James V. Schall here reviews Samir Khalil Samir, 111 Questions on Islam.
Evidence Mounts That Global Warming is a Lot of Hot Air
So far I have been very measured and noncommittal in my comments on global warming. I have contented myself with drawing some elementary distinctions that would have to be observed in any rational discussion of the issue. See here and here.
But having spoken to a climatologist and having read more on the subject, I am now inclining to the view that much of so-called climate science contains a sizeable admixture of leftist, anti-capitalist ideology fueled by grant-funding agencies with political axes to grind who favor those who toe the party line. This WSJ article is a bit more evidence that this is so.
Original and Derived Intentionality, Circles, and Regresses
1. Original/Derived Intentionality. All will agree that there is some sort of distinction to be made here. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's physical and geometrical properties. Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together should mean steeper is a meaning assigned by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater.
So some things derive their referential and semantic properties from other things. What about these other things? I draw you a map so that you can find my camp. I use the Greek phi to mark my camp and the Greek psi to mark the camp of a heavily-armed crazy man that you are well advised to avoid. I intend that phi designate my camp. That intending (narrow sense) is a case of intentionality (broad sense). This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether my intending is a case of original or of derived intentionality.
If the latter, then a regress ensues which appears to be both infinite and vicious. But before discussing this further, I need to bring in another point.
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Brentano and Whether Propositions are Intrinsically Intentional
Franz Brentano, for whom intentionality is the mark of the mental, is committed to the thesis that all instances of (intrinsic) intentionality are instances of mentality. The last post in this series considered apparent counterexamples to this thesis. But there are others. Joseph Jedwab usefully pointed out in a comment on my old blog that propositions and dispositions are apparent counterexamples. Whether they are also real counterexamples is something we should discuss. This post discusses (Fregean) propositions. Later, dispositions — if I am so disposed.
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Brentano, Dretske and Whether There is Intentionality Below the Level of Mind
For Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental: (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, and (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental. This post considers whether there is intentionality below the level of conscious mind, intentionality that can exist without any connection, actual or potential, to conscious mind. If there is, then of course (ii) is false.
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Brentano and Three Types of Unconscious Intentionality
We saw that for Brentano, (i) all conscious states are intentional, and (ii) all intentional states are conscious. We also saw that felt pain is an apparent counterexample to (i): to feel pain is to be in a conscious state, a state that is not of or about anything. But there are also apparent counterexamples to (ii). Perhaps we should distinguish three classes of putattive counterexamples:
1. Intentionality without conscious awareness but with an easy transition to conscious awareness.
2. Intentionality with neither conscious awareness nor an easy transition to conscious awareness.
3. Intentionality below the level of mind.
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Brentano on the Mark of the Mental
1. What is the mark of the mental? Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch. 1.)
2. What is intentionality? ‘Intentionality’ is Brentano's term (borrowed from the Medievals) for that property of mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. The state of perceiving, for example is necessarily object-directed. One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist. Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the "intentional in-existence of an object." Mental states for Brentano are object-directed by their very nature as mental states: there is no need that a particular state's object actually exist for that state to be intentional. It follows that intentionality is not, strictly speaking, a relation. For, necessarily, if a relation obtains, then all its relata exist. In the case of an intentional 'relation,' however, the object-relatum need not exist.
Why Brentano is Important
If Edmund Husserl is the father of phenomenology, Franz Brentano is its grandfather: his Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, along with his lectures at the University of Vienna were powerful influences on the young Husserl who, though a Ph.D. in mathematics (under Weierstrass on the calculus of variations) abandoned mathematics for philosophy. (2) Brentano's dissertation under Trendelenburg, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, was a powerful impetus to Heidegger's ruminations on Being. (3) Brentano, as Gustav Bergmann points out, was "the first linguistic philosopher." (Realism, p. 234) Brentano, then, can be said to stand at the source of both the phenomenological and the analytic streams of thought as they developed in the 20th century.
