. . .what might they have been called?
* Thales of Miletus: View from the Bottom of a Well
* Anaximander of Miletus: Indeterminate Musings
* Anaximenes of Miletus: Just Another Airhead Gassing Off
* Xenophanes of Colophon: Tales of Wickedness in High Places
* Heraclitus of Ephesus: The Upload and the Download are the Same.
(MP originals)
. . .what might it have been called? The Regina Monologues. (An MP original.)
Have you ever wondered why the elites support mass immigration? See here.
Maverick Philosopher doesn't celebrate anything as politically correct as Earth Day. Maverick Philosopher celebrates critical thinking. So I refer you to William Cronon's The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. A rich and subtle essay. Excerpt:
Many environmentalists who reject traditional notions of the Godhead and who regard themselves as agnostics or even atheists nonetheless express feelings tantamount to religious awe when in the presence of wilderness—a fact that testifies to the success of the romantic project. Those who have no difficulty seeing God as the expression of our human dreams and desires nonetheless have trouble recognizing that in a secular age Nature can offer precisely the same sort of mirror.
To put (roughly the same) point with Maverickian aphoristic pithiness: Nature for the idolaters of the earth is just as much an unconscious anthropomorphic projection as the God of the Feuerbachians.
Thus it is that wilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest. The critique of modernity that is one of environmentalism’s most important contributions to the moral and political discourse of our time more often than not appeals, explicitly or implicitly, to wilderness as the standard against which to measure the failings of our human world. Wilderness is the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It is a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives. Most of all, it is the ultimate landscape of authenticity. Combining the sacred grandeur of the sublime with the primitive simplicity of the frontier, it is the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are—or ought to be.
Alan Rhoda e-mails:
In a recent post you write:
The objector is inviting us to consider the possible situation in which beings like us do not exist and no truths either. The claim that this situation is possible, however, is equivalent to the claim that it is true that this situation is possible.
I think there's a mistake here. In general, p does not entail it is true that p. The envisioned scenario is a case in point. The sense in which the situation is admitted to be possible is purely negative in that absent truths, no contradiction results. To say, however, that it is true that the situation is possible, where truths are supposed to depend on cognizers, requires that the situation be possible in a positive sense, i.e., it requires that something be the case, not merely that contradictions not be the case.
Thanks, Alan. Let's rehearse the dialectic. I argued in a standard self-referential way that *There are truths* is not just true, but necessarily true. (For *There are no truths,* if true is false, and if false is false, hence is necessarily false, so its negation is necessarily true.) I then asked whether the necessity of its truth is unconditional or rests on a condition such as the existence of thinking beings. (In other words: is the necessity of truth merely a transcendental presupposition without which we cannot operate as thinking beings, or is the necessity of there being truths metaphysically grounded in rerum natura?) If the existence of truths is merely a transcendental presupposition, then it would seem that the following scenario is possible: there are no thinking beings and no truths either. If this scenario is possible, then the necessity of *There are truths* would be conditional. I then tried to show that the scenario is not possible by invoking the principle Necessarily, for any p, p –> it is true that p. My thought was that if it is possible that there be no thinking beings and no truths either, then it is true that this is possible. But if it is true that this is possible, then it is true independently of what anyone thinks. But then truth as something more than a transcendental presupposition is being presupposed.
I am afraid I don't understand your criticism of the reasoning. The principle p –> it is true that p strikes me as self-evident. Its 'intellectual luminosity,' if you will, will trump any putative counterexample. If snow is white, then it is true that snow is white; if grass is green, then it is true that grass is green; if it is possible that no thinkers and no truths exist, then it is true that it is possible that no truths and no thnkers exist. Now the point is that this last truth says how things are in a situation in which no thinkers exist; therefore it is a truth that cannot exist only if thinkers exist. It exists whether or not thinkers exist.
You write, "The sense in which the situation is admitted to be possible is purely negative in that absent truths, no contradiction results." I don't follow you. The situation is possible assuming that truth is a mere transcendental presupposition. Now suppose the possibility is actual. Then it will be true both that it is possible and that it is actual. So once again truth cannot be a mere transcendental presupposition.
You then say, " To say, however, that it is true that the situation is possible, where truths are supposed to depend on cognizers, requires that the situation be possible in a positive sense, i.e., it requires that something be the case, not merely that contradictions not be the case." But I am not claiming that truths are dependent on cognizers; I am refuting that view. If the existence of truths depends on cognizers, and cognizers exist contingently, then it is possible that there be no truths. But this is not possible since if, per impossibile, it were the case that there are no truths, then this would be the case, i.e., would be true.
