Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • The Lion Rises and Roars

    It's about time.  Expert analysis.

    Bill Vallicella

    14 responses to “The Lion Rises and Roars”

  • Grok on Brian Leiter

    I put the question to the Grok bot: Who first called Brian Leiter 'Ladder Man' and why? Grok shot back: 

    The earliest identified use of the nickname "Ladder Man" for Brian Leiter appears in a blog post by Bill Vallicella on Maverick Philosopher dated March 13, 2014. Vallicella used the term to criticize Leiter’s perceived obsession with academic rankings and status, particularly through his creation and management of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR), a controversial ranking of philosophy PhD programs. The nickname plays on the German word "Leiter," which means both "ladder" and "leader" (as in Gauleiter), suggesting Leiter’s focus on climbing or promoting hierarchical structures in academia. Vallicella’s post describes Leiter as a “careerist” and links the nickname to his reputation for prioritizing professional status and rankings.

     
     
    No earlier source is identified, so Vallicella likely coined the term. The context was a broader critique of Leiter’s influence in philosophy, including his academic gossip site, Leiter Reports, and his perceived aggressive behavior, which some labeled as "thuggish." The nickname reflects a satirical jab at Leiter’s role in shaping academic hierarchies.
     
    Not bad! But truth be told, I did not coin 'Ladder Man.' The honor goes to John J. Ray. See his blog Brian Leiter (Ladderman). I will check back later to see if Grok does an update. My impression thus far is that Grok crawls through substacks more assiduously than it does through blogs.
     
    Hegel wrote about objecktiver Geist.  Your humble correspondent is but one subjective spirit making his contribution to the depositum philosophiae subsisting in the aether of cyberspace.
    Bill Vallicella

  • What’s It All About?

    The question makes sense.  Variant: What's it all mean? Ron Crumb's Mr. Natural has an answer for you:

    Mr Natural
    The answer illustrates the use of' 'shit' as a quantifier, an 'urban quantifier' if you will.  This predicament we are in — call it life — doesn't mean anything.  The 'urban' use of 'shit' is an interesting linguistic bagatelle that I explored some years back in a delightful post entitled Quantificational Uses of 'Crap.' But the meaning, point, purpose of life is no bagatelle, linguistic or otherwise.

    I find it unutterably strange that we might die, become nothing, and never find out what it was all about, or that it was never about anything.  We the living do not know what it is all about, and if the curtain doesn't rise at the hour of death, no one will ever know. Or at least no mortal will ever know. How strange that would be!  Could it be like that?

    It could be in the sense that it is epistemically possible, that is, possible for all we can legitimately claim to know.  I am using 'know' in that strict and serious way according to which knowledge entails objective certainty. What I know sensu stricto I know without the possibility of mistake. But people are lazy and sloppy and claim to know all sorts of things that "just ain't so" (Ronald Reagan) when in fact that don't know 'jack' or 'squat' or 'diddly squat.'

    No doubt many believe both that life has a meaning, point, purpose, and what that meaning is.  But belief is not knowledge. People believe the damnedest things. (A sizable number of leftists believe that one can change one's sex and race, that math is racist, and that Trump is Hitler.) Corollary to belief's not being knowledge is the fact that conviction is no guarantee of truth. 

    The most one can attain in this life is a reasoned belief and a reasoned conviction. And most don't even get that far. (My meta-claim of course applies to itself: I do not claim to know, sensu stricto, that it is true. I claim merely that it is reasonably believed.)  

    Can we reason our way forward here? Note first that Mr. Natural's claim is just that, a claim. He is merely opining, and indeed blustering. What the hell does he know, or Ron Crumb, his creator? 

    You cannot prove that life has an ultimate meaning that overarches the petty and proximate meanings of the quotidian round. But you are within your epistemic rights in believing it, assuming you do so reasonably and responsibly.  And so I revert to what I have said many times before, namely, that in the end we must decide what we will believe and how we will live.  For a deeper dive, see yesterday's installment.

