Frank Brady’s End Game Reviewed

It is hard to believe that Bobby Fischer has been dead three years already.  He died on 17 January 2008.   Last night I saw Frank Brady on C-Span's Book Notes.  Brady was pitching his new book End Game which tells the rest of the Fischer story.  I will definitely be on the lookout for it in the used book bins.  Here is an NYT review.  And here is another.

The Decline of Liberalism

Conrad Black provides some historical perspective.  A balanced assessment as the following excerpt demonstrates:

Roosevelt's social programs were left essentially unaltered for 20 years after he died, until President Lyndon Johnson cut taxes while expanding the social ambitions of the federal government with his Great Society War on Poverty, and massive job retraining efforts, coupled to great and long-delayed advances in civil rights. Kennedy and Johnson favored civil rights more actively than had their predecessors, and backed conservatives into pious humbug about the Constitution not allowing for federal imposition of voting rights and official social equality for African Americans. Johnson overcame that opposition and it was one of liberalism's finest hours. But the long Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower consensus frayed badly when Johnson, who had been a congressman during the New Deal years, determined to take it a long step further and proposed a policy extravaganza that promised to buy the end of poverty through social investment. As all the world knows, it was a disaster that destroyed the African American family and severely aggravated the welfare and entitlements crises.

 

Toleration of Vandalism and the Difference Between Conservatives and Liberals

I sometimes speak of the difference between conservatives and liberals as a 'planetary' one: conservatives and liberals 'live on different planets.'  This Dennis Prager column on graffiti and its toleration by the  tolerate-anything-except-common-sense-and-conservatives Left will help you understand the 'planetary' difference. 

In Defense of Modes of Being: Substance and Accident

The 'thin' conception of being or existence, lately explained, entails that there are no modes of being. Most analytic philosophers accept the thin conception and reject modes of being. Flying in the face of analytic orthodoxy, I maintain that the modes-of-being doctrine is defensible. Indeed, I should like to say something stronger, namely, that it is indispensable for metaphysics.

My task in this series of posts is not to specify what the modes of being are, but the preliminary one of defending the very idea of there being different modes of being. So I plan to look at a range of   examples without necessarily endorsing the modes of being they  involve.  Against van Inwagen (see post linked above), I maintain that no mistake is made by partisans of the thick conception.  They do not, pace van Inwagen, illicitly transfer what properly belongs to the nature of a thing to its existence.

This post focuses on substances and accidents and argues that an accident and a substance of which it is the accident differ in their very mode of being, and not merely in their respective natures.

1. Intuitively, some items exist on their own while others are dependent in their existence on items that exist on their own. Smiles, grimaces, frowns, white caps, carpet bulges are items that exist, but
not on their own. They need — as a matter of metaphysical necessity — faces, waves, and carpets to exist in. This suggests some definitions:

D1. S is a (primary) substance =df S is metaphysically capable of independent existence.

D2. A is an accident =df A is not metaphysically capable of independent existence, but exists, if it exists, in a substance.

By 'metaphysically' I mean broadly logically in Plantinga's sense. So if a particular statue is a substance, then it is broadly logically possible that it exist even if nothing else exists. And if the smoothness or color of the statue are accidents, then it is broadly logically impossible that they exist (i) apart from some substance or other and indeed (ii) apart from the very substance of which they are the accidents.

The second point implies that accidents are particulars, not universals. Accidents cannot be shared. They are not 'repeatable' in the manner of universals. Nor can they 'migrate' from one substance to   another. You can't catch my cold if my cold is an accident of me as substance. Your cold is your numerically distinct cold. Socrates' whiteness is his whiteness and is as such numerically distinct from   Plato's whiteness. The connection between a substance and its accidents is an intimate one.

