Maverick Philosopher

This is exactly the sort of mealy-mouthed phraseology one expects from liberals. We first hear of a sovereign nation's right to control its borders for the common good. So far, so good. But then, as if it take back with the LEFT hand what was proferred with the right, we are told of the "basic human rights" of the illegal immigrant.

But what rights are these? Do they include the right to invade a sovereign nation and violate its laws? There is no right to be granted citizenship; it is privilege foreign-born persons must apply for. It is true that we are a nation of immigrants. But it is false that we are a nation of illegal immigrants.

The Bishops' statement leaves us in the dark as to what they really intend. Hence my use of 'mealy-mouthed,' a good synonym for which is 'devious.' Where do they stand exactly? Do they hold that there is a natural right to immigrate? Since rights and duties are correlative, that would imply a duty on our part to let them in. Do the bishops agree with the U. N. that the "right to freely migrate from poor to richer lands is a fundamental human right deserving of universal recognition"? (See here.) One gets the impression that they do. But surely there is no such right.

But perhaps the good bishops think there is such a right. Then we need to hear some bloody arguments. Is is as if they know how weak their case is, so that the only way they think they can win is by acts of linguistic vandalism and rhetorical deviousness.

Does the Catholic Church support illegal immigration? No. The Catholic Church does not support or encourage illegal immigration because (1) it is contrary to federal law and (2) it is not good either for society, because of the presence of a large population living outside the community, or the migrant, who is subjected to abuse, exploitation, and even death. Instead, the Church is advocating changing a broken law so that undocumented persons can obtain legal status in our country and enter the United States legally to work and support their families.

Let's translate this into plain English. The Church does not support illegal immigration. But it does support the changing of "broken" laws so that "undocumented persons" (read: illegal aliens) are no longer illegal!

Do you see the linguistic chicanery that is being perpetrated here? There are certain actions, such as crossing the border without permission, that reasonable people deem unacceptable. So these actions are made illegal. These laws are reasonable and just and every country has them. So what do the good bishops propose? They would change the laws so that these very same unacceptable actions are no longer accounted illegal.

Thus they can have it both ways at once. They can claim that they do not support illegal immigration while supporting the very actions that are now illegal. The logically acute will notice that they are equivocating on 'illegal.' The are using it in two senses: 'illegal from the point of view of the law as they would like it to be' and 'illegal as the law now stands.' It's a nice trick.

It is as if one were to reduce crime by simply legalizing various activities. Think of how much less crime there would be if rape and drunk-driving were legalized. In one sense there would be less crime: there would be less crime as this is defined by the law. But in the sense that matters there would be just as much crime: rape and drunk-driving do not become morally acceptable just because no positive law forbids them. That rape and drunk-driving are morally wrong is obvious to anyone who is not morally obtuse; the wrongness does not derive from the existence of a positive law forbidding them.

A similar mistake is made by certain anarchists who think that criminals are made such by the State and its laws. But I've already said my piece on this topic in Hocking on the Anarchist and the Criminal.

This site suggests that there are two forms of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Let c and e be individual events (event-tokens) and C and E event-types. Now it is clearly fallacious to argue:

1. c temporally preceded e.
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2. c caused e.

But what about this inference:

3. Events of type C happen immediately prior to events of type E.
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4. Events of type C cause events of type E.

Note that in the second inference pattern there are two ideas involved: temporal precedence and what Hume called "constant conjunction." Now although both argument-patterns are deductively invalid, the second has some inductive merit. If I know that all C-type events hitherto encountered are immediately followed by E-type events, does that not count as evidence of a causal connection? Defeasible evidence, no doubt, but evidence nonetheless.

So although the first inference-pattern is clearly fallacious, I hesitate to say that the second is. Consider now a third pattern:

5. Events of type C happen immediately prior to, and in spatiotemporal contiguity with, events of type E.
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4. Events of type C cause events of type E.

Someone who accepts Hume's analysis of causation in terms of temporal precedence, spatiotemporal contiguity, and constant conjuction, would have to say that the third inference-pattern is not fallacious at all, but is deductively valid. (The validity of course requires adding Hume's analysis of causation as a tacit premise.)

Note first that if one scriptural passage can be invoked as a basis for public policy and law, then any can. We are enjoined in other NT places to "Resist not the evildoer," "Turn the other cheek," and the like. (If you can help me with chapter and verse, and to find other relevant passages, please do so.)

Now imagine a society that implements a policy of not resisting (apprehending, trying, convicting, incarcerating) rapists, murderers, and miscreants generally. Such a society would seal its own death warrant and cease to function. It is a fact of human nature that people, in the main, behave tolerably well only under threat of punishment. People for the most part do not do the right thing because it is the right thing, but out of fear of punishment. This is not pessimism, but realism, and is known to be true by all unprejudiced students of history and society.

As for turning the other cheek, it is a policy that works well in certain atypical circumstances. If a man has a well-formed conscience, and is capable of feeling shame, then turning the other cheek in the face of his affront can achieve a result far superior to that achieved by replying in kind. Nonviolence can work. Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to the British may serve as an historical example. The Brits could be shamed and in any case Gandhi had no other means at his disposal. But imagine what would happen if Israel turned the other cheek in the face of its Islamic enemies who would blow it off the face of the map at the first opportunity?

Once your enemy has reduced you to the status of a pig or a dog fit only to be slaughtered, then there is no way to reach him, shame him, or persuade him by acts of forebearance and kindness. You must resist him, with deadly force if necessary, if you wish to preserve your existence.

But is it not better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, as Socrates maintained? Would it not be better to perish than to defend one's life by taking life? Perhaps, but only if the underlying metaphysics and soteriology are true. If the soul is immortal, and the phenomenal world is of no ultimate concern -- being a vale of tears, a place through which we temporarily sojourn on our way to our true home -- then the care of the soul is paramount and to suffer wrong is better than to inflict it.

The same goes for Christianity which, as Nietzsche remarks, is "Platonism for the people." If you are a Christian, and look beyond this world for your true happiness, then you are entitled to practice an austere morality in your private life. But you are not entitled to impose that morality and metaphysics on others, or demand that the State codify that morality and metaphysics in its laws and policies. For one thing, it would violate the separation of Church and State. More importantly, the implementation of Christian morality would lead to the destruction of the State and the State's ability to secure life, liberty, and property -- the three Lockean purposes for which we have a state in the first place.

There is no use denying that the State is a violent and coercive entity. To function at all in pursuit of its legitimate tasks of securing life, liberty, and property, it must be able to make war against external enemies and impose discipline upon internal malefactors. The violence may be justified, but it is violence nonethless. To incarcerate a person, for example, is to violate his liberty; it is to do evil to him, an evil necessary for a greater good that can be attained in no other way.

The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular -- be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian -- have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher/Christian, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socrtaic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug-smuggler or a human-trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law-breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's lawbreaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops who, being mushbrained liberals, cannot comprehend the simple distinctions I have tried to set forth.

2. Framing a definition is one thing, showing that something answers to it is another. Are there any necessary beings? Since a necessary being could be either abstract or concrete, I can show that there are necessary beings by showing that there is at least one abstract necessary being. To convey the senses of 'concrete' and 'abstract' by example one could say that God and Socrates are concrete while the proposition 7 is prime and Socrates' singleton -- {Socrates} -- are abstract. Concreta are causally active/passive whereas abstracta are not.

3. Some truths are necessary, others are contingent. 'I am now blogging' is contingently true: it is true, but it might not have been true. I might have been doing something inconsistent with blogging now, sleeping for instance. By contrast, 'If I am blogging, then I am writing' is necessarily true. To see this, negate the sentence in question. The result is a sentence expressing a broadly logical impossibility: 'I am blogging and it is not the case that I am writing.' Consider also, 'If I am blogging, then it is not the case that I am not blogging.' This too is necessarily true, except that the negation expresses a narrowly logical impossibility: 'I am blogging and I am not blogging.'