    The will comes into it. The decision is free but not arbitrary in the pejorative sense: the decision is reached after due doxastic diligence has been exercised in the evaluation of the various considerations for and against, and the decision is maintained over time by ongoing evaluation as new arguments and evidences surface.  Don't confuse liberum arbitrium with random neuronal swerves. 

    Bill Vallicella

    2 responses to “What’s It All About?”

  • Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and the Will to Believe

    My friend, I continue to read and reread your Heaven and Hell essay, especially the "Concluding Existential-Practical Postscript".
     
    Psalm 23. "The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not…." Let us pray that there is a Good Shepherd who cares deeply about his flock and will do things to relieve their suffering. Can we come to believe in him with an act of will?
    Surely not by an act of will alone. You didn't carefully attend to what I wrote  (and to which I now add bolding):
    . . . while these philosophical and theological problems are genuine and important, they cannot be resolved on the theoretical plane.  In the end, after canvassing all the problems and all the arguments for and against, one simply has to decide what one will believe and how one will live. In the end, the will comes into it.  The will must come into it, since nothing in this area can be proven, strictly speaking.  [. . .]  The will comes into it, as I like to say, because the discursive intellect entangles itself in problems it cannot unravel.  
     
    Obviously, one cannot decide what the truth is: the truth is what it is regardless of what we believe, desire, hope for, fear, etc.  But one can and must decide what one will believe with respect to those propositions that are existentially important.  What is true does not depend on us; what we believe does (within certain limits of course: it would be foolish to endorse doxastic voluntarism across the board.) 
     
    You have read Sextus Empiricus and know  something about Pyrrhonian skepticism. You know that, with respect to many issues, the arguments on either side, pro et con, 'cancel out' and leave one in a state of doxastic equipoise.  In many of these situations, the rational course is to suspend judgment by neither affirming nor denying the proposition at issue, especially when the issues are contention-inspiring and likely to lead to bitter controversy and bloodshed.  But not in all situations, or so say I against Sextus.  One ought not in all situations of doxastic equipoise suspend judgment. For there are some issues that are existentially important. (One of them, of course, is whether we have a higher destiny attainment of which depends on how we comport ourselves here and now.)  With respect to these existentially important issues, one ought not seek the ataraxia (imperturbableness) that supposedly, according to Sextus, comes from living adoxastos (belieflessly). To do so might be theoretically rational, but not practically rational. It would be theoretically rational, but only if we were mere transcendental spectators of the passing scene as opposed to situated spectators embroiled in it.  We are embedded in the push and shove of this fluxed-up causal order and not mere observers of it. We have what Wilhelm Dilthey calls a Sitz im Leben.
     
    As I like to put it, we are not merely spectators of life's parade; we also march in it.  (A mere spectator of a parade may not care where it is headed; but if you are marching in it, swept up in it, you'd damned well better care where it is headed.)
     
    Suppose in order to have a decent day physically I need to begin it with a 10 K run. Well, most or at least many days I can make myself run. But on some days my legs just will not. Pain and fatigue are the obstacles. Suppose to have a decent "inner" day I also need to begin it with believing in and trusting in our Good Shepherd. Some days, yes, but many days, I fear, I will not or cannot . Too much pain (before the meds) and too much exhaustion with the world.
     
    I said, "In the end . . . one simply has to decide what one will believe and how one will live." I now add that, having made that decision after due consideration, one has to stick with it. You seem to think that belief and trust need to be generated each day anew.  I say instead that they do not: you already made the commitment to believe and trust; what you do each day is re-affirm it. It's a standing commitment. Standing commitments transcend the moment and the doubts of the moment. And of course doubts there will be.  One ought to avoid the mistake of letting a lesser moment, a moment of doubt or weakness or temptation, undo the commitment made in a higher moment, one of existential clarity.  
     