2. Now suppose there is a substance S and an accident A of S. I do not deny that there is a sense of 'exist' according to which both S and A  exist.  Suppose that S and A are the only two items that exist. Then of course there is a sense in which both items exist: each is something and not nothing. Both are there to be quantified over. We can say '(Ex)(x = S)' and '(Ex)(x = A)':  'Something is (identically) S' and 'Something is (identically) A.'

3. Now the issue is this: Does what I said in #2 exhaust what there is to be said about the being or existence of S and A? On the thin conception, that is all there is to it. To be is to be something or   other. If there are substances and accidents then both are in the same sense and in the same mode. ('Sense' a semantic term; 'mode' an ontological term.) Since S and A both exist in the same way on the thin conception, they are not distinguished by their mode of being.  They are distinguished by their respective natures alone.

4. In order to see what is wrong with the thin conception, let us ask how the two entities S and A are related. Indeed, can one speak of a relation at all? Traditionally, one speaks of inherence: A inheres in   S. Inherence cannot be an external relation since if a and b are externally related, then a and b can each exist apart from the relation. But A cannot exist apart from the inherence 'relation' to S. On the other hand, if S and A were internally related, then neither  could exist without the other. But S can exist without A. Since S can exist without A, but A cannot exist without S, A is existentially  dependent on S, dependent on S for its very existence, while S is capable of independent existence. But this is just to say that A  exists in a different way than S exists. Thus S and A differ in their  modes of being. One cannot make sense of inherence without  distinguishing substantial and accidental modes of being.

5. In sum: Talk of substances and their accidents is intelligible. But it is intelligible only if there are two modes of being, substantial and accidental. Therefore, talk of modes of being is intelligible. Since the thin conception of being entails that there cannot be modes of being, that the very idea is unintelligible, the thin conception ought to be rejected.

Truth and Consolation

Nothing is true because it is consoling, but that does not preclude certain truths from being consoling.  So one cannot refute a position by showing that some derive consolation from it.  Equally, no support for a position is forthcoming from the fact that it thwarts our interests or dashes our hopes.

We Get What We Deserve

It is perhaps only fitting that fiscally irresponsible people should get a fiscally irresponsible government. Before blaming stupid legislators and greedy lenders, take a hard look into the mirror.  At least the person staring back at you is a person over whose behavior you have some control.

Husserl, Knight of Reason

Ich muss meinen Weg gehen so sicher, so fest entschlossen und so ernst wie Duerers Ritter, Tod und Teufel. (Edmund Husserl, "Persoenliche Aufzeichnungen" )  "I must go my way as surely, as seriously, and as resolutely as the knight in Duerer's Knight, Death, and Devil." (tr. MavPhil)  Note the castle on the hill, the hour glass in the devil's hand, the serpents entwined in his headpiece, and the human skull on the road. 

Time is running out, death awaits, and a mighty task wants completion.

Duerer_-_ritter2c_tod_und_teufel_28der_reuther294

The Philosophizing Hiker: The Derivative Intentionality of Trail Markers

IMG_0303 You are out hiking and the trail becomes faint and hard to follow. You peer into the distance and see what appear to be three stacked rocks. Looking a bit farther, you see another such stack. Now you are confident which way the trail goes. Your confidence increases as further cairns come into view. On what does this confidence rest?

Your confidence is based on your taking the rock piles as other than merely natural formations. You take them as providing information about the trail's direction, which is to say that you to take them as trail markers, as meaning something, as about something distinct from themselves, as exhibiting intentionality, to use a philosopher's term of art.

Of course, the rock piles might have come into existence via purely natural causes: a rainstorm might have dislodged some rocks with gravity plus other purely material factors accounting for their placement. Highly unlikely, but nomologically possible. But please note that if you believe that the cairns originated in that way, then you could not take them as embodying information about the direction of the trail. It would be irrational in excelsis to hold both that (i) these rock piles came about randomly; and that (ii) these rock piles inform us of the trail's direction.

