respect to the other naturalisms.  I will test whether or not they collapse into eliminativism in the end. 

Diversity, Inc.

Another excellent column by Victor Davis Hanson.  Excerpt:

A university, for example, might highlight its “rich diversity” by pointing to gay students, female students, Punjabi students, Arab students, Korean students, and disabled students — even should they all come from quite affluent families and backgrounds. Key here was that “diversity” was admittedly cosmetic, or at least mostly to be distinguishable by the eye — skin color, gender, etc. — rather than internal and predicated on differences in political ideology or values. A Brown or an Amherst worried not at all that its classes included very few Mormons, libertarians, or ROTC candidates; instead, if the students looked diverse, but held identical political and social views, then in fact they were diverse.

In the end the only kind of diversity liberals care about is politically correct diversity.  They are not really interested in diversity or in dissent or in civility.  They hijack these terms and pilot them towards Left-coast destinations.  They think they own these values.  Same with accusations of racism.  They think they have proprietary rights in this enterprise.  So there is white racism but no black racism. It's nonsense, but that's a liberal for you.

Related post: Diversity and the Quota Mentality

Cigarettes, Rationality, and Hitchens

Christopher-hitchens-cancerLet's talk about cigarettes. Suppose you smoke one pack per day. Is that irrational? I hope all will agree that no one who is concerned to be optimally healthy as long as possible should smoke 20 cigarettes a day, let alone 80 like Rod Serling who died at age 50 on the operating table. But long-term health is only one value among many. Would Serling have been as productive without the weed? Maybe not.

Suppose one genuinely enjoys smoking and is willing to run the risk of disease and perhaps shorten one's life by say five or ten years in order to secure certain benefits in the present. There is nothing irrational about such a course of action. One acts rationally — in one sense of 'rational' — if one chooses means conducive to the ends one has in view. If your end in view is to live as long as possible, then don't smoke. If that is not your end, if you are willing to trade some highly uncertain future years of life for some certain pleasures here and now, and if you enjoy smoking, then smoke.

The epithet 'irrational' is attached with more justice to the fascists of the Left, the loon-brained tobacco wackos, who, in the grip of their misplaced moral enthusiasm, demonize the acolytes of the noble weed. The church of liberalism must have its demon, and his name is tobacco. I should also point out that smoking, like keeping and bearing arms, is a liberty issue. Is liberty a value? I'd say it is. Yet another reason to oppose the liberty-bashing loons of the Left and the abomination of Obamacare with its individual mandate.

Smoking and drinking can bring you to death's door betimes. Ask Humphrey Bogart who died at 56 of the synergistic effects of weed and hooch. Life's a gamble. A crap shoot no matter how you slice it. Hear the Hitch:

Writing is what's important to me, and anything that helps me do that — or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation — is worth it to me. So I was knowingly taking a risk. I wouldn't recommend it to others.

Exactly right.

And like Bogie before him, Hitch paid the price for his boozing and smoking in the coin of an early death at 62.  Had he taken care of himself he might have kept up his high-toned ranting and raving for another ten years at least.

So why don't I smoke and drink? The main reason is that smoking and drinking are inconsistent with the sorts of activities that  provide satisfactions of a much higher grade than smoking and drinking. I mean: running, hiking, backpacking and the like. When you wake up with a hangover, are you proud of the way you spent the night before? Are you a better man in any sense? Do you really feel better after a night of physical and spiritual dissipation? Would you feel a higher degree of satisfaction if the day before you had completed a 26.2 mile foot race?

Health and fitness in the moment is a short-term reason. A long-term reason is that I want to live as long as possible so as to finish the projects I have in mind. It is hard to write philosophy when you are sick or dead. And here below is where the philosophy has to be written. Where I hope to go there will be no need for philosophy.

Issues and Problems

Perhaps you have noticed how, in American English at least, ‘issue’ has come to supplant ‘problem.’ For example, people will refer to medical problems such as obesity and hypertension as medical issues. Being a conservative, I don’t confuse change with improvement. And being a linguistic conservative, I am none too pleased with this recent development. So I would like to be able to say that a mistake is being made, or a distinction is being obliterated, by those who use ‘issue’ when, not long ago, one would have used ‘problem.’ I would like to say what I say to those who confuse ‘infer’ and ‘imply,’ namely, that there is an extralinguistic distinction that their linguistic confusion renders invisible. In the case of ‘infer’ and ‘imply’ it is the distinction between a subjective mental process and an objective relation between propositions.  In a slogan: People infer; propositions imply.  For details see On the Correct Usage of 'Infers and 'Implies.'

Trouble is, I am having a hard time finding any clearly formulable mistake of a logical or conceptual nature such as would justify my displeasure.  Here we read that "A problem is something negative."  Sometimes.  A flat tire is a problem and something negative.  But chess problems – the  ones problemists compose, if not  over-the-board problems – are not something negative.  The same is true of many if not all logical, mathematical, and philosophical problems. 

The so-called 'problem of universals,' for example is not negative; it's just there.  Ditto for the problem whether existence is a property of individuals.  We could just as well describe it as an issue, a topic of debate.  So some problems are issues.  But other problems are not issues.  If you suffer from hypertension, then you have a medical problem, not a medical issue.  Nevertheless, there is the medical issue of how best to treat hypertension (with angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors?  With beta-blockers?).  This medical issue can also be described as the problem of how best to treat hypertension.

Perhaps we should say the following.  Every issue is a topic of controversy.  But it is not the case that every problem is a topic of controversy.  Some problems are topics and some are not.  Of those that are not, some are difficulties while others are tasks.

 Let’s consider some more examples.

No one is about to start referring to chess problems and math problems as chess and math issues. At least I hope not. These are problems, in particular, tasks.  For example,White to move and mate in three.  If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, then you’ve got a problem in the form of a difficulty.   And if your wife is about to give birth when you run out of gas, then you really have a problem in the form of a difficulty.   The use of ‘issue’ here offends my linguistic sensibilities, and rightly so if every issue is a topic of controversy.   If you are running out of gas and your wife is in labor, then those are facts, not topics of debate. More examples:

There is an issue with the starter solenoid.

You got an issue with that, buddy?

There are serious issues with the formatting of the March issue of Chess Life.

Thank you Carmelita, for putting me on your blogroll. Carmelita: No issue!

I say that the above four examples are all egregious misuses of 'issue.'  For in none of these four cases is there any topic of controversy.  Each is a problem in the form of a difficulty. 

One issue that arises for a married couple is whether or not to have children. It's an issue because it is a topic of debate. But if the man is impotent, then that is a problem. It is even more of a problem if the two find each other physically repellent.  Neither of these is an issue because neither is a topic of controversy.

In the sentence, ‘He died without issue,’ one cannot substitute ‘problem’ for ‘issue’ salva significatione. But that is not the relevant use of ‘issue.’ We certainly don't want to make an issue, or a problem, out of that use of 'issue.'   Similarly with 'issue' in the sense of an issue of a magazine.

I end with a question.  Why is ‘issue’ coming to supplant ‘problem’? Is it just because people are suggestible lemmings rather than the independent thinkers and speakers that they ought to be?  Is it because people are averse to facing problems and so use 'issue' as a euphemism? 

We can speak correctly both of the issue and of the problem of why 'issue' is coming to supplant 'problem.' 

I assume that the bird of Reality is jointed, and we need to cut it linguistically at the joints.