    It's like a marital vow. After due deliberation you decided to commit yourself to one person, from that moment forward, in sickness and in health, through good times and bad, 'til death do you part.  You know what that means: no sexual intercourse with anyone else for the rest of your days;  if she gets sick you will nurse her; if you have to deplete your savings to  cover her medical expenses, you will do so, etc.  You may be sorely tempted to make a move on your neighbor's wife, and dump your own when she is physically shot and you must play the nurse.  That is where the vows come in and the moral test comes.
     
    Inserting a benevolent Creator in this world I encounter is VERY difficult. 
     
    I agree that it is VERY difficult at times to believe that this  world is the creation of  an omni-qualified providential God, a 'Father' who lovingly foresees and provides for his 'children.'  Why then did he not lift a finger to help his Chosen People who were worked to death and slaughtered in the Vernichtungslagern of the Third Reich?  And so on, and so forth. Nothing new here. It's the old problem of evil.  You can of course argue reasonably from the fact of evil to the nonexistence of God. But you can also argue reasonably from the fact of evil to the existence of God, and in more than one way. The 'Holocaust argument'  is one way.
     
    This brings me back to my main point: in the end, you will have to decide what to believe and how to live. The will comes into it.
     
    Maybe I've misunderstood you. I see "will" as a weak and unreliable route to a good life, much less salvation. 
     
    I disagree. While I don't agree with Nietzsche, for whom "The will is the great redeemer," 0ne of the sources, I would guess, of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph des Willens,  I see will as the only way to offset the infirmity of reason, which I imagine you must have some sympathy with given your appreciation for the Pyrrhonistas.  In the controversy between Leibniz and Pierre Bayle, I side with Bayle.  Reason is weak, though not so weak as to be incapable of gauging its own weakness.  We embedded spectators must act, action requires decision and de-cision — a cutting off of ratiocination — is will-driven
    You see why I wonder whether we are not already in Hell. Where I have gone wrong?
     
    You cannot seriously mean that we are in hell now. That makes as little sense as to say that we are in heaven now.  "Words mean things," as Rush Limbaugh used to say in his flat-footed way, and in a serious discussion, I expect you will agree that one must define one's terms. The 'Jebbies' (Jesuits) got hold of you at an impressionable age, and you became, as you told me, a star altar boy. You've had a good education, you know Latin and Greek, and went on to get a doctorate in philosophy in the U.K.
     
    So you must know that what 'hell' means theologically is  “[the] state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1033.) To be in hell is to be in a state that is wholly evil and from which there is no exit.  Now is this world as we experience it wholly evil? Of course not. Neither it is wholly good.  
     
    It simply makes no sense, on any responsible use of terms, to describe this life, hic et nunc, as either heaven or hell. If you want to tag it theologically, the appropriate term would be 'purgatory.' As I wrote earlier,
    . . . it is reasonably held that we are right now in purgatory. The case is made brilliantly and with vast erudition by Geddes MacGregor in Reincarnation in Christianity (Quest Books, 1978,  see in particular, ch. 10, "Reincarnation as Purgatory."

    Bill Vallicella

    5 responses to “Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and the Will to Believe”

  • Artificial Intelligence and the Death of the University

    The universities have been under assault from the Left for decades, but now advanced A. I. has its destructive role to play.

    A recent article by James D. Walsh in New York Magazine, widely circulated among academics, reported that “just two months after OpenAI launched ChatGPT [in 2022], a survey of 1,000 college students found that nearly 90 percent of them had used the chatbot to help with homework assignments”. The use of Generative-AI chatbots for required coursework is, if anything, even more widespread today. At elite universities, community colleges, and everything in between, students are using AI to take notes in class, produce practice tests, write essays, analyze data, and compose computer code, among other things. A freshman seems to speak for entire cohorts of undergraduates when she admits that “we rely on it, [and] we can’t really imagine being without it”. An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education quotes multiple students who are effectively addicted to the technology, and are distressed at being unable to kick the habit — because, as an NYU senior confesses, “I know I am learning NOTHING.”

