Another Round with Hennessey on Accidental Predication

Having had my say about what is known in the trade as Occam's Razor, and having secured some welcome agreement with the proprietor of Beyond Necessity in the combox of the aforelinked post, I am now ready to address the meat of Richard Hennessey's response to my three-post critique of what I took to be his theory of accidental predication.

There is no need to stray from our hoary example of accidental predication: 'Socrates is seated.'  I took Hennessey to be saying that in a true accidental predication of this simple form subject and predicate refer to exactly the same thing.  If they didn't, the sentence could not be true.  Here is how Hennessey puts it:

Let us take the proposition “Socrates is sitting” or the strictly equivalent “Socrates is a sitting being.” The referent of the subject term here is the sitting Socrates and that of the predicate term is one and the same sitting Socrates. . . . only if the referent of the “Socrates” and that of the “sitting” of “Socrates is sitting” are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting.

Since Hennessey uses the word 'identity' we can call this an identity theory of accidental predication: in true predications of this sort, the referent of the subject term and the referent of the predicate term are identical, and this identty is what insures that the predication is true.  If so, then the same goes for all other true predications which are about Socrates.  So consider 'Socrates is standing' which is the logical contrary (not contradictory) of 'Socrates is sitting.'  These sentences cannot both be true at the same time, but they can be true at different times.  Suppose we ask what the truth-maker is in each case.  Given that subject and predicate terms refer to exactly the same thing, namely, Socrates, it follows that in each case it is Socrates and Socrates alone that is the truth-maker of both sentences.  When he is sitting, Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is sitting' and when he is standing Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is standing.' 

What I do not understand, however, is how these obviously different sentences, which differ in their truth-conditions, can have one and the same entity as truth-maker.  The same problem does not seem to arise for such essential predications as 'Socrates is human.'  For there is no time when he is not human, and (this is a distinct modal point), at every time at which he is human he is not possibly such as to be nonhuman.  In the case of essential predications an identity theory may be workable.  Perhaps we can say that Socrates himself is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is human,' 'Socrates is rational,' and Socrates is animal.'

In the case of accidental predications, however, it seems definitely unworkable. This is because different accidental predications about Socrates need different truth-makers. It is not Socrates, but Socrates'  being seated that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is seated' and it is not Socrates, but Socrates' standing that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is standing.'

Without worrying about what exactly the italicized phrases pick out (facts? states of affairs? tropes?), one thing seems crystal clear: there cannot be a strict identity of, e.g., the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated.'  And since there cannot be a strict identity, there must be some difference between the referents of the subject and predicate terms.  Hennessey seems to show an appreciation of this in his response (second hyperlink above):

If we tweak the [B.V.] passage a bit, we can, it strikes me, improve the thesis about the referencing at work in the sentence “Socrates is sitting” so that it offers a more satisfactory support of the neo-Aristotelian thesis of anti-realism in the theory of universals, one indeed getting along “without invoking universals.” First, let us speak of “particular property” instead of “particularized property,” for the latter expression suggests, at least to me, that the property would be, prior to some act of particularization, a universal and not a particular. Let us then accept, but with a precision, Bill’s statement that “‘sitting’ refers to a particularized property (a trope),” saying instead that while the “Socrates” in our statement refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, the “sitting” primarily refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, and also co-refers to the particular property of sitting that inheres in Socrates. (An alternative terminology might have it that the “Socrates” in our statement denotes Socrates and the “sitting” primarily denotes Socrates, still the person sitting, and also connotesthe property of sitting that inheres in Socrates; come to think of it, I believe I recall having read, long ago, a similar distinction in the Petite logique of Jacques Maritain, a book which I no longer have, thanks to a flooded basement.)

This is definitely an improvement.  It is an improvement because it tries to accommodate the perfectly obvious point that there must be some difference or other between the worldly referents of the subject and predicate terms in accidental predications.  Hennessey is now telling us that 'Socrates' in our example refers to exactly one item, Socrates, while 'sitting' refers to two items, Socrates and the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness which inheres in Socrates.