So if you take the rock piles as trail markers, then you take them as other than merely natural formations caused to exist by natural causes. You take the stacking and the placement as expressive of the purposes of a trail-blazer or trail-maintainer, an intelligent being who had it in mind to convey information to himself and others concerning the direction of the trail. This shows that any intentionality embodied in the cairns is derivative rather than intrinsic. The rock piles in and of themselves do not inform us of the trail's direction. They provide us this information only if we take them as embodying the purposes of an intelligent being. Of course, my taking of rock piles as embodying the purposes of an intelligent being does not entail that they do in fact embody the purposes of an intelligent being. But in most cases my ascription of a purpose corresponds to a purpose: I ascribe a purpose and the rock piles do in fact embody a purpose.

Thus there are two streams of intrinsic intentionality converging on the same object, one emanating from me, the other from the trail-maintainer.  The latter's embodying of his purpose in the cairn construction is a case of intrinsic intentionality.  And when I take the rock piles as embodying the trail-maintainer's purpose thereby ascribing to the rock piles a purpose, that too is a case of intrinsic intentionality.

The ascribing of a purpose and the embodying of a purpose are usually 'in sync.' There are rock piles that have no meaning and rock piles that have meaning. But no rock pile has intrinsic meaning. And the same goes for any material item or configuration of material items no matter how complex. No such system has intrinsic meaning; any meaning it has is derived. The meaning is derived either from an intelligent being who ascribes meaning to the material system, or from an intelligent being whose purposes are embodied in the material system, or both.

Thus I am rejecting the view that meaning could inhere in material systems apart from relations to minds that are intrinsically intentional, minds who are original Sinn-ers, if you will, original mean-ers. We are all of us Sinn-ers, every man Jack of us, original Sinn-ers,  but our Sinn-ing is not mortal but vital.  Intentionality is our very lifeblood as spiritual beings.

I am rejecting the view that any sort of isomorphism, no matter how abstract, could make the rock piles mean or represent the trail's direction. No doubt there is an isomorphism: the trail goes where the cairns go. No one cairn resembles the trail to any appreciable extent; but the cairns taken collectively do resemble the trail. Unfortunately, the trail also resembles the cairns. But the trail does not represent the cairns.

Representation is most of the time asymmetrical; but resemblance is always symmetrical. I conclude that resemblance cannot constitute representation. Note also that the cairns might resemble things other than the trail. Thus the cairns taken collectively might resemble the path of a subterranean gopher tunnel directly below the trail and following it exactly. But obviously, the cairns do not mark this gopher tunnel. Note also that isomorphism is not sensitive to the difference between rocks whose stacking is artificial, i.e., an artifact of a purposive agent, and rocks whose stacking came about via random purely natural processes. But it is only if the stacking is artificial that the stacks would mean anything. And if the stacking is artificial/artifactual, then there is a purposive agent possessing intrinsic intentionality.

Mind is king.  Naturalists need to wise up.

Auto-Antonyms

An auto-antonym is a word that has two meanings, one the opposite of the other.  'Fearful' is an example.  According to Michael Gilleland, who inspired this copy-cat post,

The Oxford English Dictionary defines fearful as both "causing fear; inspiring terror, reverence, or awe; dreadful, terrible, awful" and "frightened, timorous, timid, apprehensive."

There is much more on this topic at Dr. Gilleland's site. 

There must be some philosophical terms that exhibit the auto-antonymic property.  How about 'objective reality'?  Suppose someone were to start talking about the objective reality of the God-idea. You would naturally take him to be raising the question whether there exists anything corresponding to this idea.  But if a Descartes scholar were to speak of the objective reality (realitas objectiva) of the God-idea he would mean something nearly the opposite:  he would be speaking of the representative content of the idea itself,  a content that is what it is whether or not anything corresponds to the idea.