The ComBox is open if you want to discuss this further.
Insightful commentary on the Biblical elements in Dylan's work. Here and here.
While you're at it, check out his commentary on the New Atheists.
In this post I first try to get clear about the truthmaker theory of predication proposed by Michael Bergmann and Jeffrey E. Brower in their A Theistic Argument Against Platonism. I then try to understand how it solves a certain problem in the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). Finally, I raise a question about the authors' solution.
The truthmaker theory of predication is a rival to the following theory of predication which, with a little inaccuracy, we can label 'Platonistic' so as to have a handy label:
P: The truth of all true predications, or at least of all true predications of the form "a is F", is to be explained in terms of a subject and an exemplifiable (however exemplifiables are themselves to be conceived). (p. 7)
This post will not address the authors' impressive theistic argument against P. For present purposes we can assume that it is sound the better to evaluate the alternative which Bergmann and Brower put as follows:
P*: The truth of all
true predications, or at least of all true predications of the form "a is F", is to be explained in terms of truthmakers. (p. 25)
To appreciate how the two theories differ, consider the proposition expressed by the true essential predication, 'God is divine.' The Platonistic theory explains the truth of this proposition in terms of the subject God and the exemplifiable, the property of being divine. The proposition is true because the subject exemplifies the property. By contrast, the truthmaker theory of predication explains the proposition's truth in terms of its truthmaker. Three questions: What is a truthmaker? What is the truthmaker of the proposition *God is divine*? What exactly is the difference between P and P*? The authors offer the following as a "partial analysis" of the notion of a truthmaker:
TM: If an entity E is a truthmaker for a predication P, then 'E exists' entails the truth expressed by P. (p. 22)
From TM and the fact that 'God is divine' is an essential predication it can be inferred that the truthmaker of this truth is God himself. For 'God exists' entails the truth expressed by 'God is divine.' This is because there is no possible world in which God exists and the proposition in question is not true. Thus God himself suffices as truthmaker for 'God is divine,' and there is no need for an exemplifiable entity or a concrete state of affairs (the subject's exemplifying of the exemplifiable entity.) This allows us to appreciate the difference between the Platonistic and the truthmaker theories of predication. The first, but not the second, requires that the explanation of a truth's being true invoke a subject and an exemplifiable. On the truthmaker theory it is not the case that every predication is such that its explanation requires the positing of a subject and an exemplifiable. The subjects of all essential predications of the form a is F suffice as truthmakers of the propositions expressed by these predications.
In the case of such accidental predications as 'Tom is tired,' the truthmaker cannot be Tom by himself, as the authors appreciate. (p. 26) Neither Tom nor Tom's existence nor *Tom exists* necessitates the truth of 'Tom is tired.' On one approach, the truthmaker of true accidental predications is a concrete state of affairs. On another, the truthmaker is a trope. I think it follows that P is a special case of P*. I don't find the authors stating this but it seems to be a clear implication of what they do say. According to the truthmaker theory of predication, the truth of every true affirmative monadic predication, whether essential or accidental, is explained by a truthmaker, an entity which can belong to any ontological category. The Platonistic theory is the special case in which the truthmaker either is or involves an exemplifiable. (A special case of this is the case in which the truthmaker is a concrete state of affairs.) The truthmaker theory is more general because it allows for truthmakers that neither are nor involve exemplifiables.
Application to Divine Simplicity
One of the entailments of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is that there is no distinction between God and his attributes. Thus God is (identical to) his goodness, his power, etc. We have discussed the motivation for this doctrine in earlier posts. But how could an individual be identical to its attributes or properties? If God is identical to one of his properties, such as the property of being divine, then it follows that he is a property or exemplifiable — which is absurd. It is absurd because God is a person and persons are not exemplifiable entities. But if the truthmaker theory of predication is correct, then there is a way to make coherent sense of the notion that God is identical to his nature, goodness, power, wisdom, and other such attributes.
Consider 'God is his omnipotence.' If the abstract singular term 'God's omnipotence' is taken to refer to a property, then we get the unacceptable consequence that God is identical to a property. Proponents of the truthmaker theory of predication, however, can maintain that the referents of abstract singular terms are truthmakers. Accordingly, 'God's omnipotence' and 'God's divinity' refer respectively to the truthmakers of 'God is omnipotent' and 'God is divine' respectively. Because both of these predications are essential, the truthmaker of both is God himself. To say that God is identical to his omnipotence is to say that the referent of 'God' is identical to the referent of 'God's omnipotence.' And that amounts to the unproblematic claim that God is identical to God.