    Related: Do You Really Want to Teach at a University?

    Bill Vallicella

    6 responses to “Artificial Intelligence and the Death of the University”

  • Morality Public and Private: On not Confusing Them

    With a little help from Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hannah Arendt. Substack latest.

    By the way, I learned that Arendt had ten books by Carl Schmitt in her library. We will have to look into their relationship.

    Is that a cigarette holder she's using?  A Randian touch. It would not be fair to call Ayn Rand a hack, but she comes close, and is nowhere near the level of Arendt.  A is A!

    Portrait of German-born American political theorist and author Hannah Arendt with a cigarette in her hand, 1949.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Soul Food

    A Substack sermon.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Identify the Quotation!

    Who said it? A post-liberal, an anti-liberal, Carl Schmitt?

    Blood rises up against formal understanding, race against the rational pursuit of ends, honor against profit, bonds against the caprice that is called 'freedom,' organic totality against individualistic dissolution, valor against bourgeois security, politics against the primacy of the economy, state against society, folk against the individual and the mass.

     

    Bill Vallicella

    5 responses to “Identify the Quotation!”

  • The Presidential Power of Pardon: A Political-Theological Theme

    According to Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, University of Chicago Press, 1985, p. 56:

    All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development—in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver—but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology. 

    The presidential power of pardon strikes me as an additional example of this secularization process whereby originally theological concepts are brought down to earth and acquire a political and social meaning. (Does Schmitt discuss the pardon power  somewhere? He 'must.' Where?)

    The U. S Constitution grants a near-plenary power of pardon to the president. Does this extend to convicted mass murderers such as Timothy McVeigh? (McVeigh, of course, was not pardoned, but executed.) It does so extend, if I understand the matter:

    The power to pardon is one of the least limited powers granted to the president in the Constitution. [. . .] The only limits mentioned in the Constitution are that pardons are limited to offenses against the United States (i.e., not civil or state cases) and that they cannot affect an impeachment process. 

    The theological roots of the pardon power seem obvious: what we have in the presidential case is a secular analog of the old theological problem of justice and mercy.  This is, however, at best a close analogy,  not an identity. The theological problem of how God can be both just and merciful is not identical to the problem of how a head of state, a president, for example, can be both just and merciful when he grants a pardon. That should be obvious. If not, I will explain.

    God is absolutely sovereign.  In the divine but not the human case, sovereignty implies omnipotence. The absoluteness of divine sovereignty might be taken to imply that God's omnipotence is his ability/power to do anything at all, including what is logically impossible and morally impermissible.  If so, divine power would not be limited in any way, and God would be sovereign not only over the natural order, which he obviously is on any account of omnipotence, but also over every order including the logical and moral orders.

    Leaving logical order aside, consider the rule of  law as it pertains to right and wrong, crime and punishment.  The rule of law is not a particular law but a meta-principle pertaining to all laws.  The rule of law requires that particular laws be applied equally, and that like cases be judged in a like manner. So if justice demands the death penalty in one case, then likewise in all relevantly similar cases. What room could there then be for an arbitrary (free) exercise of mercy in any given case?  To get a fix on the problem, suppose Tom and Tim are morally indiscernible twins: they share every moral attribute. They are both loyal, and to the same degree.  They are both courageous and to the same degree. And so on. But they are mafiosi hit men with no qualms about committing murder for money.   God consigns Tom to hell for all eternity, but shows mercy to Tim. How could a good God do such a thing? Surely that is offensive to our human sense of justice. 

    Simply put, the theological problem is: How could a good God be both just and merciful?  Justice and mercy are both divine attributes, but they appear to us to be logically incompatible. The theologians have proposed solutions. This is not the place to review them. For present purposes we assume that the problem is soluble in the divine case.  In the human case, however, things look very different. 