But Hennessey is not yet in the clear.  For I will now ask him what the copula 'is' expresses.  It seems he must say that it expresses inherence.  He must say that it is because seatedness inheres in Socrates that 'Socrates is seated' is true.  Now inherence is an asymmetrical relation: if x inheres in y, then it is not the case that y inheres in x.  But there is no sameness relation (whether strict identity, contingent identity, accidental sameness, Castaneda's consubstantiaton, etc) that is not symmetrical.  Thus if x is in any sense the same as y, then y is (in the same sense) the same as x.  Therefore, Hennessey's bringing of inherence into the picture is at odds with his claims of identity.  Inherence, being asymmetrical,  is not a type of identity or sameness.  So why the talk of identity in the first passage quoted above?

Why does Hennessey say that 'seated' refers primarily to Socrates but also to the particular property seatedness?   Why not just say this: 'Socrates' refers to the primary substance (prote ousia) Socrates and nothing else; 'is' refers to the inherence relation or nexus and nothing else; 'seated/sitting' refers to the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness and nothing else.  This would give him what he wants, a theory of predication free of universals.

But this is not what Hennessey says.  He is putting forth some sort of identity theory of predication.  He thinks that in some sense the subject and predicate terms refer to the very same thing.  He tells us that 'seated' refers both to a substance and to an accident.  The upshot is that Hennessey has given birth to a hybrid theory which I for one do not find  intelligible. 

Here is the question he needs to confront directly: what, in the world, makes it true that 'Socrates is seated' (assuming of course that the sentence is true)?  Here is a clear answer: the sentence is true because seatedness inheres in Socrates.  But then of course there can be no talk of the identity of Socrates and seatedness.  They are obviously not identical: one is a substance and the other an accident.  The relation between them, being asymmetrical, cannot be any sort of sameness relation.

The other clear answer which, though clear, is absurd is this:  the sentence is true because 'Socrates' and 'seated' refer to the very same thing with the result that the copula expresses identity.  Now this is absurd for the reasons given over several posts. This was his original theory which he has wisely moved away from.

Instead of plumping for one of these clear theories, Hennessey gives us an unintelligible hybrid, a monster if you will, as we approach Halloween.

On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion

Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68:

A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer.  It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude.  What passes for prayer in temples, churches, and synagogues is therefore a compromise dictated by the physical necessity of an institution.  It may be quite good but too often alas! it is only the dressed-up double of true prayer.

Where would we be without institutions?  We need them, but only up to a point.  We are what we are because of the institutions in which we grew up, and natural piety dictates that we be appropriately grateful.  But their negative aspects cannot be ignored and all further personal development requires those who can, to go it alone.

We need society and its institutions to socialize us, to raise us from the level of the animal to that of the human.  But this human is all-too-human, and to take the next step we must tread the solitary path.  Better to be a social animal than a mere animal, but better than both is to become an individual, as I am sure Kierkegaard would agree.  To achieve true individuality  is one of the main tasks of human life.  In pursuit of this task institutions are more hindrance than help.

For some, churches and related institutions will always be necessary to provide guidance, discipline, and community.  But for others they will prove stifling and second-best, a transitional phase in their development.

For any church to claim that outside it there is no salvation — extra ecclesiam salus non est — is intolerable dogmatism, and indeed a form of idolatry in which something finite, a human institution contingent both in its existence and configuration, is elevated to the status of the Absolute.

For my take on idolatry see the Idolatry category.

Nihil philosophicum a nobis alienum putamus

"We consider nothing philosophical to be foreign to us."  This is the motto Hector-Neri Castañeda chose to place on the masthead of the philosophical journal he founded in 1966, Noûs. When Hector died too young a death at age 66  in the fall of '91, the editorship passed to others who removed the Latin phrase. There are people who find classical allusions  pretentious. I understand, but do not share, their sentiment.

Perhaps I should import Hector's motto into my own masthead. For it   certainly expresses my attitude and would be a nice, if inadequate, way of honoring the man.

Hector's motto is modelled on Terentius: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. "I am a human being; I consider nothing human to be  foreign to me." One also sees the thought expressed in this form:  Nihil humanum a me alienum puto. Hector's motto is modeled on this variant.