A Question
The authors have shown us a way to demonstrate the coherence of 'God is identical to his divinity' assuming we are prepared to accept P* and TM. But I wonder whether their demonstration 'proves too much.' Consider the parallel but presumably incoherent 'Socrates is identical to his humanity.' We now must ask whether the strategy that works in the case of God also works in the case of Socrates. If it does, then the radical difference between God and creature, which is part of the motivation for DDS, will not have been properly accommodated.
The authors will grant that Socrates is truthmaker enough for (the propositions expressed by) all essential predications about him. Thus Socrates himself makes true 'Socrates is human' by TM. Because they hold P* they will grant that no exemplifiable need be invoked to explain 'Socrates is human.' We needn't say that this is true because Socrates exemplifies the property of being human; we can say that it is true because 'Socrates' and 'Socrates humanity' have the same referent, namely Socrates. But then does it not follow that Socrates is ontologically simple, at least in respect of such essential predicates as 'human,' 'rational,' and the like? Does it not follow that Socrates is identical to his humanity, his rationality, animality, etc.? Rhetorical questions aside, I am arguing as follows:
a. Socrates is the truthmaker of 'Socrates is human' and like essential predications. (From TM)
b. Socrates is the referent of both 'Socrates' and 'Socrates' humanity.' (From P*) Therefore:
c. Socrates is identical to Socrates' humanity. (From b)
But we surely do not want to say that Socrates is identical to his humanity, rationality, etc. which would imply that his humanity, rationality,etc. are identical to one another. Socrates, unlike God, is a metaphysically composite being. So something appears to have gone wrong. The Bergmann-Brower approach appears to 'prove too much.' Their approach seems to imply what is false, namely, that both God and Socrates are ontologically simple in respect of their essential attributes.
A reader from Down Under poses this question:
America is experiencing immigration problems somewhat like Australia's. The idea of 'multiculturalism' some would say is beginning to show its flaws. Who do you believe should be allowed to enter your country? Please feel free to be as politically incorrect as you like.
1. First of all, one must insist on a distinction that many on the Left willfully ignore, that between legal and illegal immigration. (Libertarians also typically elide the distinction.) Legal and illegal immigration are separate, logically independent, issues. To oppose illegal immigration, as any right-thinking person must, is not to oppose legal immigration. So, to answer one of your questions, no one should be allowed to enter illegally. But why exactly? What's wrong with illegal immigration? Aren't those who oppose it racists and xenophobes and nativists? Doesn't everyone have a right to migrate wherever he wants?
2. The most general reason for not allowing illegal immigration is precisely because it is illegal. If the rule of law is to be upheld, then reasonable laws cannot be allowed to be violated with impunity simply because they are difficult to enforce or are being violated by huge numbers of people. Someone who questions the value of the rule of law is not someone it is wise to waste time debating.
3. There are several sound specific reasons for demanding that the Federal government exercise its legitimate, constitutionally grounded (see Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. constitution) function of securing the national borders, and none of these reasons has anything to do with racism or xenophobia or nativism or any other derogatory epithet that slanderous leftists and libertarians want to attach to those of us who can think clearly about this issue.
There are reasons having to do with national security in an age of terrorism. There are reasons having to do with assimilation, national identity, and comity. There are considerations of fairness in respect of those who have entered the country legally by satisfying the requirements of so doing. There are reasons having to do with the importation of contraband substances into the country. There are reasons having to do with increased crime. Last but not least, there are reasons pertaining to public health. With the concern over avian influenza, we have all the more reason to demand border control.
Borders are a body politic's immune system. Unregulated borders are deficient immune systems. Diseases that were once thought to have been eradicated have made a comeback north of the Rio Grande due to the unregulated influx of population. These diseases include tuberculosis, Chagas disease, leprosy, Dengue fever, polio, and malaria.
You will have noticed how liberals want to transform into public health issues problems that are manifestly not public but matters of private concern, obesity for example. But here we have an issue that is clearly a public health issue, one concerning which Federal involvement is justified, and what do our dear liberals do? They ignore it. Of course, the problem cannot be blamed solely on the Democrat Party. Republicans like Bush and McCain are just as guilty. On immigration, Bush was clearly no conservative; he was a libertarian on this issue. A libertarian on some issues, a liberal on others, and a conservative on far too few.
4. Many liberals think that opposition to illegal immigration is anti-Hispanic. Not so. It is true that most of those who violate the nation's borders are Hispanic. But the opposition is not to Hispanics but to illegal entrants whether Hispanic or not. It is a contingent fact that Mexico is to the south of the U.S. If Turkey or Iran or Italy were to the south, the issue would be the same. And if Iran were to the south, and there were an influx of illegals, then then leftists would speak of anti-Persian bias.