    To make the question concrete, compare Bill Clinton's pardoning of Marc Rich with his pardoning of Patty Hearst.  Many of us will consider the latter to be a justifiable, and perhaps even an admirable tempering of justice with mercy. (The poor girl, pun intended, was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, etc.) But few will fail to consider the former pardon anything other than a moral outrage. But why an outrage?  (If you don't think the Rich pardon an outrage, choose one you think is: the illustrious Joe Biden has given us several to choose from.)

    I am assuming that in the divine case, justice and mercy are indissolubly one in such a way as to render impossible any differentiation between justifiable and unjustifiable acts of divine mercy. On this assumption no divine pardon is or could be morally wrong. In the divine case, one could not claim that God was violating the moral law by any act of mercy.  It is after all false that "no one is above the law"; God is above both the positive law and the moral law inasmuch as he is the source of both.  He is the source of positive law inasmuch as he is the creator of the persons who posit the positive law. He is the source of the moral law inasmuch as he is absolutely sovereign and so cannot be subject to anything external to himself.  There is a sense in which God is above the law. But no man is above the law.  

    Now we come to the problem.  When a president pardons a convicted criminal is he not violating the rule of law and putting himself above the law? How can that be justified? Surely not by a secularization process whereby the theological unity of justice and mercy gets transferred from God who truly is the unity of justice and mercy to a mortal man, POTUS say, who is obviously not such a unity.  

    The point I am making is that the secularization of theological concepts must not be confused with the realization in the State of theological realities.  Just as the theory of God is not the same as God, the theory of the state is not the same as the State. So if the concepts ingredient in the theory of God are secularized, which is to say, "transferred from theology to the theory of the state," as Schmitt says above, that is not to say that God is being denied and replaced by the State.  It is logically consistent to maintain both of the following: (a) "All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts" (Schmitt) and (b) God exists and is not the State.

    The question for me, and not only for me, as to what Schmitt believed in the end about these matters remains open.  The above is simply a preliminary exercise in understanding what Schmitt is ultimately driving at.  He is undoubtedly one of the great political theorists of the 2oth century. His fateful entanglement with the NSDAP from May of 1933 on is no excuse not to study him in detail and in depth.  You study Rawls and Nozick but ignore Schmitt? WTF is wrong with you?

    But it would have been nice if in retrospect he had accepted and lived by my masthead motto:  "Study everything, join nothing."

    Why did Schmitt become a Nazi? Reinhard Mehring in his monumental (748 page!) Carl Schmitt: A Biography (Polity Press, 2014, pb 2022, German original 2009, tr. Daniel Steuer, pp. 282-284) lists 47 possible reasons/motives! I schmitt you not.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “The Presidential Power of Pardon: A Political-Theological Theme”

  • Slop Talk

    'Due process' is a term of legal shop talk.  Those of us who know something about the law — I know a little — know how to use it correctly. And those of us who think that words ought to be used responsibly in serious discussions should take offense at the 'slop talk' use of 'due process.' Trey Gowdy knows a lot more about the law than I do. But a couple of Sundays ago he  asked how much 'due process' Laken Riley's assailant showed her. Sean Hannity is another who has asked this question.

    That got me thinking about what sort of 'due process' Ibarra should have shown Riley. "You have the right to plead, to pray, and to protest your upcoming rape and murder; you have in addition the right to avail yourself of the services of any well-armed Good Samaritan who might come along."

    What were Gowdy and Hannity driving at? That wide-open borders are a recipe for disaster? That the very notion of legal due process needs to be re-thought? Unclear. Commentators who want to be taken seriously  should say what they mean and mean what they say.

    Democrats are slop heads in the main; we expect incoherence, inanity, and slop talk from them. Conservatives ought not ape them.  Does my use of 'ape' make me a racist? What if I were to use such words as 'niggardly' and 'denigrate'?