Peter Hitchens on an Evening Without Richard Dawkins

Excerpt (emphasis added)

The most moving – and most enjoyable – contribution of the evening came from the marvellous Dr Stephen Priest, simultaneously diffident and extremely powerful. I won’t try to summarise it because I’m sure I’d fail. I hope it will eventually make it on to the web. It reminded me of why I had once wanted to study philosophy, a desire which faded rapidly when I was exposed to English Linguistic Philosophy and various other strands of that discipline which made me wonder if I had wandered into a convention of crossword-compilers, when what I wanted was to seek the origins of the universe.

Many of you will know that in his failure to face William Lane Craig, Professor Dawkins was not alone. Several other members of Britain’s Atheist Premier League found themselves unable or unwilling (or both) to take him on.

The important thing about this is that what Craig does is simple. He uses philosophical logic, and a considerable knowledge of physics, to expose the shallowness of Dawkins’s arguments. I would imagine that an equally serious Atheist philosopher would be able to give him a run for his money, but Dawkins isn’t that. He would have been embarrassingly out of his depth.

It would be interesting to compile a list of those who were dissuaded, or almost dissuaded, from pursuing philosophy by their encounter with the Ordinary Language movement.  Hector-Neri Castañeda  once told me that the dominance of the latter in the '50s and '60s almost convinced  him to drop philosophy as a profession abd go to law school.  Not being a native English speaker, he could not hope to contribute to discussions in which the subtleties of ordinary English usage are put under the microsope.  But then things changed in that wild decade of the '60s in which so many things changed, the epigoni of Wittgenstein went into eclipse, and systematic philosophy was back on track and attractive of the better heads.

My posts on OLP are collected in the Ordinary Language Philosophy category.

A Response to Levi Asher on Abortion

In a very brief post I posed a question for those pacifists who are pro-choice: "If you are a pacifist, why aren't you also pro-life? If you oppose the killing of human beings, how can you not oppose the killing of defenceless human beings, innocent human beings?"

Levi Asher answers at his blog, Literary Kicks. 

Asher begins with a point with which I agree: " being pro-choice and being pro-abortion are completely different things." I have made this point myself in disagreement with some conservative friends.  One can support the legal right to abortion without advocating abortion, just as one can support the right to keep and bear arms without advocating that people do so.  It is also worth pointing out that in a civil discussion we ought to respect the labels our opponents choose for themselves.  So if Ron Paul calls himself a non-interventionist in foreign policy, it is somewhat churlish to insist on calling him an isolationist as John McCain did in their 2008 debates.  It is the same with those who label themselves 'pro-choice.' 

But although one can be pro-choice without advocating abortion, one who is pro-choice tolerates abortion.  Tolerating abortion, the pro-choicer tolerates the killing of innocent human beings, innocent biologically human individuals.  The fundamental question is how such killing can be justified — whether or not one is a pacifist.  But if one is  pacifist then the burden of justification will be all the more onerous.  Of course, much depends on how one defines 'pacifist.' Asher does not provide a definition, and without a precise definition a discussion like this won't get very far.

Suppose you hold that in no possible circumstances is the killing of a human being justified.  If so, you must oppose capital punishment, just war doctrine, killing in self-defense, and indeed suicide since suicide is the killing of a human being.  The point of my question above was that if you are pacifist in this, or some closely related sense, then how would it be logically consistent of you to countenance the moral acceptability of abortion given that abortion is the killing of innocent and defenceless human beings?  Simply put, if you hold that in no possible circumstances is the killing of a human being justified, then you must also hold that the killing of unborn (not-yet-born) human beings is unjustified.

Notice that you can't reasonably deny that the unborn are human.  What are they then, bovine?  Lupine?  It is a plain biological fact that human parents have human offpsring.  Even more absurd would be to deny, as Ayn Rand does, that human fetuses are typically alive.  What are they then, dead?

One should also avoid making the silly but oft-heard assertion that a fetus is just a bit of tissue.  That's false.  The fetus, at least in its later phases of development, is a biological individual, a separate human living organism distinct from its mother.

The difference between being not-yet-born and being born is a difference, but not one that makes a moral difference.  A mere 'change of address,' a mere spatial translation from womb to crib cannot transform a morally acceptable killing to a morally unacceptable one.  Or to put it the other way around: if infanticide is morally wrong, then why isn't late-term abortion?  Analogy: if shooting me down in the street is morally wrong, then doing the deed in my house is no less morally wrong.  "Your honor, I shot him all right, but he was in his house with the door closed!"

