Generic and Specific Problems of Evil

(A reader requested a post on evil.  I am happy to oblige.  The following has some relevance to the recent soul thread.  So I'll leave the ComBox open in case Peter L. or others care to comment.  As usual, the default setting for cyberpunk tolerance = 0.)

Suppose we define a 'generic theist' as one who affirms the existence of a bodiless person, a pure spirit, who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, and who in addition is perfectly free, the creator and sustainer of the universe, and the ground of moral obligation. This generic theism is common to the mainstream of the three Abrahamic religions. Most theists, however, are not 'generic' but adopt a specific form of theism. Christians, for example, add to the divine attributes listed above the attribute of being triune and others besides. Christianity also includes doctrines about the human being and his ultimate destiny in an afterlife. Generic theism is thus an abstraction from the concrete specific theisms that people accept and live.

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The Jockstrap Bomber

That's what I call him.  Michael Medved call hims the ding-a-ling bomber.  Whatever he and his ilk are called, they need to be stopped, and political correctness be damned.  Alan Dershowitz makes some suggestions in Stopping the Next Underwear Bomber.  Here is one of his excellent points:

Nor have we learned enough from the near successes of the shoe and underwear bombers. In both cases, we should have acted as if they had succeeded. That they did not had absolutely nothing to do with our security, but rather with a factor over which the would-be terrorists had complete control, namely improving the effectiveness of their explosive triggers. Imagine what the reaction would have been if hundreds of Detroit-bound passengers had been murdered. That is what the reaction should now be to this near-catastrophe.

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A Quiz on Alienans Adjectives

First read study the post Alienans Adjectives.  Then take the quiz.  Answers below the fold.  Classify the adjectives in the following examples as either specifying (S), alienans (A), or neither (N).  Much of course depends on the context in which the phrase is used.  So imagine a plausible and common context.

1. Deciduous tree. 2. Alleged assailant. 3. Imaginary friend. 4. Material implication. 5. Contemptible leftist. 6. Infrared radiation. 7. Hypothetical medium of the transmission of electromagnetic signals. 8. Postal service. 9. Imaginary number.  10. Male chauvinist. 

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J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)

(The following review will be crossposted shortly at Prosblogion.  Comments are closed here, but will be open there.)

Apart from what Alvin Plantinga calls creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P. Moreland’s The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009) supports the theistic position by way of a penetrating critique of naturalism and such associated doctrines as scientism. Moreland briefly discusses creative anti-realism in the guise of postmodernism on pp. 13-14, but I won’t report on that except to say that his arguments against it, albeit brief, are to my mind decisive. Section One of this review will present in some detail Moreland’s conception of naturalism and what it entails. Sections Two and Three will discuss his argument from consciousness for the existence of God. Section Four will ever so briefly report on the contents of the rest of the book. In Part Two of this review I hope to discuss Moreland’s critique of Thomas Nagel’s Dismissive Naturalism. Numbers in parentheses are page references. Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are quotations from Moreland. Inverted commas are employed for mentioning and ‘scaring.’

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Alienans Adjectives

A reader inquires:

I find your blog interesting and educational.  A while ago you mentioned that there is a term for an adjective which is used not to specify a particular sort of the noun which it modifies, but rather a thing which does not meet the definition of that noun.  (I've likely somewhat mangled the description of this term in trying to recall it.)  For example 'polished leather' and 'red leather' are kinds of leather, but 'artificial leather' refers to things which aren't leather at all.  I have tried to find the post that talked about this but I forgot what the topic was when you mentioned it.  Can you please tell me the name for this?

'Artificial' in 'artificial leather' functions as an alienans adjective.  It 'alienates' the sense of the noun it modifies.  In the case of specifying adjectives,  an FG is a G, where F is an adjective and G a noun. Thus a nagging wife is a wife, a female duck is a duck, cow's leather  is leather, and a contingent truth is a truth. But if 'F' is alienans,   then either an FG is not a G, or it does not follow from x's being an  FG that x is a G. For example, your former wife is not your wife, a   decoy duck is not a duck, artificial leather is not leather, and a   relative truth is not a truth. Is an apparent heart attack a heart   attack? It may or may not be. One cannot validly move  from 'Jones had an apparent heart attack' to 'Jones had a heart attack.' So 'apparent' in  'apparent heart attack' is alienans.