I don't see how any reasonable person can deny that there are necessary truths. Another example: '7 is a prime number' expresses a necessary truth. This doesn't just happen to be true in the way that it just happens to be true that there are seven cans of Dr. Pepper left in the reefer. It is necessarily true: true in all (BL)-possible worlds.

4. A truth is a true truth-bearer. Now I don't understand how ink on paper, or chalk on a blackboard, or any physical modification of any physical medium, no matter how complex the modification and how complex the medium, could be true or false. I don't understand how anything physical could, qua physical, be a truth-bearer or truth-vehicle, i.e., an item capable of being either true or false. Marks on paper cannot be either true or false. They just exist. But suppose you think they -- or complex modifications of the stuff between your ears -- can be either true or false. Still, the marked-up paper exists contingently. Consequently, the sentence-token '7 is prime' scratched onto the paper exists contingently. Similarly for anything inscribed in your brain. Your brain and its 'inscriptions' are contingent.

5. But then how could any truth be necessarily true? There is no possible world in which 7 is not prime, but there are worlds in which there are no material things. How could the proposition in question be true in those worlds if there is nothing in those worlds to serve as truth-bearer? Let's spell this out.

If an item has a property, then, pace Meinong, the item exists. So if an item such as a truth-bearer has the property of being necessarily true, then that truth-bearer necessarily exists. Therefore, if there are necessary truths, then there are necessary beings. Now there are necessary truths. Therefore, there are necessary beings.

Given that everything physical is contingent, these necessary beings are nonphysical. So they are either mental (accusatives of mental acts) or abstract. For present purposes, it doesn't matter which of these they are. The present point is that there is good reason to believe in (i.e., believe that there are) necessary beings.

6. But I hear an objection coming:

An item can have a property essentially without having it necessarily. Thus Socrates is essentially human, but not necessarily human. He is human in every world in which he exists, but he does not exist in every world. So he is essentially but not necessarily human. Why can't the proposition expressed by '7 is prime' be like that? Why can't it be essentially (as opposed to accidentally) true, true in every world in which it exists, but neither true nor false in the worlds in which it does not exist? If this is the way it is, then your argument from necessary truths to necessary beings collapses.

The objector is suggesting that truth-bearers are contingent beings. But this is problematic as Alvin Plantinga argues (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford UP, 1993, p. 119.) Suppose that truth-bearers are brain inscriptions, and consider the proposition

1. There are brain inscriptions.

(1) is such that it could not have been false. For in a possible world in which there are no brain inscriptions, there are no truth-bearers, which implies that (1) in those words is neither true nor false, hence not false. And in every world in which there are brain inscriptions, (1) is of course true. So (1) is true in every world in which it exists, and not false in every world in which it does not exist. So (1) could not have been false.

But this bizarre. Surely there might have been no brains and no brain-inscriptions. It is not necessarily true that there are brains. If it is not necessarily true that there are brains, then it is possibly true that there are no brains.

Now what is this possibility of there being no brains? It is plausibly identified with the possibly being true of the proposition, There are no brains. But then this proposition must exist in those possible worlds in which it is not true.

The Pyrrhonian skeptic, then, seeks ataraxia as the summum bonum. This freedom from disturbance is supposed to be achieved by an epoche (suspension) of doxastic commitments of a certain sort. One is supposed to achieve the happiness of tranquillity by suspending one's belief on a certain range of issues, those issues that typically cause contention, enmity, and bloodshed. Among these will be found philosophical, theological, and political issues. My elite readers can easily supply their own examples.

The suspension of belief is supposed to ensue when it is seen that reason is impotent to decide the disputed questions, when it is seen that for every argument for some dogma, there is an equally good counterargument for its negation. So what the skeptical therapist does is run through the arguments on both sides of an issue with an eye to showing how they cancel out: one is left with no reason to prefer one side over the other.

Having thus attained insight into reason's impotence to decide the disputed questions, the 'patient' abandons his contentious and argumentative comportment, suspends belief, and 'chills out' into a state of ataraxia.

But there is a serious problem here. Among the beliefs that inspire dispute and contention and militate against mental tranquillity are the beliefs that are part and parcel of any philosophical therapy. Practioners argue over the right therapy and they compete for patients -- and often the arguing and the competing are less than edifying. In particular, the skeptic is committed -- is he not? -- to the belief that no contradiction is true. For the suspension of belief is supposed to be consequent upon insight into the (putative) fact that there are equally good arguments for both a thesis T and its negation ~T, for all contention-inspiring values of 'T.' But the existence of these equally good arguments shows the impotence of reason only if it is assumed that no contradiction is true. If some contradictions are true, then the fact that there are equally good arguments for a thesis and its negation has no tendency to show that reasoning is not a route to truth.

Of course, our skeptic will not assert the Law of Non-Contradiction -- he is too wily for that -- but he is committed to its truth. So here is one 'dogmatic' proposition belief in which he cannot suspend. His skeptical procedure presupposes a doxastic commitment to LNC. His whole practice rests on it. His skepticism cannot be thoroughgoing. He cannot free himself from a central dogmatic commitment.

He may refrain from avowing it; he may even slip into self-deception about his commitment to it. But the commitmemt remains, if not occurrently then dispositionally, and is betrayed by his actions.

There is no living without beliefs, and this includes beliefs that range beyond the sensory and immediate. Believe we must, and inquire we must. Skepticism is a failed attempt at evading these, our responsibilities.

The sense of 'possibly' here is of course non-epistemic. At issue is broadly logical (as opposed to both narrowly logical and nomological) possibility. From the definition it follows that a noncontingent being is one that is either necessary or impossible. Now you will agree that the mere framing of a definition does not guarantee that there is anything answering to it. Still, is it not at least understandable that there should be some impossible beings, some necessary beings, and some contingent beings? And if you deny this, are you saying that nothing that exists is modally qualified, or are you saying that everything that exists is contingent?

I will be assuming that de re modal talk makes sense. Thus it makes sense to say of a thing or res that it is necessary or contingent. Res here contrasts with dictum. One might deny this by insisting that all meaningful modal talk is de dicto, of or about propositions. Accordingly, one would say of a dictum that it is necessarily true, but not of a res that it is necessarily existent. But this is not my present topic. I will be assuming that it makes sense and is true to say of myself that I exist and also that I exist contingently. If this be granted, then it will make sense, even if it is not true, that there is something that exists and exists necessarily.

Now the question arises: Could every being be contingent? One might be tempted to say that every being is contingent for Humean reasons. I lately quoted Hume to the effect that whatever can be conceived as existent can just as well be conceived as nonexistent. Since everything is such that its nonexistence can be conceived, even God, one will be tempted to infer that everything is such that it might not have existed, i.e., that every being is contingent.

But regardless of one's reasons for thinking that every being is contingent, let us see what happens if one assumes that this is so:

1. Every being is contingent.

If (1) is true, then it is either contingently true or necessarily true. If (1) is contingently true, then its negation Some being is noncontingent is possibly true. Now if it is possibly true that there exists a noncontingent being, then it is possibly true that there exists either an impossible being or a necessary being. Now we can exclude the possibility that there exists an impossible being. This leaves us with the possibility that there be a necessary being.

But if a necessary being is so much as possible, then a necessary being is actual. For a necessary being, by definition, is one whose possibility entails its actuality. (In possible worlds jargon: If there is a possible world in which there is a necessary being, then there is a possible world in which there is a being that exists in all possible worlds, including the actual world, which is of course one of the possible worlds. So if a necessary being is possible, then it is actual.)