Thin (Analytic) and Thick (Continental) Conceptions of Being and the Question of Modes of Being

1. Peter van Inwagen maintains, quite rightly, that "One of the most important divisions between 'continental' and 'analytic' philosophy has to do with the nature of being." (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge UP 1981, p. 4) Analysts favor a 'thin' conception while  Continentals favor a 'thick' one. Although van Inwagen's claim is essentially correct, there are broadly analytic philosophers such as myself and Barry Miller who defend a 'thick' conception. In any case, let's set aside the (unprofitable) question of the difference between the two schools the better to focus on the substantive question of the nature of being or existence.

 2. I sometimes refer to the thin conception as the 'Fressellian' conception. 'Fressell' is a cute amalgam of the names 'Frege' and 'Russell.' We can add Quine to the mix and speak of the deflationary account of being (existence) of Frege, Russell, and Quine. This is without a doubt the dominant 20th century analytic approach to existence. (Neo-Meinongians such as Hector-Neri Castaneda and Panayot   Butchvarov suggested a theory of existence in terms of consubstantiation (HNC) and material identity (PB) but these ideas found little resonance.)

So what is the thin conception? "The thin conception of being is this: the concept of being is closely allied with the concept of number: to say that there are Xs is to say that the number of Xs is 1 or more — and to say nothing more profound, nothing more interesting, nothing more." (p. 4) Connoisseurs of this arcana will recognize it as pure Frege:

     . . . existence is analogous to number. Affirmation of existence is
     in fact nothing but denial of the number nought. (Gottlob Frege,
     Foundations of Arithmetic, 65e)

'Cats exist,' then, says that the number of cats is one or more. Equivalently, it says that the concept cat has one or more instances.  Existence, as Frege puts it, is "a property of concepts." It is the property of being instantiated. Since individuals, by definition, cannot be instantiated, it follows that existence cannot be predicated of individuals. This has repercussions for some versions of the ontological argument: "Because existence is a property of concepts, the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down."  (Frege, 65e)

3. That, in a nutshell, is the 'thin' or deflationary conception of being or existence. Existence is instantiation.  Variations on this theme are Russell's asseveration that existence is a property of propositional functions, and Quine's claim that existence is what existential quantification expresses. Van Inwagen says the following in defense of the thin conception:

     . . . it is possible to distinguish between the being and the
     nature of a thing — any thing; anything — and that the thick
     conception of being is founded on the mistake of transferring what
     belongs properly to the nature of a chair — or of a human being or
     of a universal or of God — to the being of the chair. To endorse
     the thick conception of being is, in fact, to make . . . the very
     mistake of which Kant accused Descartes: the mistake of treating
     being as a 'real predicate.' (pp. 4-5)

What van Inwagen is saying is that, for any x, one can distinguish between the existence of x and the nature of x, but that there is nothing one can say about the existence or being of x beyond what Frege and Co. have said. In particular, one cannot say that individuals of one sort exist in a different way than individuals of a different sort. The thin conception, in other words, allows no room for a plurality of modes of being: God, a chair, a number, a human being, a rattle snake, and a rock all are in the same sense and in the same way (mode).  But it would be better to say that on the thin conception there are no modes of existence than to say that there is exactly one mode common to all.  One cannot make a tripartite distinction among nature, existence, and mode of existence, but only a bipartite distinction between nature and existence. 

If this is right, then Heidegger is wrong: he famously distinguishes among several modes of Being (Seinsweisen) in Being and Time, most prominently among them: Existenz, the Being of those beings that we are; Zuhandenheit, the Being of tools, and Vorhandenheit, the Being of things of nature. J-P Sartre's distinction of being in-itself and being for-itself also falls if there can be no modes of being.

Indeed, much of classical metaphysics from Plato to Bradley bites the dust without a doctrine of modes of being. We have recently observed, for example, how the Thomist theory of intentionality requires a distinction between two modes of being, esse intentionale and esse naturale.  Roughly, a form that exists in a tree, say, with esse naturale also exists in a mind that knows the tree with esse intentionale.

