She Won’t ‘Bach’ Down

You can stand Michelle Bachmann up at the gates of hell and she won't back down.  (Or at least I hope not.) I thought she acquitted herself well on Hannity's show last night.  She talks sense unlike the blather mouth who is unfortunately our current POTUS. 

But the slimeballs of the Left are out in force against her.  Why doesn't that make them sexists by their own perverse 'logic'?  Criticize Obama's policies and they call you a racist.  Viciously attack Bachmann herself and you are not a sexist?

Requisites of Happiness

Edward Ockham at Beyond Necessity quotes Flaubert:  "To be stupid, and selfish, and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness; though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless."

Witty, but false.  Comparable and  less cynical is this saying which I found attributed to Albert Schweitzer on a greeting card: Happiness is nothing more than good health and a poor memory.  (Whether the good Schweitzer ever said any such thing is a further question; hence my omission of quotation marks.)

I am inclined to agree with both gentlemen that good health is a necessary condition of happiness.  But happiness does not require a poor memory, it requires the ability to control one's memory, and the ability to control one's mind generally.  I am happy and I have an excellent memory; but I have learned how to distance myself from any unpleasant memory that may arise. 

An unhappy intellectual may think that stupidity is necessary for happiness, but then he is the stupid one.  A keen awareness of the undeniable ills of this world is consistent with being happy if one can control his response to those ills.  There is simply no necessity that one dwell on the negative.  But this non-dwelling is not ignorance.  It is mind control. 

As for selfishness, it is probably true that its opposite is more likely to lead to happiness than it.

The temptation to wit among the literary often leads them astray.

If You Are a Conservative, Don’t Talk Like a Liberal

I've made this point before but it bears repeating. We conservatives should never acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism. Battles in the culture war are often lost and won on linguistic   ground. So we ought to resolutely oppose the Left's attempts at linguistic corruption.

Take 'homophobia.'

A phobia is a fear, but not every fear is a phobia. A phobia is an  irrational fear. One who argues against the morality of homosexual practices, or gives reasons for opposing same-sex marriage is precisely — presenting arguments, and not expressing any phobia. The arguments  may or may not be cogent. But they are expressive of reason, and are intended to appeal to the reason of one's interlocutor. To dismiss them as an expression of a phobia show a lack of respect for reason and for the persons who proffer the arguments.

There are former meat-eaters who can make an impressive case against the eating of meat. Suppose that, instead of addressing their arguments, one denounces them as 'carniphobes.' Can you see what is wrong with that? These people have a reasoned position. Their reasoning may be more or less cogent, their premises more or less disputable. But the one thing they are not doing is expressing an irrational fear of eating meat. Many of them like the stuff and dead meat inspires no fear in them whatsoever.

The point should be obvious: 'homophobia' is just as objectionable as 'carniphobia.' People who use words like these are attempting to close off debate, to bury a legitimate issue beneath a crapload of PeeCee jargon. So it is not just that 'homophobe' and 'homophobia' are
question-begging epithets; they are question-burying epithets.

And of course 'Islamophobia'  and cognates are other prime examples.  Once again, a phobia is an irrational fear.  But fear of radical Islam is not at all irrational.  You are a dolt if us use these terms, and a double dolt if you are a conservative.

Language matters.

  

Crimes Against Blacks and Nazi Art Thefts

From a Boston reader:

I read your post titled, On Black Reparations after having spent a fair amount of time recently at one of my favorite places, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In the museum, there are signs next to some pieces indicating that their provenance may include Nazi-era acquisitions in World War II Germany. If it's determined that any piece was acquired as a result of theft, illegal sales, etc. then every attempt is made to return it to the rightful owner or to the owner's heir, and this is judged to be a moral obligation. This made me think about how your argument against reparations would apply to such cases. But to make the case analogous in terms of the time that has elapsed between the crime and the proposed method of restitution, suppose the following argument is being made in 2091:

1. All of the perpetrators of the crimes associated with Nazi-era thefts of art in World War II Germany (and areas occupied by Germany at the time) are dead.

2. All of the victims of the crimes associated with Nazi-era thefts of art in World War II Germany are dead.

3. Only those who are victims of a crime are entitled to reparations for the crime, and only those who are the perpetrators of a crime are obliged to pay reparations for it.

Therefore

4. No one now living is entitled to receive reparations for the crimes associated with Nazi-era thefts of art in World War ii Germany, and no one now living is obliged to pay reparations. (Assume anyone owning such a piece was not aware, when he purchased it, of its Nazi-era provenance).

