Is Trump an example?
Substack latest.
https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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Expressive Individualism
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Is Graduate School Really That Bad?
Top of the Stack.
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A Response to My Is Sin a Fact?
Brian Bosse is not convinced by my Substack article, Is Sin a Fact? A Passage from Chesterton Examined. Brian writes,
Your Argument Against Chesterton
(1) If the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street, then the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street.
(2) It is not the case that the existence of God is a fact one can see in the street.
From (1) and (2), it follows that
(3) It is not the case that the existence of sin is a fact one can see in the street.
Bill’s Prior Commitments
(4) The existence of moral evil is a fact one can see in the street.
(5) There are objective moral values/laws.
It seems to me that from (4) and (5) one must conclude that…
(6) The existence of objective moral values/laws is a fact one can see in the street.
Bill, do you accept (6)? If so, do you think it is possible for there to be objective moral laws in a non-theistic worldview?
I endorse the first argument. It is obviously valid in point of logical form, instantiating as it does modus tollens. And I claim that both premises are true. You will agree with me that the first is true if you agree that sin is an offense against God, which implies that if there is no God, then there is no sin. The first premise is uncontroversially true because true ex vi terminorum, which is a fancy way of saying that it is true by definition. You will agree with me that the second premise is true if you agree that the existence of sinful acts and sinful omissions is not perceivable via the senses. (More on this in a moment.)
As for the second argument, I did not give it and I do not endorse it. I do not consider (4) to be true. And I reject (6). Brian is omitting some important distinctions I make. I affirm the existence of moral evil (evil that comes about through the actions and omissions of free agents), but I say nothing in that Substack article about how the fact of moral evil is known. Is there moral evil? is one question. How do we know that there is moral evil? is a different question.
Do we literally see moral evil? Is there any empirical access to it? Can we build a 'ponerometer,' an evil detector? Do we humans possess a non-empirical sensus moralitatis whereby we discern the existence of moral evil? These are just some of the questions that naturally arise. I deny that we literally see instances of moral evil. I will give a graphic example in a moment.
It is also important not to leave out the distinction I make between two senses or uses of fact.' On one use of 'fact,' a fact is a true proposition. On a second use, a fact is a true proposition known to be true. If the existence of moral evil is a fact in the second sense, that leaves open the question as to how we know that moral evil is a fact in this second sense. I deny that we can see it (with our eyes) "in the street." The fact of moral evil is not "as plain as potatoes," to use Chesterton's expression. I know that the vegetable on my counter is a potato by seeing it (with my eyes). I do not see moral evil with my eyes. I maintain that there are actions that are morally evil, but I deny that their being morally evil is a fact that one can literally see. Now for the example.
There is a video online that depicts a black thug nonchalantly loading his semi-automatic pistol and shooting in the back of the head a homeless man sitting on a curb. What do you see? You see a man shooting another man in the head. You do not see the evil of the act. (You do not see the illegality of the act either. You see a killing; you do not see a murder.) That is not to say that the act is not evil; it is to say that the evilness of the act is not visible or in any other way empirically detectable by our outer senses even when instrumentally extended. Suppose you saw the shooting from different angles in great detail, with the blood surging out of the wound, etc. You would still not thereby know by empirical means that the the act of shooting is an evil act. Suppose you had a videotape of the entire execution and then analyzed it frame-by-frame. Would you then see (with your eyes) the evilness of the act? Of course not.
In sum, I affirm the existence of moral evil. But I deny both that the existence of moral evil is a fact one can see in the street, and that the existence of sin is a fact that one can see in the street. The crucial point however, as Brian appreciates, is that moral evil is not the same as sin. It is perfectly plain that sin presupposes the existence of God. It is not perfectly plain that objective moral evil presupposes the existence of God.