Therefore, if (1) is contingently true, then there is a necessary being, which implies that (1) is false. So (1) is self-refuting on the assumption that (1) is contingently true.

So a proponent of (1) must maintain that (1) is necessarily true. Thus

1*. Necessarily, every being is contingent.

Does this pose a problem? Well, it is not straightforwardly self-contradictory like, 'It is necessarily true that all truths are non-necessary.' But if (1) is necessarily true, one can justifiably ask about the ground of its necessity. Obviously, it cannot be grounded in a mere stipulation. The problems of metaphysica generalis cannot be solved by mere stipulation.

Here is a reason to think that (1*) cannot be true. If the proposition expressed by 'Every being is contingent' is necessarily true, then that proposition — call it P — necessarily exists: a proposition true in every possible world must exist in every possible world. (Nothing can have a property unless it exists; so, a proposition cannot have the property of being true unless it exists; so if a proposition is true in every world, then it exists in every world.) But the existence of P shows that it is not the case that every being is contingent. For P is a being, but P exists necessarily. So (1*) is false.

"But P is not a concrete being." Yes, it is abstract. It is nevertheless something that is, and serves as a counterexample to (1*). The opponent must therefore retreat to something like

1**. Necessarily, every concrete being is contingent.

'Concrete' does not mean physical, but causally active/passive. Since brevity is the soul of blog, I will punch the clock for today and tell you some other time why I reject (1**).

But is there a totality of all the things that actually exist? Well, is there a totality of books in this room? There is this book here and that one there, and all the ones on all the shelves, and so without visually surveying them all, I naturally assume that they form a totality under the description, 'books in my study.' There is also the larger totality of books in my house. And so on up to the totality of everything that exists.

But of course there is a difference. One can count books; one cannot count existents. This is because an existent is not kind of thing. Being is not a genus as Aristotle remarks in the Posterior Analytics at 92b10 and in the Metaphysics at 998b22. How could one count existents?

Do I count my coffee cup as one existent or as many? It has many properties, and they exist. If the property of being blue did not exist in some mode or manner, then the cup couldn't have it. Now anything blue is colored, and so the property of being colored has to be counted, and presumably also the relation of inclusion that the latter bears to the former. One sees how tricky this becomes.

Still, it seems to make sense to say that there is a totality of things that exist. Given that there are many things, even infinitely many, it seems it must be possible to regard that manifold as one sum-total. They all exist and are unified by this fact. In what sense is this manyness a sum-total? This question is not easy to answer positively. Negatively, we can say it is not a set since, if I recall my set theory, it is provable within Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory that there is no set of everything.

Questions about realism and idealism come in here. Is the world-whole merely an horizon we project rather than an existent whole independent of us? And these are only some of the questions that arise.

One could simply tax Hume with begging the question against his theistic opponent, but I'll try a less brutal tack. Suppose we concede Hume's premise that whatever we conceive as existent we can also conceive as nonexistent. What does this show? It shows that nothing is such that existence is contained within its concept.

Consider the concept of God. (And don't confuse the concept of God with the essence of God.) Analyzing this concept, our concept, we may extract from it certain subconcepts such as omniscience, omnipotence, etc. But no matter how far we protract the analysis, we will not arrive at existence. In Kantian terms, no existential proposition is analytic; every existential proposition is synthetic. No existential truth is a conceptual truth.

This is plausible, and it may even be right. But how is it relevant to what a sophisticated theist would maintain? When the latter says that God is a necessary being, he needn't mean that God is a being whose nonexistence is inconceivable; he could mean that God is a being whose nonexistence is impossible. That is, our sophisticated theist could consistently maintain both

1. God's nonexistence is conceivable

but

2. God's nonexistence is impossible.

How so? Well, the fact that I can conceive some object or state of affairs does not make it (really) possible. I'm a puny mortal with a mortal mind. (And you're in the same leaky boat.) Why should my power to conceive have any ontological relevance? What I can conceive might well be impossible, and there may be objects and states of affairs that are possible that I cannot conceive.

Therefore, from the the mere fact that I can conceive the nonexistence of God, it does not follow that God is a contingent being, one whose nonexistence is possible.

The Humean (Cleanthean) position is that every being is a contingent being (because every being is such that its nonexistence is conceivable.) This is dubious as I will show in a separate post. For now, my point is that the argument quoted above causes a sophisticated theist such as your humble correspondent no trouble at all.

God exists because it is his nature to exist. Isn't that just a "virtus dormitiva"? Why should we take that seriously?

Let us first consider what a 'virtus dormitiva' explanation is and what is wrong with it. People learned from experience that Valerian root, ingested in sufficient quantities, is a soporific, a sleep-inducing agent. There is an observed regularity: take the stuff, get drowsy. So the question arises: Why does it make people sleepy? To say that it causes sleep because it possesses the dormitive power sounds tautological: "it causes sleep because it causes sleep." It sounds as if one is merely redescribing the phenomenon to be explained using obfuscatory terminology.

But although it is tautological to say that Valerian root causes sleep because it causes sleep, it is not tautological to say that there are powers (propensities, dispositions) in nature that are not reducible to their manifestations. Consider this counterfactual conditional:

1. If I were to drop this light bulb, it would shatter.

The truth of (1) does not depend on the bulb's ever being dropped. So the truth of the counterfactual cannot be grounded in the empirically manifest behavior of the bulb. The disposition to shatter if dropped of some light bulbs is never exercised or actualized. That disposition cannot be identified with any empirical manifestation. The disposition is arguably real though it remains forever empirically 'occult' (hidden). ('Occult' just means hidden, as when we speak of occult blood in a stool sample.)

Now to say that there are powers, propensities, dispositions in nature is to make a substantive non-tautological claim, and to explain the manifest behavior of things in terms of them is not tautological either.

So one has to be careful with this talk of 'virtus dormitiva.'

Consider a psychological example. Suppose I notice after careful observation that a person takes offense easily, angers easily, etc. If I explain his behavior by saying that he is irascible, then I am not merely redescribing his behavior but pointing to something that underlies it and that is at its root. One might even go on to correlate this character trait with a certain chemical deficiency. One hesitates to say that such an explanation is a circular redescription of the explanandum in the explanans.

But what does any of this have to do with God as necessary being? The theist says something like this: The universe exists because it is caused to exist by God. To the question, Why does God exist? the answer is: God is a necessary being, a being whose essence entails its existence.

If you say that nothing is such that its essence entails its existence, then you need to argue that out. One cannot dismiss the idea by bandying about the phrase 'virtus dormitiva.'

Whereas Q2 asks why anything at all exists, Q3 asks something more specific, namely, why this particular totality of things exists rather than some other possible totality. To have an explanation of why things in general exist is not to have an explanation of why these things exist.

Q3 could be put this way: Why is the actual world actual? "It is actual because it would not have been the actual world had it not been actual." To give this answer is to miss the sense of the question. The question asks: Why is this world, our world, actual rather than some other merely possible world? Let ‘A’ denote (rigidly designate) our world, the world that happens to be actual. The question is: Why is A actual rather than some merely possible world X?

So formulated, Q3 presupposes that there are other possible worlds. Suppose there is only one possible world, the actual world. Then the actual world would be the necessary world. For if there is only one possible world, then the world that is actual does not merely happen to be actual, but could not have failed to have been actual. The view that there is exactly one possible world may be called modal Spinozism, or to leave Spinoza out of it, modal monism. On modal monism, ‘possible,’ ‘actual,’ and ‘necessary’ become logically equivalent expressions. On modal monism, there is a collapse of modal distinctions which induces Q3 to lapse: if there is exactly one world and it is necessary, then this world is self-explanatory and there is no need of an explanation ab extra.

