Moral Objectivism, Mackie’s Argument from Queerness, and Alterational Change

Our old friend Vlastimil Vohanka from the Czech Republic asked me if moral objectivism is a respectable metaethical position.  It depends on what exactly moral objectivism is.  Let's first of all see if we can locate it on the metaethical map.  Then I take a quick look at Mackie's 'argument from queerness.'

Let's think about sentences like

   1. Slavery is a great moral evil.

Presumably anyone reading this blog will assent to (1) and also hold that everyone ought to assent to it.  So our question does not concern the ground-level acceptability of (1) which is here simply taken for granted.  Our concern is metaethical.

(1) is a grammatically indicative sentence that appears to predicate the property of being evil of an action-type or an institution-type.  If it puzzles you how an action-type can be evil, I say: an action-type is evil just in case actual or possible tokens (instances) of the type are evil.

But is (1) a fact-stating piece of discourse? If yes, then it has a truth-value. But note that if sentences like (1) are truth-valued, it  does not follow that some are true and others false. It might be that   they are all false, as on J. L. Mackie's Error Theory, which I won't discuss in this entry.  Now let's  introduce some terminology. 

Continue reading “Moral Objectivism, Mackie’s Argument from Queerness, and Alterational Change”

What is Man?

Angel still groping He is an animal, but also a spirit — and thus a riddle to himself. He reasons and speaks, he objectifies, he says 'I' and he means it. Thus he does not parrot the word 'I'; uttering 'I' he expresses self-awareness.  Man has a world (Welt), not merely an environment (Umwelt).  Man envisages a Higher Life, a higher destiny, whether within history or beyond it.  And then he puzzles himself over whether this is a mere fancy, a delusion, or whether it presages the genuine possibility of a higher life. 

More than an animal, he can yet sink lower than any animal which fact is a reverse index of his spiritual status.  He can as easily devote himself to scatology as to eschatology.  The antics of a Marquis de Sade are as probative of man's status as the life of a St. Augustine.

Kierkegaard writes that "every higher conception of life . . . takes the view that the task for men is to strive after kinship with the Deity . . . ."  (Attack Upon Christendom, p. 265)  We face the danger of "minimizing our own significance" as S. K. puts it, of selling ourselves short.  And yet how difficult it is to believe in one's own significance!  The problem is compounded by not knowing what one's significance is assuming that one has significance.  Not knowing  that it is or what it is, one cannot minimize it.

Kierkegaard solves the problem by way of his dogmatic and fideistic adherence to Christian anthropology and soteriology.  Undiluted Christianity is his answer.  My answer:   live so as to deserve immortality.  Live as if you have a higher destiny.  It cannot be proven, but the arguments against it can all be neutralized.  Man's whence and whither are shrouded in darkness and will remain so in this life.  Ignorabimus. In the final analysis you must decide what to believe and how to live.

You could be wrong, no doubt.  But if you are wrong, what have you lost?  Some baubles and trinkets.  If you say that truth will have been lost, I will ask you how you know that and why you think truth is a value in a meaningless universe.  I will further press you on the nature of truth and undermine your smug conceit that truth could exist in a meaningless wholly material universe.

The image is by Paul Klee, Engel noch tastend, angel still groping.   We perhaps are fallen angels, desolation angels, in the dark, but knowing that we are, and ever groping.

The Court of Philosophy

Philoponus makes a fascinating suggestion:
You know, your inquiry into burden-of-proof (BOP) has put the idea in my mind that we could, if we wanted, institute something like a “court of philosophy”.  Bear with me for paragraph—I don’t mean what follows as parody.
 
It would work like a civil action in which a claimant appears before a judge and files his motion: “I believe the following version of the Ontological Argument is sound and I will prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.” The judge examines the claimant's motion and informs him precisely what his BOP will be at trial with respect to each of the key premises of the argument. If the claimant agrees, the judge accepts the case. At this point the claimant must deposit a hefty bond with the court. It will be returned with interest if he carries his motion at trial but otherwise forfeited. The judge appoints a prosecutor/opponent who will argue against the claimant. A trial date is set and a jury of unbiased academics (philos?) seated.  At trial the claimant set out his thesis as the opening statement and the prosecutor attacks it. The claimant gets to respond. The prosecutor gets his redirect. Expert witnesses may even be called on technical points like modal logic. The judge decides when the back and forth has continued long enough and then charges the jury. “You will decide whether the claimant has proven his thesis beyond a reasonable doubt.”  The jury deliberates and reaches a verdict. “We the jury find that the claimant has not shown beyond a reasonable doubt that the Ontological Argument is sound.”
OK, I think we could do something like this. We could structure a philosophical debate like a civil action at law with clear assigned BOPs and a clear winner and loser. The question is, have we compromised anything essential or important about philosophical debate by imposing this kind of structure? Wouldn’t it be interesting to try this format and see what we get?  Accumulated “case” law from these trials might be highly instructive. For example, suppose a dozen people have tried to sustain the Ontological Argument and all have failed at trial.
You have been arguing in several posts that BOP doesn’t belong in philosophical debate as we know it. I agree, but the question I’m now asking you is whether we could do philosophy in the style of a civil action? And if we could, wouldn’t it be useful to try?