To take another example, how are we to make sense of Aristotle's distinction between primary   substances and their accidents if there are no modes of being? Substances exist in themselves while accidents exist in another, namely, in substances. These are distinct modes of being. Substances and accidents both exist, but they exist in different ways. To take yet another example, for Aquinas, essence and existence are diverse in creatures but not in God. This is a difference in mode of being. God  exists a se, while creatures exist ab alio. God exists from himself  while creatures exist from another, namely, God.  Many other examples could be given.

4. Van Inwagen  uses 'mistake' twice in the above quotation. Having made a hard-and-fast distiction between the existence of a thing and its nature, van Inwagen  proclaims it to be a mistake to think that there are ways of existing. Having decided that existence is devoid of content, he asserts that it is a mistake to import any content into it. Well sure!  — but that blatantly begs the question. 

One should be very skeptical when one philosopher accuses another of making a 'mistake' given how easily the tables can be turned.  For a defender of the thick conception could just as easily accuse   Fressellians of making a mistake, the mistake of confusing general existence and singular existence.  

Compare 'Philosophers exist' and 'Socrates exists.' The former makes a claim of general existence or instantiation: it is plausibly construed as expressing the instantiation of the concept philosopher, as saying that the number of philosophers is one or more. But if this is all there is to existence, if existence if just a concept's being instantiated, then existence cannot be predicated of individuals, and 'Socrates exists' becomes meaningless. This is a conclusion Frege and Russell both explicitly draw. But obviously 'Socrates exists' is not  meaningless. We can and do predicate existence of individuals. When I say 'I exist,' I predicate existence of myself. If Frege's view were correct, then not only would the ontological argument "break down," the Cartesian cogito would also "break down." So there has to be something wrong with the Fresselian analysis.

There are many complicated issues here which I discuss in A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer, 2002), but at the moment I am suggesting that there is something superficial and unphilosophical about taxing the thick conception with 'mistakes' — the mistakes of importing content into being and of thinking that being can be predicated of individuals — when the thin conception can just as easily be accused of resting on 'mistakes.' Dealing as we are with two radically opposed approaches to being, it is is very strange to think  that either could rest on simple 'mistakes.' "How stupid of me not to notice that existence cannot be predicated of individuals! What was I thinking?"

Note also that if a first-level concept is instantiated, then it is instantiated by an individual, and indeed by one that exists — assuming you do not want to go the route of Meinong. So we are brought right back to singular existence, the existence of individuals. How then can existence be identified with the instantiation of concepts?

And once you see that existence does belong to individuals, contra the Fressellians, the way is clear to ask how an individual is related to its existence and to distinguish between different ways of existing.

5. Now what exactly is that 'mistake' that van Inwagen accuses the modes-of-being theorists of making?   It is the mistake of transferring what properly belongs to the  nature of an F to the existence of an F.  (See quotation above.) Compare a felt pain (of the sort caused by a stubbing of a bare toe on a large rock) and a rock.  The esse of the pain is its percipi.  But the esse of the rock, pace the good bishop,  is not.  So I say: the mode of being of the pain is different from the mode of being of the rock.  Van Inwagen would have to say that I illicitly transferred what properly belongs to the nature of a particular pain to its existence.  But I fail to see how it is part of the nature or qualitative character of that pain that its esse be percipi.  A pleasure quale has a totally different nature and yet its mode of being is the same. 

If any mistakes are being made here, they are being made by van Inwagen.  There is first of all the mistake of confusing general existence (existence as instantiation) with singular existence.  You could call this the mistake of failing to grasp that the Frege-Russell-Quine theory of existence is untenable.  There is also the mistake of thinking that the two putative mistakes he mentions  in the passage quoted are the same mistake.  If it is a mistake to think that existence belongs to individuals, then surely that is a different mistake from the mistake of thinking that there are modes of existence.  For one could hold that existence belongs to individuals without holding that there are different modes of singular existence.

But talk of  'mistakes' in philosophy is best avoided except in a few really clear cases which are usually of a logical sort.