Brian asks, "Do you think it is possible for there to be objective moral laws in a non-theistic worldview? [i.e., in a world in which God does not exist?]" Well, there cannot be objectively binding moral commandments without a very special commander, or objectively binding moral imperatives without an Imperator. But why couldn't there be objectively true moral declaratives — e.g., it is wrong always and everywhere to torture innocent human beings for one's sexual gratification — in the atheist's world?
But these questions go well beyond the topic of my article which was merely to show that Chesterton was blustering when he claimed that it is empirically obvious — "plain as potatoes," a fact in the second sense — that there are sinful deeds and omissions. That could be true only if it is empirically obvious that God exists. But the latter is not empirically obvious.
25 responses to “A Response to My Is Sin a Fact?”
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Coffee
October 1st is International Coffee Day. But we are still in March. So I'm jumping the gun as one might do under the influence. Herewith, some tunes in anticipatory celebration. Not that I'm drinking coffee now: it's a morning and afternoon drink. I am presently partaking of a potent libation consisting of 3/4 Tequila Añejo and 1/4 Aperol with a non-alcoholic St. Pauli Girl as chaser. Delicioso!
Ella Mae Morse, Forty Cups of Coffee
Cream, The Coffee Song
Johnny Cash and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, A Cup of Coffee
Commander Cody, Truck Drivin' Man. This one goes out to Sally and Jean and Mary in memory of our California road trip nine years ago. "Pour me another cup of coffee/For it is the best in the land/I'll put a nickel in the jukebox/And play that 'Truck Drivin' Man.'"
Dave Dudley, Coffee, Coffee, Coffee
Calexico & Roger McGuinn, Another Cup of Coffee. A good version of this old Dylan tune.
Mississippi John Hurt, Coffee Blues
Patricia Kaas, Black Coffee
Annette Hanshaw, You're the Cream in My Coffee, 1928
Johann Sebastian Bach, Coffee Cantata
What is wrong with people who don't drink or enjoy coffee? They must not value consciousness and intensity of experience. Poor devils! Perhaps they're zombies (in the philosophers' sense).
Patrick Kurp recommends Rick Danko and Paul Butterfield, Java Blues, one hard-driving, adrenalin-enabling number which, in synergy with a serious cup of java will soon have you banging hard on all synaptic 'cylinders.'
Chicory is a cheat. It cuts it but doesn't cut it.
"The taste of java is like a volcanic rush/No one is going to stop me from drinking too much . . . ."
Warren Zevon, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
2 responses to “Saturday Night at the Oldies: Coffee”
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A Hot Sauce Rant from 2013
A hot (sauce rant) or a (hot sauce) rant? Both. Parentheses matter! Scope matters. All scope distinctions matter. Mind your p's and q's. Discriminate operators and operands. (Am I sending a coded message?)
Substack latest.
Don't complain about 'old news.' What are you, a Twitterized 'woke' presentist?
There is presentism in the philosophy of time and there is what I will call, for want of a better term, historical presentism. This, roughly, is the conceit that the present alone matters and that we have little or nothing to learn from the past. It is not so much a view as an attitude, a 'bad 'tude' if you will, one shared by adolescents of all ages. There is the punk who, ignorant of great literature, installs Bukowski in the literary pantheon. Self-insulation from the past and its achievements is one of the ways wokesters self-enstupidate.
And there are those who ought to know better, spineless university administrators in the grip of fashionable obsessions, who are thereby rendered incapable of just judgments of past times and individuals. Case in point: the Flannery O'Connor unnaming.
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Pasta Puttanesca
Pasta Puttanesca is a good Lenten meal for a Friday night despite its being 'in the style of the whore.' Italian la puttana means whore, harlot, slut. Didn't Jesus suffer all to come unto him, even the ladies of the evening?