Or is it the time difference that is supposed to make the moral difference?  Compare a fetus a few days before birth to a neonate  right after birth.  There is a temporal difference, and a very slight developmental difference, but not a difference that makes a moral difference, i.e., a difference that justifies a difference in treatment.

So I am not sure Asher got the point of my question.  If one respects all life, including the life of unborn humans, and this is not an empty avowal, then one must be prepared to defend life especially in cases where the living beings are innocent and defenceless.  The pro-choicer, however, by tolerating abortion shows that he is not willing to defend the life of the innocent and defenceless unborn.

Asher puts the following question to me: "how can you claim to be a libertarian, and yet want the government to outlaw abortion?"

First of all I have never claimed to be a libertarian.  I thought it was obvious that I am a conservative.  Although many liberals confuse libertarians and conservatives there are important differences which it would require a separate post to detail.  Moreover, it is a bad mistake to suppose that all libertarians are pro-choice.  Ron Paul is a nationally prominent libertarian who is pro-life.  He had the good sense to quit the Losertarian Libertarian Party and join the Republicans, but that does not make him any less of a libertarian.  His pro-life position is very clearly defined in the first chapter of his 2011 book, Liberty Defined: 50 Essential Issues That Affect Our Freedom (Grand Central Publishing, pp. 1-9)  I understand that there are even some Objectivists who take a pro-life position, though their hero was pro-choice, employing arguments as awful as many of her arguments are.  See Ayn Rand on Abortion.

Asher continues:

If you don't believe it the government's place to manage anyone's economy, health care or education, how can it be the government's place to intrude on one of the most deeply personal and difficult decisions a woman or a woman's family has to make? If you're a libertarian, don't you want to reduce the government's power to intrude into private life? You can't be a libertarian and not be pro-choice — the combination of the two would be an oxymoron.

Again, I am not a libertarian.  How could anyone think that I was?  Support for limited government does not distinguish between libertarians and conservatives since both support limited government.  Asher says that a libertarian cannot fail to be pro-choice.  That is plainly false, as witness the case of Ron Paul.  (I'll have to write a separate post to summarize Paul's arguments.)  Both libertarians and conservatives champion the rights of individuals.  Among these rights are the right to life.  It is perfectly consistent for a libertarian to extend these rights to the unborn. 

Asher thinks that laws against abortion "intrude into private life."  He doesn't seem to understand that some such intrusions are legitimate.  If he abuses or kills his own children he will have to answer to the state, and rightly so.  That is a legitimate intrusion into his private family life.  Conservatives, and some libertarians, maintain that there is no difference that makes a moral difference between killing born and unborn children.  If one of the legitimate functions of the state is to protect life, and it is, then that includes all human life. 

I notice that Asher doesn't given any arguments in favor of his position.  One of the arguments he could give is the Woman's Body Argument which I present and refute here.  The gist of the argument is that a woman has a right to do anything she wants with any part of her body.  But unless it can be shown that the biologically human individual growing within her is a mere part of her body, the argument will not establish its conclusion.

Suggestions on How Best to Study

Just over the transom:

Noting your desire to correct spelling, here are two that I spotted: "…gave an argment [sic] a while back (1 August 2010 to be precise) to the conclusion that there cannot, as a matter of metaphyscal necessity [sic]…"

Holy moly!  Thanks.  I just corrected them, and then found three more.

My current frustrations stem from mental mistakes, not typos.  Thinking clearly about philosophy is more difficult for me than writing about my thoughts, which makes me suspect that I should write more (summary papers, counterarguments) while I'm working through the material instead of just taking notes along the way.

Right.  Reading by itself is too passive to be very profitable even if done while alert in a quiet environment in an upright position.  So one ought to take notes and mark passages (assuming you own the book).  But even this is not enough.  The only way  properly to assimilate a philosophical text is by writing a summary and a critique of it.  The summary is an attempt to understand exactly what the author's thesis or theses are, and (just as important) what his arguments are.  Having done that, one advances to critical evaluation, the attempt to sort out  which theses and arguments you consider true/valid and which false/invalid.  Blogging can be very useful for this purpose and can lead to worthwhile exchanges and the refinement and testing of one's ideas.