Q3 therefore presupposes that modal monism is false and that some version of modal pluralism is true. The modal pluralist holds that there is a plurality of possible worlds.

What is a possible world? A merely possible world is a total way things might have been. The actual world is the total way things are. A possible world, therefore, is either a total way things are or might have been.

Q3 therefore presupposes that there is a plurality of possible worlds. But Q3, being contrastive, also presupposes that only one of these worlds is actual. For if each were actual (by being actual at itself, relative to itself, from its own point of view, etc.), then all the worlds would be on an ontological par, and there would be nothing to explain.

In other words, Q3 presupposes not only that (i) there is a plurality of possible worlds, but also that (ii) actuality is absolute as opposed to world-relative.

Q3 also presupposes that (iii) things exist, and that (iv) there is an explanation as to why things exist. As far as I can see, Q3 is a legitimate question. It cannot be dismissed in the way I dismissed Q1. The four presuppositions on which it rests are reasonably held.

A theist could answer both Q2 and Q3 as follows. Contingent things in general exist because God created them. God exists because it is his nature to exist. This particular totality of things exists rather than some other merely possible totality because God freely chose this totality over the other possible totalities.

But what could an atheist do with Q2 or Q3? 1) He could ‘pull a Spinoza’ and say that it is necessary that things exist and that this precise totality of things exist. 2) He could ‘pull a David Lewis’ and maintain that there is a plurality of possible worlds all equally real. 3) A third option for an atheist would be to say that it is a brute fact that things and that this precise totality of things exists. 4) Finally, our atheist could try to explain what actually but contingently exists in terms of earlier phases of what actually but contingently exists. Are there any other possibilities?

My judgement is that each of these four atheistic moves can be countered, and that each is worse than theism, so that theism emerges as the best answer to Q2 and Q3. Subsequent posts will perhaps address these alternatives.

The old lawyers' joke question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" can be answered with a simple "No," without implying anything nasty about the respondent. If one has never beaten one's wife, one has never had occasion to stop.

This doesn't sound right to me. True, if one has never X-ed, then one has never had occasion to stop X-ing. But one cannot stop X-ing unless one has been X-ing. To stop is not the same as to have occasion to stop.

Now consider

Q1. Why is there something rather than nothing?

To ask why there is something is to presuppose that there is something. Surely one cannot explain what is not the case. To ask why there is something rather than nothing is to presuppose that there might have been nothing. Or at least this is what I presuppose when I ask, and when I hear, (Q1). Presupposing, in the root sense, is not something that abstract objects do (whether these be propositions or interrogative senses or whatever) but something that persons do.

So it looks as if we can construe (Q1) as doubly complex: he who asks it presupposes an affirmative answer to 'Does anything exist?' and an affirmative answer to 'Is it possible that nothing exist?' This suggest the following unpacking of (Q1):

Q1*. Things exist. Possibly, nothing exists. Why then something rather than nothing?

One can then respond to (Q1*) by questioning its second presupposition in the same way that one responds to 'When did Jones stop beating his wife?' by questioning the presupposition that he had been beating his wife.

As for my disagreement with Spur, would he grant the difference between (Q1*) and

Q2*. Things exist. Why does anything exist?

My thesis, refined, is that there is a clear difference between (Q1) and (Q2) when these are understood in terms of (Q1*) and (Q2*). The latter has one less presupposition than the former.

The first thing to understand about Reconquista is that while it is perhaps not the official policy of Mexico, it might as well be. Current and former top Mexican government officials and advisers, for example, along with leaders of U.S. groups like the National Council of La Raza, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, routinely co-host seminars of the Foundation for Solidarity of Mexico and America, according to Hector Carreon of the Aztlan Communications Network. The basic aim of FSMA, which is a key convergence point of open-borders advocacy in both countries, is uninterrupted immigration from Mexico to the U.S...

Do you know what 'La Raza' means? The race. That should give you pause. These are people who identify themselves, not as human beings or as individuals, but racially. But what would the Left say if Caucasians did the same thing? The would scream 'racism.' And others of their portmanteau terms of absue would not be far behind: 'Fascist,' 'Nazi,' etc. Yet another of the Left's double standards.

So the dominant note of my personality is quietism in the sense just sketched. The Big Questions turn my crank, not this foreground rubbish about illegal immigration, social security, eminent domain, etc. It would be nice to be able to let the world and its violent nonsense go to hell while cultivating my garden in peace.

Unfortunately, my garden and stoa are in the world and exposed to its threats. So politics, which has too little to do with truth and too much to do with power, cannot be ignored. This world is not ultimately real, but it is no illusion either, pace some sophists of the New Age, and so some battling within it, ideological or otherwise, cannot be avoided.

These two worries seem to pull in opposite directions. The first question asks, in effect, how there could be a plurality of possible worlds. Malcolm seems to incline to the view that everything is what it must be. That amounts to saying that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world. But if possibility and actuality coincide, then that one world is necessary, and everything it it, including all concrete objects, exist necessarily and have all of their properties essentially. But if Malcolm can swallow this, then why should he have trouble with the idea that some concrete object cannot fail to exist, i.e., must exist?

Now can I prove that there is a plurality of possible worlds? Not quite, but I may be able to soften people up for the idea.

Start with some mundane state of affairs: I am blogging while drinking Dr. Pepper. Although I am blogging now, I might not have been blogging now, where 'now' in both occurrences picks out the same time. Now what does your modal intuition tell you about this? My intuition tells me that at the very time at which I am blogging, I might not have been blogging, but doing something else. And the same goes for drinking Dr. Pepper. I might have been drinking Pepsi instead, or water, or nothing at all. The same holds for my existence: I exist now, but I might not have existed now. I might have been run over and killed while running this morning.

A merely possible world is just a total or maximal way things might have been. My not existing now is a merely possible state of affairs, but it is too measly to be a possible world. But you can get from it to a possible world by conjoining compossible states of affairs to it until you attain maximality. One could say, using a chemical metaphor, that possible worlds are 'saturated': so big that if they are made bigger by one state of affairs a contradiction would be 'precipitated.'

Now we have several possible worlds. There is the actual world (the total way things are: alles was der Fall ist; die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen nicht der Dinge, to put the Tractarian Wittgenstein to work for us). There is the world in which I am dead now but everything else is the same that can remain the same. There is the world in which I am alive now but riding my bike with everything else the same that can remain the same. There is the world in which I am blogging now, but drinking whisky, etc.

I'll stop here and just put the question to Malcolm: Do you share my intuition that there are contingent states of affairs, or do you see the world as one solid block of Spinozistic necessity?

For these two question-pairs to be strictly analogous, (1) ought to be replaced by

1'. Why is Mary walking rather than not walking?

Spur goes on to say that, while (1) and (2) are different questions with different answers, there is no difference between (1') and (2) or between (Q1) and (Q2).

Spur sees no difference between the asking of a question of the form Why is it that P rather than ~P? and the asking of a question of the form Why is it that P? His reasoning seems to be this: P rather than ~P is equivalent to P & ~~P, which is equivalent to P & P, which in turn is equivalent to P. Now Spur is right that to ask

3. Why is it that (P & ~~P)?

is the same as to ask

4. Why is it that P?

But for Spur's argument to be compelling, he has to show that P rather than ~P can be rendered salva significatione using the truth-functional connectives '~' and '&.' This is not obvious. And I see no reason to think that to ask

5. Why is it that P rather than ~P?

is to ask (3) = (4). For (5) and (4) have different presuppositions. (5) presupposes that (i) P is true, (ii) ~P is false, and (iii) ~P is possibly true. But (4) does not presuppose that ~P is possibly true. Indeed, (4), but not (5) is consistent with ~P's being necessarily false.