Make it with sardines: 'meatier' than anchovies. Pour some extra virgin olive oil into a pan. Don't ask how much. Eyeball it like a man. Dump some chopped-up garlic onto the olio d'oliva lube job. Set the heat to moderate. Crack open the can of sardines and dump the contents, oil, water, and all into the pan. Break the formerly-sentient sea critters into small pieces. Add a can of diced tomatoes. Throw in your Italian spices and fresh-ground pepper. Chop up some olives and add to the mix. Stir. Simmer.
You knew without my telling you to get a righteous quantity of water boiling. Dump the pasta into the boiling water. Capellini cooks quickly thus comporting well with the celerity with which this dish is supposed to be thrown together at the end of a long day. Cook the pasta a little shy of al dente. It will cook further when you add it to the sauce. Eat it topped with freshly-grated Parmigiana Reggiano or Pecorino Romano. Wash it down with a glass or two of Dago Red. Think with compassion of the ladies of the evening. But do not avail yourself of their services.
To the scholarly among you I recommend Benedicta Ward, SLG, Harlots of the Desert: A Study of Repentance in Early Monastic Sources, Cistercian Publications, 1987. With chapters on Mary Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Pelagia, Thais, and Maria the Niece of Abraham.
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It Pays to Publish . . .
. . . but don't pay to publish. Leader of the Stack.
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Anarcho-Tyranny in the USA
Here by Auron MacIntyre at The Total State (Substack):
The city of Philadelphia has announced an agreement to pay a $9.25 million settlement in connection with the police response to protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020. While dozens were killed and billions of dollars of damage were done during the riots that raged across America for weeks in the summer of 2020, it is the participants themselves who will be paid restitution by the government.
Law and order in the United States have now descended to a level of anarcho-tyranny in which the government funds rioters with the tax money of their victims. The slow death of the rule of law in America would be ugly enough, but what we are witnessing instead is the twisted, grimacing corpse of a system that was once designed to protect the safety of Americans now being used to punish us for disagreeing with our political elites.
UPDATE 3/24
This fellow and I so far appear to be 'on the same page.' Two days ago, before I had heard of him, I spoke of our time as
. . . a time when those in control of the state apparatus have forgotten, or rather willfully ignore, the purposes that justify government in the first place, namely, the tasks of securing the life, liberty, and property of those governed. But the Orwellian wokesters now in charge invert these values in the Orwellian manner and aid and abet those who aim at the opposite.
As MacIntyre points out, what we are witnessing is "more than the slow death of the rule of law," but the inversion of our founding values. And yet brazen liars such as Nancy Pelosi yammer on about the rule of law while her shills in the media intone in unison the scripted mantra, "No one is above the law," as they pervert the law Soviet-style to destroy Donald J. Trump. Thankfully, Nancy dear is no longer with us (nor against us) politically speaking; others, however, far worse and more dangerous because less stupid, will take her place.
And as usual the Left Coast leads the way. (Because it is closer to China?) Here is Substacker David Zweig on lockdown and surveillance Santa Clara-style.
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Buckner Clarifies his Terminology
Terminological fluidity is one of the banes of philosophy. What follows is an admirable exercise in terminological fixation by the Worthy Opponent. My comments are in blue.
I have been discussing toothbrushes [mirror images] with David but it’s clear we are being held back by semantics. I am not clear what we respectively mean by “reflection” or “appearance”, or of the green colour of these things. So I will try to set out what I mean or understand by the different terms.
“Phenomenal green”, “green as we see it”, “green as it appears to us”, also David’s “sensation of green” I think all mean the same thing, namely what I mean by green(ness), but let me explain what I understand by “green”.
BV: So far, so good.
1) Greenness is a visible quality of certain objects such as leaves, avocados, algae, brussel sprouts, [some] toothbrushes etc.
BV: The point needs to be put more precisely. Green (greenness) is a determinable with a range of corresponding determinates. (See here for the distinction.) The latter are the specific shades of green. The determinable green is arguably not a visible quality; only the lowest determinates are, the infima species.