As I see it, there is no point in seriously studying anything without a decision as to whether or not one should take on board the author's theses and arguments and incorporate them into one's own thinking.  The point of study and inquiry is to get at the truth, not to know what someone else  has maintained that the truth is.

I have just completed a semester of Searle's intro to the philosophy of mind via podcast. I worked through the primary readings and also studied his textbook.  It was very difficult and rewarding.  Now it is time to tackle his semester on language.

Searle is good.  You will learn a lot from him.  My posts on Searle are collected in the aptly-named Searle category.

Always enjoy your posts.  Occam's Razor is sorely abused by apologists from all corners of the debate.

Glad we agree, and thanks for the kind words.

The Use and Abuse of Occam’s Razor: On Multiplying Entities Beyond Necessity

Self-styled neo-Aristotelian Richard Hennessey's response to my three posts concerning his theory of accidental predication is now online. 

He graciously declines my suggestion that he make use of accidental compounds or accidental unities in his theory despite the excellent Aristotelian pedigree of these items, a pedigree amply documented in the writings of Frank Lewis and Gareth Mathews.  Following Mathews, I characterized accidental compounds as 'kooky' objects with as little pejorative intent as I found in Mathews who defends these items. Hennessey, however, apparently takes the label pejoratively:

I cannot help but agree that the seated-Socrates in question, as a being other than Socrates, is a “‘kooky’ or ‘queer’ object.” And I cannot help but wonder how anyone who rejects universals could be tempted to multiply entities and accept such a “‘kooky’ or ‘queer’ object.”

So before examing the meat of Hennessey's response to me, in a later post, we must first tackle some preliminary matters including the nature of Occam's Razor, its use and abuse, and the role of explanation and explanatory posits in philosophy.

On Brandishing the Razor

I am not historian enough to pronounce upon the relation of what is standardly called Occam's Razor to the writings of the 14th century William of Ockham. The different spellings of his name will serve as a reminder to be careful about reading contemporary concerns into the works of philosophers long dead. Setting aside historical concerns, Occam's Razor is standardly taken to be a principle of theoretical economy or  parsimony that states:

   OR. Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.

It is sometimes formulated in Latin: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. The principle is presumably to be interpreted qualitatively rather than quantitatively, thus:

   OR*. Do not multiply TYPES of entity beyond necessity.

Thus it is not individual entities that are not to be multiplied, but types or kinds or categories of entity.  To illustrate.  Some criticized David Lewis' extreme modal realism on the ground that it proliferates concreta: there are not only all the actual  concreta , there are all those merely possible ones as well.  He responded quite plausibly to the proliferation charge by pointing out that the Razor applies to categories of entity, not individual entities, and that category-wise his ontology is sparse indeed.

'Multiply' is a picturesque way of saying posit. (Obviously, there are as many categories of entity as there are, and one cannot cause them to 'multiply.')  And let's not forget the crucial qualification: beyond necessity.  That means: beyond what is needed for purposes of adequate explanation of the data that are to be explained.  Hence:

OR**  Do not posit types of entity in excess of what is needed for purposes of explanation.

So the principle enjoins us to refrain from positing more types of entity than we need to explain the phenomena that need to be explained. It is obvious that (OR**) does not tell us to prefer theory T1 over theory T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity than T2. What it tells us is to prefer T1 over T2 if T1 posits fewer types of entity AND accounts adequately for all  the data. So there is a trade-off between positing and accounting.

Our old pal Ed over at Beyond Necessity often seems to be unaware of this.  He seems to think that simply brandishing the Razor suffices to refute a theory.  Together with this he sometimes displays a tendency to think that whole categories of entity can be as it were  shamed out of existence by labeling them 'queer.'  I picked up that word from him.  A nice, arch, donnish epithet.  But that is just name-calling, a shabby tactic best left to the ideologues. 