I wonder if such an argument could be run to refute the notion that such works should be returned to any living heirs, or to museums from which they might have been looted. It seems to me that counter this possibility, we might point out that one relevant disanalogy may be the fact that here we're dealing with concrete items — with property — and not with difficult (impossible?) to calculate contemporary harms caused by past wrongs. After all, it's easier to argue that Jones has been harmed by not owning a painting he would have plausibly (probably?) inherited were it not stolen than it is to argue that Smith has been harmed by the fact that his great-great-great grandfather was enslaved. But I'm not sure if this works, for the force of your argument doesn't come from pragmatic concerns like that, but from the moral issues involved, and they seem to apply with similar force to cases concerning whether one is obligated to return art of Nazi-era provenance to identifiable heirs. Do you think that the argument you've formulated would imply that, at least in 2091, Museums would not be obligated to return items acquired by Nazis and Nazi collaborators during World War II to identifiable heirs, and would you agree that if this is so, the conclusion minimally conflicts with our moral intuitions? Sorry for the length of the post, and thanks for taking the time to read it.

An interesting response.

I think the cases are disanalogous for reasons different from the one the reader mentions.  Suppose a piece was stolen by the Nazis from the Louvre in Paris and it ends up in the MFA in Boston.  Said piece is the property of the Louvre and ought to be returned there despite the fact that the Nazi thieves and the Louvre curators are all dead.  The wrong was committed against the Louvre which continues to exist.  And therein lies one point of disanalogy.  The blacks who were enslaved and maltreated no longer exist.   A second point of disanalogy is that when restitution is made nothing is taken from the MFA that it has a right to possess.  But when a present-day non-black is forced to pay reparations to blacks  he is having something taken from him that he has a right to possess.   

 

On Black Reparations

Warning to liberals: clear thinking, moral clarity, and political incorrectness up ahead! If you consider any part of the following to be 'racist' or 'hateful' then you are in dire need, not of refutation, but of psychotherapy.  Please seek it for your own good.

There is no question but that slavery is a great moral evil. But are American blacks owed reparations for the slavery that was officially ended by the ratification of the 13th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution over 145 years ago on 6 December 1865? I cannot see that any rational case for black reparations can be made. Indeed, it seems to me that a very strong rational case can be made against black reparations. The following argument seems to me decisive:

1. All of the perpetrators of the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S. are dead.
2. All of the victims of the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S. are dead.
3. Only those who are victims of a crime are entitled to reparations for the crime, and only those who are the perpetrators of a crime are obliged to pay reparations for it.
Therefore
4. No one now living is entitled to receive reparations for the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S., and no one now living is obliged to pay reparations.  

Continue reading “On Black Reparations”

How Does One Know that There Are Contingent Beings?

When I was writing my book on existence I was troubled by the question as to how one knows that there are contingent beings. For I took it as given that there are, just as I took it as given that things exist.  But one philosopher's datum is another's theory, and I was hoping to begin my metaphysical ascent from indubitable starting points.  So it bugged me:  how do I know that this coffee cup is a contingent being?  Given that it exists, how do I know that it exists contingently?    I satisfied my scruples by telling myself that I was writing  about the metaphysics of existence and that concerns with its epistemology could be reserved for a later effort.  What exactly is the problem?  Let's begin with a couple of definitions:

D1.  X is contingent =df possibly (x exists) & possibly (x does not exist).

The possibility at issue is non-epistemic and broadly logical.  And note that the definiens of (D1) is not to be confused with 'possibly (x exists & x does not exist)' which is necessarily false.

D2.  X contingently exists =df x exists & possibly (x does not exist).

Note that to say that x exists contingently is not to say that x depends for its existence on something else; it is merely to say that x exists and that there is no broadly logical (metaphysical) necessity that x exist.  Suppose exactly one thing exists, an iron sphere.  Intuitively, the sphere is contingent despite there being nothing on which it depends for its existence.  For though it exists, it might not have.

Note also that to say that x exists contingently is not to say that x is actual at some times and not actual at other times.  (Even if everything that contingently exists exists at some times but not at all times, the contingency of what contingently exists does not consist in its existing at some but not all times.)  If one said that contingency is existence at some but not all times,  then one would have to say that x exists necessarily just in case x exists at all times.  Something that exists at all times, however, could well be contingent in a clear sense of this term, namely, possibly nonexistent.  For example, suppose the physical universe always existed and always will exist.  It doesn't follow that it necessarily exists (is impossibly nonexistent).  It would remain a contingent fact that it exists at all in the D2 sense.  And then there that are items that are not in time at all: numbers, Fregean propositions, and other 'abstracta.'  They exist necessarily without being temporally qualified.  Their necessity is not their existence at all times.

For example, my coffee cup exists now — how I know this is a separate epistemological question that I here ignore — but is possibly such that it does not exist now, where 'now' picks out the same time.  But how do I know that the cup is now possibly nonexistent?  That's my problem.