2) It is extended. I mean that a green patch is composed of green patches, which are in turn composed of further green patches ad infinitum. i.e. The greenness is continuous, or consists of a set of green points.
BV: This is not quite right either. Yes, a visible green patch can be subdivided, but not to infinity, for soon enough we arrive at sub-patches that cannot be seen, and this long before we get to points. A point is dimensionless: it has a location but no extension. And surely it is true that no color-determinate is visible if unextended.
3) Only a surface, i.e. a two dimensional thing can be green. However the surface is extended in 3D space, because each point can be a different distance from me.
BV: This sounds right to me. Visible green is given only two-dimensionally, even if the 'green' thing in the external world is 'green' all the way through.
4) The green quality is mind-independent, for the following reasons. (i) It exists outside me, (ii) it is a quality of the object which is green, and not a quality of me. (iii) I can no longer see it when I shut my eyes, but it is still there.
BV: Here is where the going gets tough. If 'exists outside me' just means 'mind-independent,' then the first reason begs the question, or is circular. If, however, 'exists outside me' means 'appears outside me,' then the visible need not be mind-independent.
As for (ii), what is the object? 'Object' is notoriously ambiguous. The thing in the external world? But then it hasn't been shown that the visible quality is a property of the object. It might just be a property of the phenomenon in Kant's sense which, though empirically real, is transcendentally ideal.
As for (iii), if the visible quality is still there when I close my eyes, then it would have to be part of the thing itself in the external world, right? But that seems to comport none too well with the visible quality's being a phenomenal item.
5) It is inert, namely unlike heat it has no causal power to affect my senses.
BV: Seem right. The seen green has no causal power. But how can the visible two-dimensional phenomenal quality be both causally inert, and yet still be there when I close my eyes, given that the latter implies that the quality is part and parcel of the thing itself in the external world?
Unlike heat? But surely there is phenomenal heat in contradistinction to heat-scientifically-understood. The felt heat of the hot coffee when I take a sip is not the same as the mean molecular kinetic energy of the coffee-water molecules.
6) Thus it is not equivalent to reflectance properties of leaves or algae, which are powers to affect my senses, as far as we know, but greenness is an inert, non-causal quality. The leaf just is green.
BV: Yes. The reflectance properties are dispositional properties, but there is nothing dispositional about the seen green, the phenomenal sense quality (sensory quale). It is wholly occurrent or actual.
7) It follows that greenness cannot be a reflectance property of green objects, although there may be some unknown causal connection between the property and the quality.
BV: Seems so. Seen green cannot be a reflectance property of 'green' things themselves in the external world, things we call 'green' because they have the power to cause in us sensory qualia that are phenomenally green.
If, as science suggests, the green quality ‘out there’ is caused by neural processes, the greenness of “green” objects is an illusion, for it cannot be a quality of the green object. The causation cannot work in reverse. There is no way that a neural process in the brain can change or affect the quality of any object outside the brain.
BV: So when I am outside looking at my green palo verde tree in the backyard I am under an illusion because the tree in nature (in the external world) cannot be phenomenally green: that visible quality cannot be a property of the tree itself. It is conjured up in my brain by neural processes.
Is there not something dubious in the view that our direct sensory perception (in optimal conditions of lighting, etc.) of things like trees is illusory? If the seen green is illusory, then so is the smelt scent of the blossoms (The Sonoran spring is in full swing.) And so on for all the other so-called secondary qualities/properties. Can we keep the illusoriness from spreading to the primary qualities?
17 responses to “Buckner Clarifies his Terminology”
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Kato Crews: ‘Wokified’ but not Qualified
Another example of how qualifications do not matter to wokesters.
UPDATE 3/26. In the related case of the 'wokified' but not qualified Phil Washington, sanity has prevailed.
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Academentia in excelsis
DEI and the collapse of the universities.
Substack latest.
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Three Senses of ‘Peace’
There is the divine peace that "surpasseth all understanding." (Philippians 4:7) It is the most difficult to achieve.