    The WAPO fentanyl 'mystery' is another good illustration of how contemptibly stupid our political enemies can be. Karoline Leavitt has fun with it.  In other news, her intersectional and highly 'wokified' predecessor has quit the Dems, and like 'Fake Jake' Tapper and others will endeavor to tap into the money to be made from telling tales of dementia and dysfunction in high places.

    Further examples are easily multiplied beyond all necessity. "Tampon Tim" Walz is a bloody good source of them.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Agapic Love

    It is rare are among humans, but common in relation to our pets.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Bill Maher versus David Mamet

    About six minutes long. Topics: 2020 election and Jan 6. Tell me who you think 'won' and why.

    Related: Three Notes on David Mamet.  From 2023. Vito Caiati and Dmitri Dain offer their typically astute comments.

    Bill Vallicella

    9 responses to “Bill Maher versus David Mamet”

  • Schiller contra Schmitt

    Freude, Schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuer-trunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

    Joy! A spark of fire from heaven,
Daughter from Elysium,
Drunk with fire we dare to enter,
Holy One, inside your shrine.
Your magic power binds together,
What we by custom wrench apart,
All men will emerge as brothers,
Where you rest your gentle wings.

    Full text of Schiller's Ode to Joy, in German and English, here. 
    Relevant portion of the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
    Bill Vallicella

  • The Universe Groks Itself and the Aporetics of Artificial Intelligence

    I will cite a couple of articles for you to ponder.  Malcolm Pollack sends us to one in which scientists find their need for meaning satisfied by their cosmological inquiries.  Subtitle: “The stars made our minds, and now our minds look back.”

    The idea is that in the 14 billion years since the Big Bang, the universe has become aware of itself in us. The big bad dualisms of Mind and Matter, Subject and Object are biting the dust. We belong here in the material universe. We are its eyes. Our origin in star matter is higher origin enough to satisfy the needs of the spirit. 

    Malcolm sounds an appropriately skeptical note: "Grist for the mill – scientists yearning for spiritual comfort and doing the best their religion allows: waking up on third base and thinking they've hit a triple." A brilliant quip.

    Another friend of mine, nearing the end of the sublunary trail, beset by maladies physical and spiritual, tells me that we are in Hell here and now. He exaggerates, no doubt, but as far as evaluations of our predicament go, it is closer to the truth than a scientistic optimism blind to the horrors of this life.  What do you say when nature puts your eyes out, or when dementia does a Biden on your brain, or nature has you by the balls in the torture chamber? 

    What must it be like to be a "refuge on the unarmed road of flight" after Russian missiles have destroyed your town and killed your family? 

    Does the cosmos come to self-awareness in us? If it does, then perhaps it ought to figure out a way to restore itself to the nonbeing whence it sprang.

    The other article to ponder, Two Paths for A.I. (The New Yorker), offers pessimistic and optimistic predictions about advanced AI.

    If the AI pessimists are right, then it is bad news for the nature-mystical science optimists featured in the first article: in a few years, our advanced technology, self-replicating and recursively self-improving, may well restore the cosmos to (epistemic) darkness, though not to non-being. 

    I am operating with a double-barreled assumption: mind and meaning cannot emerge from the wetware of brains or from the hardware of computers.  You can no more get mind and meaning from matter than blood from a stone. Mind and Meaning have a Higher Origin. Can I prove it? No. Can you disprove it? No. But you can reasonably believe it, and I'd say you are better off believing it than not believing it.  The will comes into it. (That's becoming a signature phrase of mine.) Pragmatics comes into it. The will to believe.

    And it doesn't matter  how complexly organized the hunk of matter is.  Metabasis eis allo genos? No way, Matty.

    Theme music: Third Stone from the Sun.

    Chimes of Freedom.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “The Universe Groks Itself and the Aporetics of Artificial Intelligence”

  • A ‘Progressive’ Paradox

    How 'progressive' is it to be stuck in the past? 

    Substack latest.

    Bill Vallicella

Philosophy Weblogs

Other Websites