This is a variant of the problem of modal knowledge.  (See Notes on Van Inwagen on Modal Epistemology.) The cup is full, but it might not have been.  It is full of coffee, but it might have been full of whisky.  It is two inches from the ashtray, but it might have been three inches from it.  It exists now but it might not have existed now.  It has existed for 20 years; it might never have existed at all.  And so on.  I  can see that the cup is full, and I can taste that it contains coffee and not whisky.  But I cannot see or taste what doesn't exist (assuming that 'see' is being used as a verb of success), and the cup's being empty or the cup's containing whisky are non-obtaining states of affairs.  Thus there seems to be nothing for my modal knowledge to 'grab onto.'  

If I know that the cup exists contingently, then I know that it  is possibly nonexistent.  But how do I know the latter?

"You know it from your ability to conceive, without contradiction, of the cup's nonexistence."  This is not a good answer.  First of all, conceivability (without contradiction) does not entail possibility. Example here.  Does the conceivability of p raise the probability of p's being possible?  This is a strange notion.  Discussion here. 

If conceivability neither entails nor probabilifies possibility, then my question returns in full force: how does one know, of any being, that it is a contingent being?

"Well, you know from experience that things like coffee cups come into existence and pass out of existence. If you know that, then you know that such things do not exist of metaphysical necessity. For what exists of metaphysical necessity exists at all times, if it exists in time at all, and your coffee cup, which exists in time, does not exist at all times.  Now what does not exist of metaphysical necessity is metaphysically contingent.  Therefore, you know that coffee cups and such are contingent existents."

This argument may do the trick. To test it, I will set it forth as rigorously as possible.  To save keystrokes I omit universal quantifiers.

1. If x is a material thing, and x does not exist at all times, then x is not a necessary being (one whose nonexistence is broadly-logically impossible).
2. If x is not a necessary being, then x is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
Therefore
3. If x is a material thing, and x does not exist at all times, then x is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
4. My coffee cup is a material thing and it does not exist at all times.
Therefore
5. My cup is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
6. If x exists, then x is not impossible.
7. My cup exists.
Therefore
8. My cup is a contingent being.
9. I know that (8) because I know each of the premises, and (8) follows from the premises.

The inferences are all valid,  and the only premise that might be questioned is (1).  To refute (1) one needs an example of a material being that does not exist at all times that is a necessary being.  But I can't think of an example.

The argument just given seems to be a rigorous proof that there is at least one contingent (possibly nonexistent) existent.  But does it show that this existent is possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists? (The latter is the question I posed above.) 

Would it make sense to say that my cup, though not a necessary being, is necessarily existent at each time at which it exists?  If that makes sense, then my cup is contingent in that it might not have existed at all, but not contingent in the sense that at each time at which it exists it is possibly nonexistent.  Are these two propositions consistent:

a. x is contingent in that it might not have existed at all

and

b. x is not contingent in the sense of being possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists?

If (a) and (b) are consistent, then it appears that I have not proven that my cup is contingent in the sense of being possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists.  For then the above argument shows merely that the cup is contingent in that it might not have existed at all. 

Further Left Than Chomsky

"There is no further left than Chomsky.  Further left than Chomsky is Stalin."  (Dennis Prager,  just now, on his radio show.)  And Chomsky gets paid to speak on college campuses, he doesn't get pie in the face, and doesn't need a body guard.  But Ann Coulter and David Horowitz need body guards.  (Prager made these obvious points as well.)

There is scumbaggery on the Right, but it is far, far worse on the Left.  Anyone who disagrees with this I would consider so delusional as to be not worth talking to.

Value-Free Government?

Libertarians sometimes speak as if government could and ought to be value-free.  But value-free government is as impossible as value-free education.

Education cannot be value-free for the simple reason that all education, assuming it is not confused with indoctrination, presupposes that knowledge is a value and ignorance a disvalue.  If knowledge is a value then so is the pursuit of truth.  And if the pursuit of truth is a value, then the habits of mind and character the cultivation of which are conducive to the pursuit of truth are values as well.  Among these are truthfulness and intellectual honesty.  But truthfulness and intellectual honesty cannot be brought to bear in the quest for truth without diligence and self-control and respect for those who know better.  We could continue with this reflection but we have gone far enough to see that the notion of value-free education is nonsense.

Equally nonsensical is the notion of value-free government.  One would not be much of a libertarian if one did not hold liberty to be a value and (material) equality to be, if not a disvalue, then at least subordinate in the axiological hierarchy to liberty.  So libertarians have at least one value, liberty.  They advocate a government that allows its richest expression.  Anarchists, conservatives, liberals, fascists — they too have their characteristic values which they hope to promote when and if they gain power.

What I have said suffices to show that the notion of value-free government is nonsense.  The question is not whether values but which values.

Music = Dylan?

Jan cover Purdue  philosopher Jan Cover appears to maintain a Music = Dylan Identity Thesis. I wouldn't have gone that far even in the '60s. (Though I was a bit of a fanatic. I wrote for a high school 'underground' newspaper under the pen name 'Dylan's Disciple.') Cover's Dylan page is short but well worth a look.