Perhaps we should say that presupposition is a relation between a person and a proposition. Thus when a person asks an explanation-seeking why-question, the person presupposes a proposition. Thus when I ask, 'Why does anything at all exist?' I presuppose that things exist. To say that the question presupposes that things exist is just a loose way of saying that the person who asks the question, by asking the question, presupposes that things exist.

There are of course contexts in which we naturally say that one proposition presupposes another. Compare

1. A thing's being red presupposes that it has a color.
2. A thing's having properties presupposes that it exists.
3. A thing's existing presupposes that it has properties.
4. A person's having the right to vote presupposes that she is a citizen.

By a natural extension, properties can be said to presupposes properties:

5. Knowledge presupposes truth, but truth does not presuppose knowledge.
6. Being-known presupposes being-believed, but not vice versa.

In these cases, presupposition is a relation between propositions/properties, a relation that appears to be indistinguishable from entailment.

So my suggestion is that presupposition in the strict sense is the prerogative of persons. If this is right, then presupposition is not a strictly formal-logical notion but a transcendental-logical one, i.e., one to be investigated in a theory of the conditions of the possibility of inquiry.

1. Why is Mary walking rather than swimming?

2. Why is Mary walking?

An answer to (2) might be: She exercises daily and her preferred form of exercise is walking. But this answer is no answer to (1). For here it is not the phenomenon of her walking that needs explaining, but the contrastive phenomenon of her walking instead of swimming. An answer to (1) might run: Mary is walking rather than swimming because she had an operation on her arm and she doesn't want to get the bandage wet.

So answering (2) does not answer (1). But it is also true that answering (1) does not answer (2). For if she is walking rather than swimming so as not to get her bandage wet, this does not explain why she is walking in the first place. It leaves open whether she walks to exercise, or to meet her neighbors, or for some other reason.

I conclude that (1) and (2) are distinct. They are distinct because their answers need not be the same.

Now let us consider the presuppositions of (1). It is obvious -- isn't it? -- that only what is the case can be explained. That there are leprechauns cavorting in my yard cannot be explained since it is not the case. I will allow you to say that there is a possible world in which leprechauns cavort in my yard; but since that world is merely possible, nothing in it needs to be explained. So (1) presupposes that Mary is walking. (1) also presupposes that Mary is not swimming. No one can both walk and swim at the same time; so a person who is walking is not swimming.

A third presupposition of (1) is that it is possible that Mary be swimming. If I aim to explain why she is walking rather than swimming, then I presuppose that she is not swimming. But her not swimming is consistent with the possibility of her swimming. Her not swimming is also consistent with the impossibility of her swimming. Nevertheless, if I ask why walking rather than swimming, I presuppose that she might have been swimming. 'Rather than' means 'instead of' (in place of). So if she is walking instead of swimming, and walking is possible because actual, then swimming must also be possible if it is to be something that can be done instead of walking. It might help to consider

3. Why is Mary walking rather than levitating?

or

4. Why is Mary walking rather than levitating and not levitating at the same time?

These two questions have presuppositions that are false. (3) presupposes that it is possible that Mary be doing something nomologically impossible, while (4) presupposes that it is possible that Mary being doing something that is narrowly-logically impossible. Questions (3) and (4) are therefore not to be answered but to be rejected -- by rejecting the false presuppositions upon which they rest.

The same holds for the rather more interesting (Q1) and (Q2). (Q1) presupposes that it is possible that nothing exist. For again it is a contrastive phenomenon that wants explaining: something rather than nothing. Either (Q1)'s presupposition is false, or it is such that, if it were true, then every being would be contingent, in which case there could be no ultimate regress-stopping explanation of why something rather than nothing exists.

So the correct response to (1) is either to reject it by rejecting the false presupposition upon which it is based, or to reject it by pointing out that, if said presupposition were true, no ultimate regress-stopping explantion would be possible.

(Q2), however, does not presuppose that it is possible that nothing exist. It does not suffer from the internal defect that bedevils (Q1).

Wenn Wittgenstein erklaert, man solle nur das sagen, was sich klar sagen laesst, dann klingt das zwar sehr heroisch und hat womoeglich noch einen mystisch-existentiellen Oberton, der sehr erfolgreich an die Menschen in der gegenwaertigen Stimmung appelliert. Ich glaube aber, dass dieser beruehmte Satz Wittgensteins geistig von einer unbeschreiblichen Vulgaritaet ist, weil darin vorbeigesehen wird an dem, worauf es allein in der Philosophie ankommt: das ist genau das Paradox dieses Unterfangens, mit den Mitteln des Begriffs das zu sagen, was mit den Mittlen des Begriffs eigentlich nicht sich sagen laesst, das Unsagbare eigentlich doch zu sagen.

It no doubt sounds very heroic when Wittgenstein declares that one should say only that which can be said clearly. It also conveys a mystical-existential aura that many today find appealing. But I believe that this famous Wittgensteinian proposition is of an indescribable spiritual vulgarity inasmuch as it ignores the whole point of philosophy. It is precisely the paradox of this enterprise that it aims to say the unsayable, to express by means of concepts that which cannot be expressed by means of concepts. (tr. BV)

The proposition of Wittgenstein that Adorno finds indescribably vulgar is the one that ends the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen. "What one cannot speak about one must pass over in silence."

As I read Wittgenstein, this bifurcation of the Sayable and the Unsayable is the central negative theme of his thinking both early and late. Much in the Tractatus he came to abandon, but not this radical separation of the effable and the ineffable. That which can be said can be said clearly and meaningfully, and all the rest is Unsinn, nonsense, except that within the realm of the nonsensical is to be found all that is most important to us. Thus Wittgenstein is only superficially related to the (superficial) Logical Positivists. For the latter, nonsense is just nonsense and can be dismissed. For Wittgenstein, however, there is such a thing as important nonsense. In a November 1929 lecture, Wittgenstein said:

My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk on ethics or religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolutely valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it.

Although I am very critical of Wittgenstein, I am also very critical of Adorno: they both go off the rails. But on the question of the crude dichotomizing of the Sayable and the Unsayable, I am with Adorno.

As the above quotation suggests, Wittgenstein thinks that language has fixed boundaries, that language is a cage in which we are imprisoned against the walls of which we run hopelessly. Words get what meaning they have from mundane contexts of use, and any extraordinary use of words, any analogical extensions of their meanings, or any alteration of their sense by their embedding in theories is branded as meaningless. But why should we acquiesce is this philistine refusal to go beyond ordinary usage?

After all, Wittgenstein himself never stopped scribbling, and what he scribbled does not count as ordinary language.

Adorno is right: to philosophize is to attempt to articulate something that is not articulated, or poorly artiuclated, something that may even in the end be inarticulable. The project is to say -- not the strictly Unsayable: here Adorno's formulation is needlessly paradoxical -- but the Unsaid. The project is to bring into the light the dimly discerned. One cannot do this without moving away from the particulars of ordinary usage.

For example, I want to know what it is for an individual to exist. If you ask what an individual is, I can give an example such as this table or that tree, but in the end the only way to clarify my use of 'individual' is by connecting it to other terms in a systematic theory, a theory in which the various terms acquire their meaning in part from their Stellenwert, their 'positional value.' Thus I say that an individual is an unrepeatable entity. From there I explain my use of 'entity' and 'unrepeatable' and 'repeatable,' and so on. In part what I am doing is creating a language in which to think thoughts that I could not think if I kept my nose to the grindstone of ordinary talk.