Note that I was careful to say 'artificial' in 'artificial leather' is an alienans adjective.  For it does not function as such in every context.  'Artificial' in 'artificial insemination' is not alienans: you are just as inseminated if it has come about artificially or naturally.

Two more examples of alienans adjectives that I borrow from Peter Geach: 'forged' in 'forged banknote' and 'putative in 'putative father.'  If x is a forged banknote it does not follow that x is a banknote.  And if x is the putative father of y, it does not follow that x is the father of y. Here is an example I got from the late Australian philosopher Barry Miller:  'negative' in 'negative growth.'  If my stock portfolio is experiencing negative growth,  then it is precisely not experiencing growth.

Of course, I am not suggesting that every adjective (as employed in some definite context) can be classified as either specifying or alienans.  Consider the way 'mean-spirited' functions in 'mean-spirited Republican.'  In most contexts, the implication is not that some Republicans are mean-spirited and some are not; the implication is that all are.  To be a Republican is just to be mean-spirited.  Is there a name for that sort of adjective?  I don't know.  But there ought to be, and if I ever work out a general theory of adjectives, I'll give it one.

Now consider 'Muslim terrorist.'  A politically correct idiot might take offense at this phrase  as implying that all Muslims are terrorists or even that all and only Muslims are terrorists.  But no intelligent person would take it this way.  If I say that Hasan is a Muslim terrorist , then the plain meaning to anyone with his head screwed on properly is that Hasan is a Muslim and a terrorist, which obviously does not imply that all Muslims are terrorists. 

Kitsch and Cliché

Kinkade1

To the left is an example of kitsch from that master of kitsch, Thomas Kinkade.  Is there no visual cliché that he will not avail himself of?  Note the wisps of smoke emanating from the chimneys.  Just as we are annoyed by those who thoughtlessly retail platitudes, we are also annoyed by the analogous thoughtlessness of those artists who serve up what the average Joe 'knows' to be art and expects.  This, I take it, is part of what we object to in kitsch, and part of what we mean by kitsch.  (But there is a lot more to it than this, and your humble correspondent has only begun to think hard about these questions.) What is offensive in kitsch is the thoughtless purveyance of visual cliché's, the pandering to the viewer, the 'pushing of his buttons,' and in some cases the cynical attempt to elicit a stock emotional response in order sell the stuff.  Wholesome schlock for the masses  mass-produced for a tidy profit.  Art for the overfed denizens of Dubuque and Fargo who, wallowing in complacency, want to be reinforced in their tastes and prejudices.  Art for the malls of  'fly-over country.'  None of my discerning readers, I trust, could be paid to hang such a thing in their homes.  Well, if you paid me, and I had an empty wall needing a splash of color, then I might display it for didactic and ironic purposes.

But clichés, by definition, are true and meaningful, albeit flattened by overuse, and this is the other side of the coin.  Kitsch is offensive, but so is what might be called anti-kitsch, the mannered result of trying to be far-out and avant-garde. Isn't a boring truth better than an 'original' falsehood?  Doesn't truth trump novelty in a sane scale of values?   Isn't beauty, even of a conventional sort, better than ugliness? The febrile and adolescent attempt to to be original and avant-garde at all costs has led in the 20th century to a crapload of art and music without human meaning.  It is at least arguable that wholesome schlock that has some human meaning is superior to decadent junk like this from the house-painting brush of Mark Rothko:

Rothko_061

When Is a Tautology Not a Tautology?

My Aunt T. was married to a gruff and taciturn Irishman who rejoiced under the name of 'Morris.' Thinking to engage Uncle Mo in conversation during one of my infrequent visits to the Big Apple, and knowing that Morris drove a beer truck, I once made some comment about the superiority of German over American beer. Uncle Mo, not to be seduced  into the bracing waters of dialectic, replied, "Beer is beer." End of conversation.

But the beginning of an interesting line of thought. A tautology is a logical truth. To be precise, a tautology is a logical truth within the propositional calculus. (Every tautology is a logical truth, but not every logical truth is a tautology.  The logical truths of the predicate calculus are not tautologies, strictly speaking.)