Hennessey is perhaps not guilty of any name-calling or entity-shaming but I note that he too seems to think that merely waving the Razor about suffices as a technique of refutation. One piece of evidence is the quotation above where he states in effect that to posit accidental compounds such as seated-Socrates is to multiply entities.  But this is to ignore the crucial question whether there is any need for the positing. 

What is offensive about Razor brandishing is the apparent ignorance on the part of some brandishers of the fact that we all agree that one ought not posit types of entity in excess of the needs of explanation. What we don't agree on, however, is whether or not a given class of entities is needed for explanatory purposes.  That is where the interesting questions and the real disagreements lie. 

Hennessey eschews universals in the theory of predication, and elsewhere.  Fine.  But he cannot justify that eschewal solely on the basis of Occam's Razor which is a purely methodological principle.  In other words, the Razor does not dictate any particular ontology.  Taken as such, and apart from its association with the nominalist Ockham, it does not favor nominalism (the view that everything is a particular) over realism (the view that there are both particulars and universals).  It does not favor any ontology over any other. 

Nor does it rule out so-called 'abstract objects' such as Fregean propositions.  I gave an argument a while back (1 August 2010 to be precise) to the conclusion that there cannot, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, be nothing at all, that there must be at least one abstract object, a proposition.  Hennessey commented on that post, Thinking about Nothing, and made the objection that I was multipying entities.  But again, the salient question is whether the entity-positing is necessary for explanatory purposes.  If my argument was a good one, then it was.  One cannot refute such an argument simply by claiming that it introduces a type of entity that is less familiar than one's favorite types.

To sum up.  Philosophy is in large part, though not entirely, an explanatory enterprise.  As such it ought to proceed according to the methodological principle formulated above as (OR**).  This principle is not controversial.  Hence it should not be presented to one's opponents as if it were controversial and denied by them.  Nor is it a principle that takes sides on the substantive questions of ontology.  Thus the following argument which is suggested by Hennessey's remarks is invalid:

1. OR**
2. Accidental compounds are a category of particular distinct from both substances and accidents.
Ergo
3. There are no accidental compounds. 

Non sequitur!  He needs a premise to the effect that the positing of accidental compounds is otiose since the explanatory job can be adequately done without them.  He needs such a premise, and of course he needs to defend it.

What I am objecting to is the idea is that by earnest asseverations of a wholly uncontroversial methodological principle one actually  advances the substantive debate.  

Why Science Will Never Put Religion Out of Business

If science can eventually provide what religion promises, then science will eventually put religion out of business.  But can science provide what religion promises?  I will argue that it cannot.  My argument will  not assume that any religion, or any combination of religions, is true, wholly or in part.  Perhaps no actual or possible religion makes contact with reality at any point.  Perhaps every actual or possible religion is nothing but an elaborate expression of human neediness, of human wishes, dreams, hopes, and fears. Still, there remains the fact of these fears and hopes, and the question whether anything can assuage the former and fulfill the latter.  I will begin by listing the main types of problem that religion addresses, and then ask whether current or future science, or rather, a technology that implements current or future science, can supply the needs that religions cater to.

The Problems Religion Addresses

1. The first category of problems includes the facts that shook young prince Siddartha to his core, moved him to forsake the royal compound with its impressive perquisites and blandishments and set him on the austere path to becoming Buddha, the supremely enlightened one who saw to the bottom of our predicament and saw the way out (as his followers believe), and went on to found Buddhism.  What shook Siddartha and shocked him deeply were sickness, old age, death, and everything connected with them, everything that causes them and everything they bring in their train. We can lump all this under the rubric of natural evil: suffering and misery in all its forms that arises from natural causes.  For Buddha the fundamental fact and the fundamental problem was that of suffering, which is why the First Noble Truth, which is not only first in the order of presentation but also first in the order of importance, is "All is suffering," sarvam dukkham.

2. The second category is that of moral evil.  These are the problems that come into the world via the exercise of free will, from the merest unkindness on up to the horrors of rape, torture, slavery, mass murder, abuse of power by governments and their agents, as well as by private individuals, and all the crimes that fill the history books and the pages of every newspaper in every corner of the globe every day.  Here belong all the ills that derive not just from weakness of will, but even more from perversity of will. 