A salient feature of liberals and leftists — there isn't much difference nowadays — is their willingness to 'play the race card,' to inject race into every issue. The issue of illegal immigration has nothing to do with race since illegal immigrants do not constitute a race. There is no such race as the race of 'llegal aliens.' Opposition to them, therefore, cannot be racist.
"But aren't some of those who oppose illegal immigration racists?" That may be so, but it is irrelevant. That one takes the right stance for the wrong reason does not negate the fact that one has taken the right stance. One only wishes they would take the right stance for the right reasons. Even if everyone who opposed illegal immigration were a foaming-at-the-mouth redneck of a racist, that would not detract one iota of cogency from the cogent arguments against allowing illegal immigration. To think otherwise is to embrace the Genetic Fallacy. Not good.
5. The rule of law is a precious thing. It is one of the supports of a civilized life. The toleration of mass breaking of reasonable and just laws undermines the rule of law.
6. Part of the problem is that we let liberals get away with obfuscatory rhetoric, such as 'undocumented worker.' The term does not have the same extension as 'illegal alien.' I discuss this in a separate post. But having written thousands of posts, I don't quite know where it is.
7. How long can a welfare state survive with open borders? Think about it. The trend in the USA for a long time now has been towards bigger and bigger government, more and more 'entitlements.' It is obviously impossible for purely fiscal reasons to provide cradle-to-grave security for everyone who wants to come here. So something has to give. Either you strip the government down to its essential functions or you control the borders. The first has no real chance of happening. Quixotic is the quest of strict constructionists and libertarians who call for it. Rather than tilting at windmills, they should work with reasonable conservatives to limit and eventually stop the expansion of government. Think of what a roll-back to a government in accordance with a strictly construed constitution would look like. For one thing, the social security system would have to be eliminated. That won't happen. Libertarians are 'losertarian' dreamers. They should wake up and realize that politics is a practical business and should aim at the possible. By the way, the pursuit of impossible dreams is common to both libertarians and leftists.
8. Even though contemporary liberals show little or no understanding for the above arguments, there are actually what might be called 'liberal' arguments for controlling the borders:
A. The Labor Argument. To give credit where credit is due, it was not the conservatives of old who championed the working man, agitated for the 40 hour work week, demanded safe working conditions, etc., but liberals. They can be proud of this. But it is not only consistent with their concern for workers that they oppose illegal immigration, but demanded by their concern. For when the labor market is flooded with people who will work for low wages, the bargaining power of the U.S. worker is diminished. Liberals should therefore oppose the unregulated influx of cheap labor, and they should oppose it precisely because of their concern for U. S. workers.
By the way, it is simply false to say, as Bush, McCain and other pandering politicians have said, that U.S. workers will not pick lettuce, clean hotel rooms, and the like. Of course they will if they are paid a decent wage. People who won't work for $5 an hour will work for $20. But they won't be able to command $20 if there is a limitless supply of indigentes who will accept $5-10.
B. The Environmental Argument. Although there are 'green' conservatives, concern for the natural environment, and its preservation and protection from industrial exploitation, is more a liberal than a conservative issue. (By the way, I'm a 'green' conservative.) So liberals ought to be concerned about the environmental degradation caused by hordes of illegals crossing the border. It is not just that they degrade the lands they physically cross, it is that people whose main concern is economic survival are not likely to be concerned about environmental protection. They are unlikely to become Sierra Club members or to make contributions to the Nature Conservancy. Love of nature comes more easily to middle class white collar workers for whom nature is a scene of recreation than for those who must wrest a livelihood from it by hard toil.
C. The Population Argument. This is closely related to, but distinct from, the Environmental Argument. To the extent that liberals are concerned about the negative effects of explosive population increase, they should worry about an unchecked influx of people whose women have a high birth-rate.
D. The Social Services Argument. Liberals believe in a vast panoply of social services provided by government and thus funded by taxation. But the quality of these services must degrade as the number of people who demand them rises. To take but one example, laws requiring hospitals to treat those in dire need whether or not they have a means of paying are reasonable and humane — or at least that can be argued with some show of plausibility. But such laws are reasonably enacted and reasonably enforced only in a context of social order. Without border control, not only will the burden placed on hospitals become unbearable, but the justification for the federal government's imposition of these laws on hospitals will evaporate. According to one source, California hospitals are closing their doors. "Anchor babies" born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income.