The Supreme Enigma
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 4:
Every puzzle that fascinates innumerable persons and induces them to attempt its solution — be it mathematical and profound or ordinary and simple — is an echo on a lower level of the Supreme Enigma that is forever accompanying man and demanding an answer: What is he, whence and whither? The quester puts the problem into his conscious mind and keeps it there.
On Forming Societies at Faint Provocation
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 154, #56:
I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and it is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste time.
Well said. Would Thoreau have joined the Thoreau Society? Merton the Merton Society? Would Groucho Marx have joined a club that would have him as a member?
Seriously, there is something dubious about societies. Were I to read a paper the least bit critical of Thomas Merton at the Merton Society, I would receive a hostile response no matter how good the paper was. I would be taken as attacking their man, someone with whom they identify. In a one-on-one exchange, it is not uncommon for an interlocutor to 'get his back up' if one criticizes, however judiciously, something or someone in whom the interlocutor has invested time and energy. But when there is a bunch of these people reinforcing each other, look out! They close ranks and their critical acumen goes to zero.
Merton, Heidegger, Ayn Rand and so many others who inspire a cult-like following need to have their works discussed critically, and that means: not by followers and not by dismissers, but by the independent. But what happens for the most part is that their works get chewed over lovingly in uncritical enclaves while being ignored or dismissed by those outside the charmed circles.
Who Are the Oddballs?
Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, vol. II, The Quest (Burdett, NY: Larson Publications, 1986), p. 24:
We are regarded as odd people because we trouble our heads with the search for an intangible reality. But it never occurs to our critics that it is much more odd that they should go on living without pausing to inquire if there be any purpose in life at all.
Dubious Consolation for the Bald
Paul Brunton, who was bald, writes,
I take comfort in the continental proverb,"A hundred years hence we shall all be bald." (Notebooks, VIII, 202.)
I am not bald and the genetics of my lineage suggest the unlikelihood of my becoming bald. But the occasional dream reveals a subconscious anxiety. In one, I caught a glimpse via an array of mirrors of the beginning of a bald spot on the back of my head. But why should the thought of balding induce anxiety if not because the bald spot is a harbinger of the meatless skull each head is headed for?
Hair today, bone tomorrow.
Meditation as Disciplined Nonthinking: A Brunton Passage Exfoliated
‘Meditation’ has two main senses. The first refers to disciplined discursive thinking. Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy classically illustrates this first sense. If we use ‘thinking’ as short for ‘discursive thinking,’ we can say that the second sense of ‘meditation’ refers to disciplined nonthinking. Accordingly, meditation2 is an attempt to silence the discursive mind and enter into a nondiscursive state of awareness.
With this clarification in mind, we are ready to appreciate a passage from Paul Brunton:
All thinking keeps one’s awareness out of the Overself. That is why thinking about the Overself merely produces another thought. Only in the case of the sage, who has established himself in the Overself, is thinking no barrier at all. In this case, thinking may coexist with the larger awareness. So it is not enough to be a good thinker; one also has to learn how to be a good non-thinker. Of course, the way to do this is through the practice of meditation. (Inspiration and the Overself, p. 144)
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Why Be Consistent? Three Types of Consistency
A reader inquires:
This idea of the necessity to be consistent seems to be the logician's "absolute," as though being inconsistent was the most painful accusation one could endure. [. . .] What rule of life says that one must be absolutely consistent in how one evaluates truth? It is good to argue from first principles but it can also lead one down a rat hole.
Before we can discuss whether one ought to be consistent, we need to know which type of consistency is at issue. There are at least three types of consistency that people often confuse and that need to be kept distinct. I'll call them 'logical,' 'pragmatic,' and 'diachronic.' But it doesn't matter how we label them as long as we keep them separate.
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Can a Black Man Vote Against Obamacare?
If a black congressman were to vote against a Democrat health care reform proposal, could he call himself a black man? According to this source:
The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.
“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”
Brother Jesse apparently thinks that it is somehow inscribed into the very essence of being black that one be a leftist.
When we conservatives label libs and lefties as loons, it is this sort of preternatural idiocy that we have in mind.