But why should I keep my nose to the grindstone of ordinary talk? Why should I be a philistine who refuses to philosophize? Why should I take Wittgenstein's quirky obsession with ordinary language seriously? Why should I pay attention to this vulgar engineer who "ignores the whole point of philosophy"?

Michael Liccione here comments on a remark by Hans Kueng:

He [ H. K.] says: The fundamental question of philosophy, according to Leibniz, is “Why is there anything at all and not simply nothing?” It is true that Leibniz asked that question, but as I argued in my doctoral thesis, the question is ill-posed. To suppose that there being anything at all requires explanation is to suppose that nothing is what one would expect unless something brings it about that there is something. But of course, if there’s anything to have brought it about that there is something rather than nothing, then there was something, not nothing, to begin with. Hence, the sort of explanation invited by the answer is possible only if the question’s supposition is false.

I am pleased to agree with Liccione about this. There are two questions that need to be distinguished:

Q1. Why does anything at all exist, rather than nothing?

Q2. Why does anything at all exist?

In Two Forms of the Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question I argue that (Q1) rests on a presupposition that renders it unanswerable, but that this defect does not inhere in (Q2).

Let me be blunt. McCain is a self-serving, opportunistic pig. He, like other open-borders, Americans-Are-Lazy politicians, is a man who has grown soft and fat and elitist in Washington, DC, and has developed an obvious contempt for the average working American. Not only does he not deserve to even think about being president, he should not be in the U.S. senate. He is an example of the opportunistic narcissists in Washington whose only concern is their own career as they do whatever they think it'll take to advance themselves.

And we've got the perfect combo of that scourge with the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill--McCain clearly has learned a lot from Kennedy about the strategy of abandoning someone and leaving them to drown. But instead of just one woman, now they're working on an entire nation of hardworking Americans who are getting smeared everyday by the likes of McCain, Kennedy and yes, President Bush, who repeats and repeats and repeats the slander that illegal aliens "are doing the jobs Americans won't do."

Read it all.

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. There are reasons having to do with the importation of contraband substances into the country. 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. See here.

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 Dems. Republicans like Bush and McCain are just as guilty. On immigration, Bush is clearly no conservative; as Tammy Bruce once remarked, he is a libertarian on this issue.

A libertarian on some issues, a liberal on others, and a conservative on far too few.

In order to pray, it is said, the disciple must close the door of his cell, place himself in a state of quiet, sit down, rest his chin against his chest, look towards the middle of his stomach, restrain his breathing, and make a mental effort to find the "place of the heart" while repeating all the time "the epiclesis of Jesus Christ." (p. 47)

Of course, the term 'navel-gazing' is almost always used in a deprecating manner by the worldly to refer to any sort of idle practice of 'philosophizing' whether discursively or non-discursively, and when Adorno refers to a man who gazes at his navel, ein Mensch der seinen Nabel beschaut (Philosophische Terminologie I, 142), he shares in the deprecation.

A central concern of Theodor Adorno in Philosophische Terminologie, lectures he delivered in Frankfurt am Main in 1962-63, is to explain his concept of philosophy. Since philosophy is the love of wisdom, and since the wise man is apt to be viewed as a navel-gazer, Adorno is led to the question of Kontemplation and Versenkung, which latter term renders graphically the process of meditation, suggesting as it does a sinking down into the depths of one's inwardness, a moving from the superficies of consciousness to its source. Philosophy is supposed to be something 'deep,' and one way depth gets understood is in terms of inwardness and subjective reflection.

But as one might expect, the depth to which meditation leads is judged by Adorno to be a false depth, something deceptive and 'abstract' (in the Hegelian sense) and therefore unreal. Still, Adorno is nothing if not dialectical, and so he grants some merit to the process of subjective immersion. The idea that the Absolute is to be found by the inward path, an idea common to all mystical traditions and to all religious traditions (e.g., Eastern Orthodoxy) whose connection with mysticism has remained vital, ist nicht ganz grundlos, (142) not entirely without basis. For if philosophy is to exist at all, the subject must differentiate itself from the object by turning within and realizing its own existence as a subject.

So Adorno grants that subjective reflection is essential to philosophy. But when subjective reflection becomes Versenkung it leads to illusion, not truth, to an abstract inner emptiness, to something merely tautological along the lines of 'I am I' or the Heideggerian "Being is Itself." Mystical depth is a false depth. The true depth of the subject is constituted when it seiner selbst entaeussert, das heisst, aus sich hinaus und in die Andersheit hineingeht (143), "externalizes itself, that is, comes out of itself and enters into otherness." The language is of course Hegelian.

Adorno asserts (143) that the subject has no content except insofar as it is referred to something external. A subject by itself, sunk into itself, is contentless, a mere abstract emptiness. Subject and object mediate each other. The subject is what it is only in relation to the object. Since neither can exist without the other, both are mere abstract moments when considered separately. It follows that a subject who ruthlessly excludes all otherness, all that is objective, ends up with merely the concept of the subject, not its concrete reality. He ends up with a mere abstraction. So no true depth can be attained in this way. True depth, and genuine concretion, is to be had only by the subject caught up in and constituted by its social relations. (144)

I of course reject this notion that we are constituted in our true selfhood by social relations, and with it, the notion that meditation is a deceptive practice that leads us into a false depth. I would say that it is precisely our social existence that is our false existence (for the most part) and that our true life is the life of inwardness.

Adorno's thought is totalitarian and denies all Transcendence: the true Absolute is the social whole of which we are 'moments' (in the Hegelian sense). Das Wahre ist das Ganze as Hegel says in the Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit. Nothing within the whole has any substantial being: everything is mediated (vermittlelt) by everything else. One problem is how anything can be constituted by its relations which other things. The very notion of a relation presupposes that which stands in the relation, and it is difficult to see how the being of these relata can reduce to their being-in-relation.

But more on this later.

Most nouns ending in f, ff, or fe form their plurals regularly by adding -s to the singular: chief, chiefs; proof, proofs; roof, roofs; sheriff, sheriffs; fife, fifes. However, some nouns ending in f or fe change the f or fe to v and add -es: calf, calves; elf, elves; half, halves; knife, knives; life, lives; loaf, loaves; self, selves; shelf, shelves; thief, thieves; wife, wives; wolf, wolves. A few nouns ending in f or ff, including beef, dwarf, hoof, scarf, wharf, and staff have two plural forms: beefs or beeves; dwarfs or dwarves; hoofs or hooves; scarfs or scarves; wharfs or wharves; staffs or staves. In this case, sometimes different forms have different meanings, as beefs (complaints) and beeves (animals) or staffs (people) and staves (long poles).

The long-haul trucker anthem, "Willin'," features the memorable line, "I had my head stoved in but I'm still on my feet." But that is ungrammatical, isn't it? It should be either 'stove in' or 'staved in.' But someone who has driven "every kind of rig that's ever been made" from "Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah" will presumably not be concerned with such grammatical niceties.

Of course, it is an empirical question as to how astronomers and others use 'planet.' Suppose there are three main ways that 'planet' is used. Establishing that there are three ways, and what those three ways are, does not help us determine the number of planets. To do that, we must decide on one of the ways. One must decide on what will count as a planet. We must fix our use of 'planet' thereby making a conceptual decision. No amount of empirical inquiry will help us with this decision; indeed, empirical inquiry is possible only after various conceptual decisions have been made.

To take an example closer to the ground, consider the question of how many suicides occurred in New York City in 2001. This is of course an empirical question, one not answerable a priori. But to answer it, to count the number of suicides, one must know what counts as a suicide. Is suicide an act of self-killing? If yes, then you will get one answer. But if you define suicide as an act of intentional self-killing, then you will get a smaller number as answer. You won't count the Molotov-cocktailer who insisted on smoking while making his bomb. Now some of the 9/11 hijackers intentionally brought about their own deaths in NYC in 2001. Did they commit suicide? Do you count them when you count up the number of suicides in NYC in 2001?