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Up With Running Skirts

Running skirt During my last road race, and as a runner who has long been open to callipygian inspiration, I spied something I had seen but once before: a female runner sporting a short skirt in lieu of the usual shorts. I thought to myself: Is this the beginning of a trend? Apparently it is.

Vive la différence!

It Is What It Is

Maybe not. It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is.

Seriously, though, this saying is seeing quite a lot of use lately.  It is a sort of present-tensed Que sera, sera.  Things are the way they are.  Don't kick against the pricks.  Acceptance and resignation are the appropriate attitudes.

From a philosophy-of-language point of view, what is interesting is the use of a tautological form of words to express a non-tautological proposition.  What the words mean is not what the speaker means in uttering the words.  Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart.  The speaker does not literally mean that things are what they are — for what the hell else could they be?  Not what they are?  What the speaker means is that (certain) things can't be changed and so must be accepted with resignation.  Your dead-end job for example.  'It is what it is.'

There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions.  'What will be, will be' is an example, as is 'Beer is beer.'  When Ayn Rand proclaimed that Existence exists! she did not mean to assert the tautological proposition that each existing thing exists; she was ineptly employing a tautological sentence to express a non-tautological and not uncontroversial thesis of metaphysical realism according to which what exists exists independently of any mind, finite or infinite.

'What will be will be' is tautologically true and thus necessarily true.  What the sentence is typically used to express, however, is the non-tautological, and arguably false, proposition that what will be, will necessarily be, that it cannot be otherwise.  So not only do sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart in this case; a modal fallacy is lurking in the background as well, the ancient fallacy of confusing the necessitas consequentiae with the necessitas consequentiis.

Now you know what I think about on those long training runs (3 hours, 18 minutes last Sunday).  Running is marvelous for 'jogging' one's thoughts.

Powerblogs Finally Pulls the Plug; TypePad Rules!

It happened around 5 PM local time, yesterday, January 3rd.  It was supposed to happen on the last day of November.  One final bit of incompetence from the Powerblogs team: it took them over a month to shut down their server.   But I used the time to capture more old posts the easy way.  Yes, of course, I have backed up the entire site, comments and all.  (Keith Burgess-Jackson kindly gave me unsolicited advice on how to do this.) I have also backed up the hundreds of partially completed draft posts.  Trouble is, it is a royal pain in the culo to transfer the backed-up material to the archive site.  I have done a little, as you can see here.  But it is an awful chore working with a monstrously large blob of unstructured text, cutting it at the joints.  It's work not fit for man nor beast. My life of creative leisure under the guiding star of otium liberale has spoiled me for mechanical and secretarial tasks.  Being a vox clamantis in deserto doesn't help either.

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Philip Larkin on Death

David Rieff, son of Susan Sontag, writes movingly of her mother's love of life and her refusal to accept extinction in Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir (Simon and Shuster, 2008). Her attitude and his is close to the one expressed by Philip Larkin in the following poem which displays Larkin's power as a poet in tandem with his weakness as a philosopher. Rieff, p. 13, quotes approvingly from the stanza which I have bolded.

In my humble opinion, the "specious stuff" in Larkin's phrase below is not the wisdom of Epicurus to which allusion is made, but the boozy self-indulgence Larkin serves up. What annoys me, I suppose, is the poetic passing-off of substantive claims with nary an attempt at justification. Am I again criticizing poetry for not being philosophy as I did once before with reference to Wallace Stevens? Perhaps. Or perhaps I am objecting to the nihilism of much of the 'art' of the 20th century.

Larkin's poetry illustrates how life must appear to those for whom God is dead. Read some more of it here. It is skillfully symptomatic of the age.

Getting back to Rieff and Sontag, I find curious their unquestioning conviction that physical death just has to be utter extinction. How can they be so cocksure about that? Socrates, Plato, Moses Mendelsohn and a hundred other luminaries were just deluded fools? And then there is this thought: if physical death extinguishes us utterly, then the game is not worth the candle, and Sontag's stubborn refusal to accept her mortality even after 71 years worth of this ephemeral life is just ridiculous, and the opposite of anything that could be called wisdom.

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