One important difference is that the dialectical situation in the court room is practical whereas the dialectical situation in the stoa or seminar room is theoretical.   By a dialectical situation I mean a context in which orderly rational discussion occurs among two or more competent and sincere interlocutors who share the goal of arriving as best they can at the truth about some matter, or of resolving some question in dispute. Legal and philosophical proceedings are both dialectical in this sense, but in the legal context the issue in dispute must be decided and in a timely manner, whereas in the philosophical context there is no need for a decision — a 'verdict' if you will — and also virtually no prospect of one. 

One way decisions are arrived at in the law is via presumptions.  Suppose Peter has one child, Paul, and no wife.  One day Peter vanishes and is not heard from by anyone for years. He leaves behind his house and various other assets.  Paul decides that he should inherit the assets.  But he cannot inherit his father's estate until the man is dead.  There is a question of fact here, the question whether Peter is dead or alive.  But there is no conclusive evidence either way.  The law deals with this via the presumption that a person who, without reasonable explanation, has not been heard from for at least seven years is dead.  Given this presumption, all that Paul or his attorney has to show is that he is Peter's only living heir and that the father has been incommunicado for seven years or more.  One can see from this example that the presumption makes possible the decision, and that without it no definite decision could be arrived at.

In philosophy, however, everything either is or can be called into question.  This is the glory of philosophy — but also its misery.  And so there is no room for presumptions and BOP-assignments in philosophy.  There is no room for judicial fiat of any kind.  One cannot just lay it down that, e.g., an ontology that posits n categories of entity is to be preferred to one that posits n + 1 categories.  In a court of law neither the law itself nor the procedural rules are on trial; but in philosophy, everything is 'on trial' including the most basic principles of logic. And so it comes as no surprise that nothing is ever decided in philosophy: no question is definitely answered, and no problem solved, to the satisfaction of all competent practioners.

And so I suggest that a court of philosophy would not be a court of philosophy.  For what would go on in that court would not be philosophy, but rather a sort of dogmatically  constrained quasi-philosophy.  One would get answers all right, but only because various arbitrary decisions had been made, decisions that would be philosophically questionable.

A Fine Essay on George Orwell

By Robert Gray, in The Spectator, here.  Excerpts:

Orwell, then, presented Catholics as either stupid or blinkered, dishonest or self-deceived. Yet he was very far from denying the need for religion. In his opinion socialists were quite wrong to assume that when basic material needs had been supplied, spiritual concerns would wither away. ‘The truth,’ Orwell wrote in 1944, ‘is the opposite: when one’s belly is empty, one’s only problem is an empty belly. It is when we have got away from drudgery and exploitation that we shall really start wondering about man’s destiny and the reason for his existence. One cannot have any worthwhile picture of the future unless one realises how much we have lost by the decay of Christianity.’

Exactly right.  Would that the point were appreciated by the so-called New Atheists and their cyberpunk acolytes.  Were they to rid the world of religion, what would they put in its place, to satisfy the needs of the spirit for meaning and point in the teeth of time and transition?

Prescriptive worldly counsel and other-worldly [hyphen added!] ideals were both anathema. ‘No doubt alcohol, tobacco and so forth are things that a saint must avoid,’ Orwell wrote in his essay on Gandhi, ‘but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.’ ‘The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.’

Part of what attracts me to Orwell is his intellectual honesty.  He sees the problem, one that superficial atheists and dogmatic believers alike often paper over.  The baubles and trinkets of this all-too- transient life cannot satisfy anyone with spiritual depth, which is presumably why Marxists and other leftist activists of a less superficial stripe  invent a pie-in-the-future ersatz which is even less believable than the promises of traditional religion.  But on the other hand, the dogmatic certainties projected by the will-to-believe flabbergast the critical intellect and appear as so many idols set up to avoid nihilism at all costs.

Yet seven months before Orwell died, he wrote to Buddicom, insisting that there must be some sort of afterlife. The letter, unfortunately, is lost, but Buddicom remembered that he had seemed to be referring not so much to Christian ideas of heaven and hell, but rather to a firm belief that ‘nothing ever dies’, that we must go on somewhere. This conviction seems to have stayed with him to the end: even if he did not believe in hell, he chose in his last weeks to read Dante’s Divine Comedy.