The point is that you can be a good liberal and oppose illegal immigration. You can oppose it even if you don't care about about increased crime, terrorism, drug smuggling, disease, national identity, national sovereignty, assimilation, the rule of law, or fairness to those who have immigrated legally. But a 'good liberal' who is not concerned with these things is a sorry human being.
I hope I have been politically incorrect enough for my reader's taste.
Emile Chartier (1868-1951) was a French professor of philosophy among whose students were Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Chartier's sunny disposition, however, did not rub off on the brooding Weil. Under the pseudonym 'Alain,' Chartier published thousands of two-page essays in newspapers. What follows is a striking sentence from the essay "Maladies of the Mind" in Alain on Happiness, F. Unger, 1973, p. 25:
An old man is not a young man who suffers from old age; a man who
dies is not a living man who enters into death.
Political disagreement has become 'planetary': Right and Left occupy different planets. The proliferation of 'rights' is a central feature of Planet Left. If it were April Fool's Day I'd suspect the following of being a bad joke. But I fear it is not:
Read more:
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2923469#ixzz0lehTzF2DNear the end of Richard Weaver's essay, "Life Without Prejudice," he quotes Milton:
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world; we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by that which is contrary.
This fits nicely with Keat's notion of the world as a vale of soul-making.
As Michael Barone understands, " the issue on which our politics has become centered — the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government — is really not just about economics. It is really a battle about culture, a battle between the culture of dependence and the culture of independence."
Do old leftists ever die, or do they just fade away — into a red sunset? Some reds end up at Sunset Hall near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.
From the mail bag:
I’m hoping you can help me with an annoying question that came up in conversation recently. I’m sure you can answer it much better than me.
Statements are self-refuting when they are included in their own field of reference and fail to conform to their own criteria of validity. Thus ‘there are no truths’ is self-refuting because if it is false, then it is false. But if it is true, then it is false as well because then there would be no truths, including the statement itself. So what about the statement ‘all statements are self-refuting’?
You are right about 'There are no truths.' If true, then false. If false, then false. So necessarily false. Therefore, its negation — 'There are some truths' — is not just true, but necessarily true.
There is exactly the same pattern with 'All statements are self-refuting.' If true, then self-refuting and false. If false, then false. So necessarily false. Therefore, its negation — Some statements are not self-refuting — is not just true, but necessarily true.
Now an intriguing question arises. Are these necessities unconditional, or do they rest upon a condition? The second necessity appears to be conditional upon the existence of statements and the beings who make them. Statements don't 'hang in the air'; a statement is the statement of a stater, so that, in a world without rational beings, there are no statements. 'Some statements are not self-refuting,' therefore, is not true in all possible worlds, but only in those worlds in which statements are made. Given that there are statements, it is necessarily true that some statements are not self-refuting. But there might not have been any statements. The existence of statements is contingent.
Now what about 'There are some truths?' Clearly, this sentence (or rather the proposition it expresses) is not contingently true, but necessarily true. But is it true of absolute metaphysical necessity, or does its necessary truth rest on some condition? Suppose something gives the following little speech:
I see your point. There have to be truths. Forif you say that there aren't any, you are saying that it is true that there aren't any, and you thereby contradict yourself. So there is a sense in which there cannot not be truths. But all this means is that WE must presuppose truth. It doesn't mean that there are truths independently of us. WE cannot help but assume that there are truths. The existence of truths is a transcendental presupposition of our kind of thinking. But it does not follow that there are truths of absolute metaphysical necessity. If we were not to exist, then there would be no truths, not even the truth that we do not exist.
Is the little speech coherent? The objector is inviting us to consider the possible situation in which beings like us do not exist and no truths either. The claim that this situation is possible, however, is equivalent to the claim that it is true that this situation is possible. But, on the transcendental hypothesis in question, the existence of this truth is relative to our existence, which implies that it is not true independently of us that it is possible that beings like us not exist and no truths either. But then it is not really possible that beings like us not exist and no truths either: the possibility exists only relative to our thinking. So I conclude that the transcendental hypothesis is only apparently coherent, and that 'There are truths' is true of absolute metaphysical necessity. So it is not just that we cannot deny truth; truth is undeniable an sich.
What will you have on your death stand? Whose thoughts will occupy your mind in your final moments in the dying of the light, as the breath comes short and the cancer cells conquer organ after organ? Speaking for myself, I'll take Plato over Putnam, Boethius over Butchvarov, Aquinas over Quine, the Psalms over Sartre. Reading Quine at a moment like that would like looking for bread among the dusty and jagged shards in a stone quarry.
It is not too soon to begin making a list.