My point is that the resolution of empirical questions presupposes antecedent conceptual decisions. There is a fact of the matter as to how many suicides occurred once the use of 'suicide' is fixed. But there is apparently no fact of the matter as to what ought to count as a suicide. Now let's get back to the planets and their number. One definition of 'planet' runs:

An object orbiting a star that is not a brown dwarf but bigger than an asteroid. This is somewhat ambiguous. In our solar system it is really an historical definition which boils down to "a planet is a member of the set {Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto}". All the known planets orbiting other stars are large gas planets so no ambiguity yet arises there. ...

The first thing to notice about this definition is that it confuses ambiguity with vagueness. The opening sentence is not ambiguous — it does not have two or more distinct meanings — it is vague: it lacks a precise meaning. But that is not the main problem with the definition. The main problem is that this definition by enumeration makes it impossible for there to be a tenth planet. But Xena is a serious contender for planetary status. For if x is a planet iff x is a member of {Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto}, then there cannot be fewer than nine or more than nine planets.

What's more, the definition implies that no object distinct from each of the 'standard' planets could have been a planet. Thus it rules out the possibility that there be nine planets, except that Xena count as a planet but not Pluto. The definition implies that there must be nine planets, and that no other planets could have been those nine. But this is an empirical question that cannot be decided definitionally. That is, it is not only an empirical question as to how many planet there are, but is is also an empirical question as to which objects are those nine.

So is 2003 UB313 (Xena) the tenth planet or not? More on this later. Here is a list of definitions of 'planet.'

Well, it helps to not be anonymous. My home is my castle, and my blog my cybercastle, and I prefer not to admit unknown persons into either. I need to be able to 'scope people out' at least to some extent. Googling your e-mail address turned up nothing. Is there something of yours online that I can read?But I am somewhat familiar with R, T & H, having used it in a course I taught in 1984, and if you are in thrall to it, that is a good sign. Nothing disqualifying there.

Generally, I am interested in people who are civil, reasonably well informed about the sorts of topics disussed here, and not so divergent in respect of fundamental assumptions as to make discussion fruitless. I am not inclined to allow a hard-core leftist onto the premises, for example, since experience has shown that debates with such people lead to nothing.

Or let's say you are a deconstructionist who denies that there is such a thing as truth. I would have to show you the door, or rather, not let you in the door in the first place. People with views wildly divergent from my own have a right to their opinion, of course, but that right does not entail an obligation on my part to provide them with a forum.

Rubin appears to have written an important book, judging from JT's letter and the two reviews I have read. As for envy and jealousy, there is definitely a difference between them. I explain the differences among envy, jealousy, and Schadenfreude as I see them here.

I think I understand from Denis Dutton's review how envy can function as a motivation for leftists. Rubin's idea, I take it, is that in a zero-sum economy, envy has survival value and is thus 'rational.' If we survive by hunting and gathering, then every fish I catch, every rabbit I snare, and every cherry I pick is one less for you. So those who have more will be perceived as having acted unjustly by taking more than their fair share or by stealing from others. The view of justice as fairness, as a distribution of goods and services that is equal (or is as equal as is consistent with the welfare of the worst off), can therefore be seen as deriving from envy, or at least as connected with it. (Compare John Rawls' Difference Principle: Socioeconomic inequality is justified only if it benefits the worst off.)

What is not clear to me is how jealousy can be laid at the doorstep of the Right. What does Rubin or JT understand by jealousy?

But let's return briefly to envy. To feel envy is to feel diminished by another's success or well-being. It has traditionally been viewed as vice, indeed as one of the seven deadly sins. Although I don't expect evolutionary theory to give us any answers to normative questions, one can still ask whether what we rightly consider to be a vice, namely envy, would be a vice in a society that was zero-sum. Envy in our society is self-evidently vicious and irrational: Your having more than me does not detract one iota from what I have except in unusual circumstances. For example, if your net worth is ten times mine, it does not follow that you grabbed more from the pot of preexisting loot than I did, leaving me with less to grab. But would envy be a vice in a zero-sum society, or would it be something akin to righteous indignation?

Suppose Tim and Tom are applying for the same teaching post. Tim is highly qualified and deserves the job, while Tom is a bum who does not deserve the job but gets it anyway. Tim feels bad about Tom's success. But is it envy that Tim feels or righteous indignation? Is it the objective wrongness of an undeserving man's getting a job that offends him, or rather the fact he feels dimished in his self-worth by Tom's success? Would envy be a form of righteous indignation in a zero-sum society? If yes, then envy would not be envy given that it is defined as vice.

Dief climbs outdoors because that's how he started, and he knows that climbing on rock has its advantages. Fresh air. Sunshine. Scenic views.

'Fresh air' is not a sentence, and it doesn't even attain the dignity of a decent sentence fragment such as 'Which is why he climbs outside.' 'Fresh air' is but a lowly phrase. 'Sunshine' is not even a phrase. Why pass off a word as a sentence? Why write in this infantile, barbaric, and atomistic manner? Is the idea to reduce attention span, or perhaps even to contribute to the destruction of the diachronic unity of consciousness? What is wrong with the following formulation:

Dief climbs outdoors because that is how he started, and he knows that climbing on rock offers such advantages as fresh air, sunshine, and scenic views.

If you prefer the second formulation over the first, then I say your linguistic sensibility is healthy. But I'm afraid there is no arguing sensibility. Fruitful argument occurs against a backdrop of shared assumptions and shared sensibility. So if you don't agree with my linguistic judgment, then we may have to agree to disagree.

Or could I argue that nuanced thinking requires nuanced writing?

Miller, a tenured professor at New York University, is obviously intelligent and highly articulate and entertaining to listen to, his mannerisms and delivery reminiscent of Woody Allen. He takes himself to be a defender of the values of the Enlightenment. But then so do I. So here is the beginning of a 'disconnect.' From my point of view, Miller is an extremist motivated by the standard Leftist fear of, and hostility toward, religion. (Miller's NYU colleague, Thomas Nagel, owns up to his fear of religion, as I document here.) Miller's hostility was betrayed a dozen or so times during his speech by mocking turns of phrase. But of course he doesn't see himself as an extremist but as a sober defender of values he feels are threatened by Christian Reconstructionism, also know as Dominion Theology.

One of the most curious features of Right-Left debate concerns threat assessment. What are the threats, and how seriously are they to be taken? During the Cold War, the Right took the threat of Soviet Communism seriously indeed, whereas the Left spoke disparagingly of a Red Scare, the word 'scare' of course suggesting that the threat was unreal and manufactured by the Right to further its 'facist' agenda. The same pattern has been repeating itself since 11 September 2001, when the threat posed by militant Islam, which had been building since at least the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, became impossible to ignore any longer. The Left either refuses to take the threat seriously at all, or else downplays its significance, seeing it as yet another attempt of the Right to impose 'fascism' at home and 'hegemony' abroad. (I could document this with statements from Amy Goodman, Nadine Strossen, et al.)

At the same time that the Left downplays the threat posed by one religious ideology, militant Islam, it exaggerates the threat emanating from the religious ideology of Christian Reconstructionism. Thus we find the Left accusing the Right of not only being 'fascists' but of being 'theocrats' as well. Indeed, some go so far as to claim or imply that we already have in place in the Bush administration a 'fascist theocracy.' This of course is a wild exaggeration bordering on a paranoid delusion, on par with the Bush = Hitler Identity Thesis. I am not denying that Christian Reconstructionism is theocratic; but its influence is slight and hardly representative of American Christianity. And to brand all conservatives as 'theocrats' is irresponsible to put it mildly. There are plenty of conservatives who aren't even theists, let alone theocrats.