In his will Orwell had left directions that he should be buried according to the rites of the Church of England. Of course no one was better qualified to appreciate the beauty of the Book of Common Prayer; nevertheless the request surprised some of his admirers. A funeral was duly held at Christ Church in Albany Street; and David Astor, responsible for the arrangements, asked if his friend’s body might be interred in a country churchyard, at Sutton Courtenay, in Berkshire.

Appealing to both Right and Left, invoked by both, Orwell is owned by neither.  He was his own man, a maverick.  Hats off.

Texas Versus California

People are voting with their feet.  Voting with the feet and the wallet are more effective than casting ballots when it comes to expressing  views and punishing  enemies, not to mention voting with 'lead,' a last resort which, one hopes, will remain unnecessary.

Anthony Weiner at the Gym

It's good that he takes care of his body, but what's the thing about his thing?

It has been alleged that Weiner 'sexted' some of these photos to at least one woman.

So why does he continue to stick it out?  Elsewhere in these pages I speak of the Mighty Tetrad:  "Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below."  He won't resign because of the money, a salary of $174, 000 per annum plus benefits.  He won't resign because of the power of his office with its attendant privileges and perquisites.  Power, as Henry Kissinger once observed, is a strong aphrodisiac.  If it made old Henry attractive to the opposite sex think what it does for an in-shape dude like Weiner.  And besides being sex-obsessed, our boy is apparently also an attention whore.  In him the Mighty Tetrad achieves a particulalry twisted configuration.

He says he will seek 'treatment.'  A typical liberal, he would apply the disease model to everything including his morally reprehensible behavior.  He ought to man up, resign, and learn that, even in the Beltway,  manhood is not something located south of the belt line.

It is the control of the cock, more than its deployment, that makes the man.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Libations

The Champs,Tequila.  Arguably unique in that its lyrics consist of exactly one trisyllabic word. The Eagles, Tequila Sunrise.  Electric Flag, Wine.  Great video of the late Mike Bloomfield and his Gibson Les Paul in their prime.  Definitive proof that a Jew can play the blues. Canned Heat, Whisky-Headed Woman.  The Doors, Alabama (Whisky Bar). Johnny Cash, Beer Drinking Songs.  John Lee Hooker, One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer. Ray Charles, Let's Go Get Stoned.

I Lay in a Supply of Incandescent Light Bulbs

Virginia Postrel writes,

If you want to know why so many Americans feel alienated from their government, you need only go to Target and check out the light bulb aisle. Instead of the cheap commodities of yesteryear, you’ll find what looks like evidence of a flourishing, technology-driven economy.

There are “ultrasoft” bulbs promising “softer soft white longer life” light, domed halogens for “bright crisp light” and row upon row of Energy Smart bulbs — some curled in the by-now- familiar compact fluorescent form, some with translucent shells that reveal only hints of the twisting tubes within.

It seems to be a dazzling profusion of choice. But, at least in California, where I live, this plenitude no longer includes what most shoppers want: an inexpensive, plain-vanilla 100-watt incandescent bulb. Selling them is now illegal here. The rest of the country has until the end of the year to stock up before a federal ban kicks in. (I have a stash in storage.) Over the next two years, most lower-wattage incandescents will also disappear.

Read the rest.

Light Banned on the Left Coast in the People's Republic of Californication!  It figures. It's sad to see what has become of my native state.  But I am fortunate to flourish in Arizona where bright sun and hard rock and self-reliant liberty-lovers have a suppressive effect on the miasma of leftists.  So with a firm resolve to stick it to the nanny-staters I headed out this afternoon in my Jeep Liberty to Costco where not a single incandescent was to be had.  So I went to Lowe's and cleaned 'em out.  I bought four 24-packs.  Three packs were Sylvania 60W 130V A19's @ $10.03 per pack  and one pack was Sylvania 100W 130V A19's @12.02 per pack.  Total: $42.11 for 96 bulbs. That comes to less than 44 cents per bulb.

The 130 volt rating means that I will get plenty of life out of these bulbs at the expense of a negligible reduction in illumination.  A voltage check at a wall socket revealed that I'm running just a tad below 120 V.

Next Saturday I'll pay a visit to Home Despot Depot and add to my stock. 

And now I am remined of what were supposed to have been Goethe's last words: Licht, Licht, Mehr Licht!  Light, light, more light!

My Body and I

My body is my body and not my body's body.  So I am not my body.  I have a body.  This having, presumably sui generis and unlike any other type of having, is yet a having and not a being.  My body doesn't have a body.  I know that I have a body.  My body doesn't know this.  So again I am not my body.  'This body is this body' is a tautology. 'I am this body' is not a tautology. 