3. The third category is that of moral and intellectual blindness, ignorance, and delusion, for example, the delusional thinking of someone who believes that happiness will be his if he succeeds in murdering his wife, collecting on a life insurance policy, and getting away with the crime.

4. Under the fourth rubric I collect all the problems associated with the ontological deficiency of the world of our ordinary experience.  All of the deeper heads in the East, the Near East and the West from Buddha and Ecclesiastes to Plato and Plotinus to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche have been struck and shocked by the vanity of existence and the transitoriness of life.  "I am aggrieved by the transitoriness of things," wrote Nietzsche to his friend Overbeck.  A homo religiosus with the bladed intellect of a skeptic, Nietzsche couldn't bring himself to accept any traditional religion.  And yet the religious need was alive in him, and it was that need that gave rise to his peculiar scheme of Redemption in the form of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. 

Connected with the vanity of existence and the transience of life is the apparent meaninglessness of our lives.  Albert Camus famously argued in the The Myth of Sisyphus that the one and only serious philosophical problem is that of suicide.  Does the Absurd demand suicide as the only appropriate response?  That was his question.  He characterized the Absurd as the disproportion between the human craving for meaning and the universe's apparent meaninglessness.  What we want it cannot provide.  It is not that the universe is indifferent to us — indifference, after all, is a human attitude which presupposes concern and is a privation thereof — but beyond indifference and interestedness. The silence of ther universe is not a privation of speech, but something deeper — and worse.

We suffer from a lack of existential meaning, a meaning that we cannot supply from our own resources since any subjective acts of meaning-positing are themselves (objectively) meaningless. Connected with this is our deep existential insecurity which erupts into consciousness from time to time in the form of the anxiety, anguish, dread, Angst that Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre described.  This is not an anxiety about this or that; its intentional object is global, our very Being-in-the-world in Heideggerian jargon.  This is experienced as unheimlich.  Anxiety reveals that we are not at home in the world.   We feel desolation.  I feel fear for an intramundane being, ein innerweltliches Seiende; I feel Angst for my very In-der-Welt-sein, which is precarious desolate and lived in the face of das Nichts. (The connection between original sin and dread/anxiety is explored by Kierkegaard in The Concept of Dread.)

I don't claim that the above catalog is complete or even very well constructed: #4 bleeds back into #1 especially if suffering is taken in the radical Buddhist sense in which all-pervasive dukkha (suffering, ill, unsatisfactoriness) is undepinned by anatta (selflessness, insubstantiality) and anicca (radical, Heraclitean impermanence).  For the Buddhist, suffering goes deep, rooted as it is in the very ontological structure of the world of our ordinary experience. 

But I have said enough to make clear what sorts of problems religion addresses.  It follows that the salvation religion promises is not to be understood in some crass physical sense the way the typical superficial and benighted atheist-materialist would take it but as salvation from meaninglessness, anomie, spiritual desolation, Unheimlichkeit, existential insecurity, Angst, ignorance and delusion, false value-prioritizations, moral corruption irremediable by any human effort, failure to live up to ideals, the vanity and transience of our lives, meaningless sufferings and cravings and attachments, the ultimate pointlessness of all efforts at moral and intellectual improvement in the face of death . . . .

I should add that anyone who doesn't feel these problems to be genuine problems will have no understanding of religion at all.  And I remind the reader that I do not assume that any religion can deliver on its promises of salvation from the above litany of problems. My point is that natural science and its resulting technologies are powerless to solve these problems.

This ought to be self-evident to anyone who appreciates the problems.  Consider #1.  If suffering is rooted as deeply as the Buddhists think, in the very ontological structure of this changeful world, then obviously no mere manipulation of matter will solve the problem of suffering.  You can drug people into a stupor, but being rendered insensate is no solution to the problems of sentient suffering.  Suppose you don't think suffering is as deeply rooted as the Buddhists think.  Sickness, old age, and death remain inevitable despite the welcome alleviations and life-extensions that modern science makes possible.

As for the rest of my categories, it is self-evident that there are no technological solutions to moral evil, moral ignorance, and the apparent absurdity of life.  Is a longer life a morally better life?  Can mere longevity confer meaning?

The notion that present or future science can solve the problems that religion addresses is utterly chimerical.