There is peace among people who love, or at least tolerate, one another. It is moderately difficult to achieve.
There is finally the peace most easily achieved, that based on deterrence and mutual fear. (Our enemies do not respect us, but they can be made to fear us, and for most practical purposes fear suffices.) This is the peace guaranteed by the strength of a Reagan or a Trump but undermined by the weakness of a Carter, an Obama, or (worst of all) a Biden. This is the peace about which it is wisely said, "If you want peace, prepare for war." Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Credible deterrence assures peace between nations. Never forget: Nations are in the state of nature vis-à-vis one another, and nature is "red in tooth and claw." This is not pessimism; it is realism.
A well-armed and well-trained populace assures peace between it and the state apparatus which is ever lusting to increase its power. The will to power wills not merely its preservation but its continuous increase.
The peace purchased by credible deterrence is the foundation of the other, loftier, two. You will not be able to achieve the peace that "surpasseth all understanding,' or even peace with your brothers if your monastery is being bombed to smithereens. This is why the Luftmensch must know how to fight, why the bookman must needs also be a rifleman. This is especially so at a time when those in control of the state apparatus have forgotten, or rather willfully ignore, the purposes that justify government in the first place, namely the tasks of securing the life, liberty and property of those governed. But the Orwellian wokesters now in charge invert these values in the Orwellian manner and aid and abet those who aim at the opposite. I trust my meaning is clear.
By the way, now you know why the 9mm pistol round is sometimes referred as the parabellum round. Also, and coincidentally, Pb is the designation on the Periodic Table for the element, lead, which I might add, nowadays counts as a 'precious metal.' A wise man in these trying times stocks up on such 'precious metals' as Au and Pb.
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On Prejudice
The word has two senses; only one is pejorative.
Leader of the Stack.
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American Restoration
Substack articles by Bruce Abramson. From his About page:
Suppose you think that it’s wrong to discriminate based on race. To the Woke, you’re a racist.
Suppose you say that humans are either male or female. To the Woke, that’s dehumanizing.
Suppose you champion free speech. To the Woke, you’re promoting hatred.
Suppose you think that the ends don’t justify the means. To the Woke, you’re impeding justice.
Suppose you believe in God. To the Woke, you’re an unstable superstitious bigot.
The list of such absurd defamations is long, and it grows longer every day. But it’s no joke. Once the woke have labeled you a hateful, dehumanizing, unstable racist whose mere existence stands in the way of justice, they will treat you as if that’s who you really are. They will work to destroy you—terminate your personal relationships, professional aspirations, and financial possibilities.
Worst of all, the Woke are winning. The United States is mired in a Second Civil War. The country no longer functions as either a free society or a constitutional republic. Every single one of our major institutions has been corrupted: Academia, K-12 education, the media, the civil service, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the legal and medical professions, and nearly every important professional society. Recent years have even uncovered deep Woke rot running corporate boardrooms, the IRS, FBI, CIA, NSA, and the military.
Leaders and organizations that are not Woke themselves cower in fear and fall in line. More than 60% of American report being afraid to voice their opinions; they fear woke reprisal.
This situation is neither tolerable nor sustainable. If we don’t move quickly to restore the free society America was born to be, we will slide irretrievably into an autocratic, elitist oligarchy.
We are beyond the time of timidity and prudence. We have become both the counterculture and counterrevolutionaries. Very little of what we have done in the past is suited to those roles. If we are to restore America, we will need new lessons, strategies, tactics, and priorities.
This essay series is for those who want to master the techniques we need.
Is Abramson exaggerating? I'd say he isn't. What say you?
12 responses to “American Restoration”
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Consciousness is an Illusion . . .
. . . but truth is not? An inconsistency in Dennett.
Over at the Stack.
2 responses to “Consciousness is an Illusion . . .”
4 responses to “Is Graduate School Really That Bad?”