The human body is not a body in the sense of physics alone but an embodiment of subjectivity.  The body of the Other is the body of the Other.

Contra Husserl:  I cannot constitute Paul's body (Leib, nicht Koerper) as a lived body without first constituting him as an Other Mind.  So I cannot explain the constitution of the Other as Other by starting from the constitution of the body.  The Fifth of the Cartesian Meditations ends in shipwreck.

 

On Being Guilty and Being Found Guilty

Blogging has been good to me.  I have met a number of very interesting and intellectually stimulating characters via the blogosphere.  I had breakfast with four of them last Sunday morning: Peter L., Mike V., Carolyn M. and Seldom Seen Slim.  Topics included logic and existence, the concept of sin, the question why be moral, and the distinction between being guilty and being found guilty in a court of law.

Slim and I found ourselves in that dialectical situation known as a disputation or dispute.  Douglas N. Walton, a noted writer on informal logic, defines the term as follows. "A dispute is a dialogue in which one side affirms a certain proposition and the other side affirms the opposite (negation) of that proposition." (Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation, Cambridge UP, 2007, p. 60.)  I affirmed the proposition that to be found guilty/not guilty in a court of law is not the same as to be guilty/not guilty.  Slim affirmed the negation, namely, that to be found guilty/not guilty  is the same as to be guilty/not guilty.  The distinction strikes me a self-evident; but Slim denied it and I could not budge him from his position. 

While thinking further about the matter yesterday, the following argument occurred to me which strikes me as decisive.

Here are two questions we can ask with respect to burden-of-proof (BOP) considerations as they figure in our legal system.  First, why is a BOP assigned at all?  (One can imagine courtroom proceedings in which no BOP is assigned.) Second, why is it assigned to the prosecutor/plaintiff?  Part of the answer to the first question is because a decision must be made, a question resolved, a dispute adjudicated — and in a timely manner.  If there is no presumption on one side or the other, or, correlatively, no BOP assigned to the other side or the one, then in cases where the evidence is evenly balanced or unclear a decision might be not be achievable in a reasonable time.  But why lay the BOP on the state or the plaintiff or their respective representatives?  At least part of the answer to this second question is that we collectively judge it to be better that a guilty person go free than that an innocent person be wrongly convicted.

Now if Slim grants me this obvious point, then I have all I need to refute his assertion.  To prefer that a guilty man go free than that an innocent man be penalized and in some cases executed  is precisely to presuppose my distinction between being guilty/not guilty  and being found guilty/not guilty in a court of law.  He who denies this distinction removes the main reason for the presumption of innocence, a central pillar of our legal system.

Apparently, Slim thinks there is no objective fact of the matter as to whether or not a person accused of a crime is guilty of it or not.  He seems to think that a guilty verdict or an acquittal is what makes one either guilty or not guilty.  To my mind this is utterly preposterous.  It elides the obvious distinction between a fallible judgment about the way things are and the way things are.

My point goes through even if there is no distinction betweem morality and legality.  Suppose there is no distinction between a morally wrong killing of a human being  and a legally wrong killing of a human being, that the former collapses into the latter.  (Someone who holds this could argue that abortion is legal and so ipso facto moral.)  Even so, either Jones killed Smith in a legally proscribed manner or he did not — regardless of a court's verdict.  There are hard facts about what the law proscribes, and there are hard facts about Jones' behavior in relation to Smith.  Those two sets of fact taken together determine whether he is guilty or not guilty.

There is only one way I can imagine my distinction collapsing.  In the divine court, if such there be, there cannot be any discrepancy between being found guilty and being guilty, nor between being found innocent and being innocent.  The distinction would hold only on the intensional plane; extensionally there would be no possibility of a person beng found guilty/not guilty and being guilty/not guilty.  Here below, however, we are stuck with fallible courts.  And it is a curious form of idolatry to suppose that our fallible courts can do what only the divine court can do.

Why Doesn’t Anthony Weiner Quit?

Or:  Why does he stick it out?  One reason is that he's a Dem and Dems as a group, when compared to Republicans as a group, are shameless.  But the main reason is very simple:

Weiner has also complained to friends that he wasn’t sure how he would make a living if he were to leave Congress and its $174,000 annual salary. "He’s worried about money and how to pay his bills," said a Democratic insider. "He’s very concerned about that."

$174,000!  To do what?  Basically to perpetuate a system whose main goal is the protection of its members' own power, privileges, and perquisites. For far too many pols these days government is nothing more than their hustle, a hustle like any other.

Yet another argument for limited government. 

When it comes to Weiner's 'sexting' of his love engine, bigger is better.  But when it comes to government, bigger is not better.  Wise up, liberals.