So if you reject religion, then you ought to honestly face the problems without evasion and without cultivating 'pie-in-the-future' illusions.  Companion post:  Can Belief in Man Substitute for Belief in God?

The Stove ‘Dilemma’ and the Lewis ‘Trilemma’

This from D. J. Stove, the son of atheist and neo-positivist David Stove:

When the possibility of converting to Catholicism became a real one, it was the immensity of the whole package that daunted me, rather than specific teachings. I therefore spent little time agonizing over the Assumption of Mary, justification by works as well as faith, the reverencing of statues, and other such concepts that traditionally irk the non-Catholic mind.

Rather, such anguish as I felt came from entirely the other direction. However dimly and inadequately, I had learnt enough Catholic history and Catholic dogma to know that either Catholicism was the greatest racket in human history, or it was what it said itself that it was. Such studying burned the phrase "By what authority?" into my  mind like acid. If the papacy was just an imposture, or an exercise in power mania, then how was doctrine to be transmitted from generation to generation? If the whole Catholic enchilada was a swindle, then why should its enemies have bestirred themselves to hate it so much? Why do they do so still?

This reminds me of the famous 'trilemma' popularized by C. S. Lewis:  Jesus is either the Son of God, or he is a lunatic, or he is the devil. This trilemma is also sometimes put as a three-way choice among lord, lunatic, or liar.  I quote Lewis and offer my critical remarks here.

Just as I cannot accept the Lewis 'trilemma' — which is not strictly a trilemma inasmuch as not all three prongs are unacceptable — I cannot accept the Stovian 'dilemma' which strikes me as a text-book case of the informal fallacy of False Alternative.  ". . . either Catholicism was the greatest racket in human history, or it was what it said itself that it was."  Why are these the only two alternatives?  The Roman Catholic church claims to be the one, true, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic church.  One possibility is that the Roman church was all of these things before various linguistic, political, and theological tensions eventuated in the Great Schism of 1054 such that after that date the one, true, etc. church was the Orthodox church of the East.  After all, both can and do trace their lineage back to Peter, the 'rock' upon whom Christ founded his church.  That is at least a possibility.  If it is actual, then the present Roman church would be neither a racket nor what it claims to be.  It would be a church with many excellences that unfortunately diverged from the authentic Christian tradition.

Or it could be that that true church is not the Roman church but some Protestant denomination, or maybe no church is the true church: some are better than others, but none of the extant churches has 'cornered the market' on all religiously relevant  truth. 

I get the impression that Stove has a burning desire to belong to a community of Christian believers, is attracted to the Roman church for a variety of reasons, some of them good, and then concocts an obviously  worthless argument to lend a veneer of rationality to his choice.

My point is a purely logical one.  I am not taking sides in any theological controversy.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac’s Favorite Song

Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken." Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity." They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song. Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sobbed by a harmonic, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.

Indeed they do. A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveler, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of tears & mist, a pilgrim on the via dolorosa of this dolorous life, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore. Here is another version of the tune with some beautiful images.

Another 'river' song in the same plaintive vein is Pat Boone's Moody River from 1961. 

Here’s to You, Jack

Jack Kerouac was a big ball of affects ever threatening to dissolve in that sovereign soul-solvent, alcohol. One day he did, and died. The date was 21 October 1969. Today is the 42nd anniversary of his release from the wheel of the quivering meat conception and the granting of his wish:

The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . .
. . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel
and safe in heaven dead. (Mexico City Blues, 1959, 211th Chorus)

Apparently, he took his last drink  at the Flamingo Sports Bar in St. Petersburg.

The bar has become the area's de facto gathering spot for Kerouac aficionados to swap stories. Sitting on the patio, Alan Sansotta, who shot pool with Kerouac every week in the late 1960s, said he understands why the connection still matters.

"The first time you read On The Road, you think, 'What the hell am I doing with my life? I need to open my head up and see what's going on in the world,' " said Sansotta. "His literature really did change my life. It changed my life. And I thank God for that, because no doubt, geez, I'd have led a pretty boring life without Jack."

Yep, it would have been a lot less interesting without Jack.

The picture below is of Neal Cassady.  The inscription on the gravestone reads: "He honored life."

Kerouac grave