Part of the problem here is the Left's penchant for portmanteau terms of abuse, with 'theocrat' just being a recent addition to a list including 'racist,' 'sexist,' 'ageist,' 'homophobe,' 'fascist,' etc. Indeed, Miller somewhere on his blog uses 'Christo-fascist,' presumably to counter the use of 'Islamo-fascist' by some conservatives. I suggest we drop 'fascism' and coinages incorporating it altogether unless we are speaking specifically of the political ideology of Benito Mussolini.

During his talk Miller complained that leftists are demonized by people like David Horowitz who are, Miller thinks, filled with anger but devoid of valid points. They supposedly engage in psychological projection and are "paranoid." Interestingly, however, Miller went on to display the very same characteristics. For example, he thinks that the ultimate agenda of the pro-lifers is a ban on contraception. Of course, some who oppose abortion also oppose contraception (though with different arguments); but to say or imply that the ultimate agenda of pro-lifers is a ban on contraception is border-line delusional.

Miller dsplays an abysmal failure to appreciate that there are powerful reasons for regarding abortion as deeply immoral, reasons that are not even theistic let alone theocratic. See A Common Mistake in the Abortion Debate. Instead of dealing with the conservative's legitimate concerns, and granting them some probative weight, Miller paints him as an extremist, thereby projecting his own extremism into the conservative. And his accusation of projection is arguably itself an example of projection! Unable to acknowledge his own tendency to project, Miller projects projective tendencies into his opponents. Near the end of his talk he angrily projected his anger into conservatives accusing them of being 'rascists.' This is perhaps the premier portmanteau term of letist abuse, to which presumably there can be no response. The ultimate argument-stopper: 'You're a racist!'

So I suggest there are reasons to be pessimistic about the future of Right-Left debate in this country. Observation of the antics of someone as intelligent as Miller cannot leave a reasonable person very sanguine.

To know, to understand -- that's the thing for me. The practical man sees the world sub specie voluntatis. He would impose his will upon it, either to change it in the manner of the reformer, or to prevent it from changing in the manner of the conservationist. But I would understand the world, first, and work upon it only second, and as little as possible.

Marx famously remarked that the philosophers have variously interpreted the world when the point is to change it: Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern. (11th of the Theses on Feuerbach.) I reject that from the ground up: the vita activa exists for the sake of the vita contemplativa, not vice versa. Making, doing, the worldly hustle generally are for the sake of contemplative repose. So I would parody Marx thusly: The activists have variously tampered with the world, often to bloody effect with the Commies murdering some 100 million in the 20th century; the point, however, is to understand it before going off half-cocked on some activist crusade that will only make it worse.

While the U.S. House of Representatives last December passed a draconian “immigration reform” bill that would penalize individuals or groups for even so much as feeding a hungry immigrant child — and would build a Berlin Wall on the U.S. - Mexican border takes a more empathetic approach.

Can you make head or tail of that sentence? But apart from the sorry syntax, there is the stupid phrase 'Berlin wall.' Think about that for a second. The Berlin Wall was erected to keep East Germans from defecting to the West. It was bult by East Germany to keep people in the DDR, the Communist state of East Germany; it was not built by West Germany to keep them out of the BRD, the free state of West Germany. A wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, however, would be to keep illegal aliens out of the U.S., not to keep them in Mexico, and it would be erected not by Mexico but by the U. S.

Yet another example of the curious liberal blend of moral and intellectual obtuseness. The Berlin Wall was a scandal: it demonstrated the abject failure of Communism. But it doesn't follow that every wall is morally objectionable. But that invalid inference is what the slopheaded author of the above passage wants people to draw.

The multiple ambiguity of 'is' has been well-known to philosophers for centuries, although it is only recently that an American president has put the ambiguity to work in a successful bid at saving his political hide. A key distinction is between the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication. The decal exploits this ambiguity to achieve its humorous effect. 'I am Grumpy' asserts the identity of the speaker with Grumpy, whereas 'I am grumpy' predicates a property of the speaker, the property of being grumpy. A key difference between identity and predication is that the former is symmetrical whereas the latter is aysmmetrical. (Please do not confuse asymmetry with nonsymmetry. Loves is a nonsymmetrical relation: if I love you it does not follow that you love me; but it also does not follow that you do not love me. If literary memory serves, that was the case with the love of Don Quixote for the fair Dulcinea: he loved her, but she neither loved him nor did not love him. Existing as she did only in his febrile imagination, she was indeterminate with respect to the property of loving him.

In previous posts I have explored the idea that many cases of humor derive from logico-conceptual incoherence, as above. The equivocation on 'is,' as between its predicative and identitarian senses, is at the root of the decal's funniness. For other examples, poke around in my Philosophy of Humor category.

The decal also alludes to a Platonic theme, that of the self-predication of Forms. Forms are not properties but paradigms. Thus the Form Wisdom is the paradigm case of wisdom. As such, Wisdom is wise, The Good is good, Virtue is virtuous — and Grumpiness is grumpy! (Assuming, as Plato would almost certainly not assume, that there is a Form corresponding to 'grumpy.') Thus grumpy things are grumpy in virtue of participating in Grumpiness which is grumpy in virtue of participating in itself.

A self-participating Form is (identically) what it has. Here the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication coalesce. Wisdom is wise in virtue of being identical with itself. God is not a good thing, but Goodness Itself; thus God is not good by having goodness but by being Goodness. Here we glimpse the connection between the self-participation of Forms and the doctrine of the divine simplicity.

And all of this squeezed out of one lousy decal on the rear window of a beat-to-hell pickup truck problably owned by some illegal alien.

. . . The great labor leader Samuel Gompers supported a more restrictive immigration policy in the early 20th century to boost the wages of native workers. Liberal icon Cesar Chavez, the organizer of agricultural workers, excoriated illegal immigration. The end of the “bracero” guest-worker program in the mid-1960s led to a one-time increase in the wages of Chavez’s workers by 40 percent.

Democrats now figure that new immigrants can swell the ranks of their voters. Unions make the same kind of calculation, counting on signing up immigrants to make up for dwindling native membership. As Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies said, “American workers turned their backs on unions, and now unions have turned their backs on them.” Even if the AFL-CIO leadership welcomes a massive dose of immigrant labor, its rank and file still knows the economic score. When Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), defended his amnesty plan at a meeting of the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department, he was roundly booed. (Emphasis added)

The bolded passage strikes at the heart of the matter. The Dems want illegal immigration because they know that illegals will end up voting, legally or illegally, Democratic. (You will have noticed that Dems oppose the common sense demand for ID at polling places.) It is about power. The Dems want it even if it means subverting the rule of law. So I ask Victor Reppert and other of my Dem friends: why in hell do you support this party? Are you living in the past? Are you aware of your own interests and the interests of the country? Note that I am not saying to Victor et alia that they should become Republicans. They could do as I do and register Independent.

As for the unions signing up illegals, this doesn't make a lot of sense. In order for unions to have clout, there cannot be a vast supply of workers whose destitution motivates them to work for chump change. Will people in dire economic straits respect picket lines? Think about it.

Hi, I am a photographer in Yosemite, CA (yes, I do live in Yosemite Valley). I came across your site while searching for an Ed Abbey essay. I am relieved to find someone who understands the need for philosophical reasoning to be brought back to compete with pundits. Many are too disgusted with the nasty political world to bother. I'm glad someone is sticking with it.

I am beginning a photo article on modern nomads, people who have left behind their homes and roots for a new/wilder place and never quite landed. Your CV indicates you might understand this experience.

I am mainly focusing on Rock Climbers. They comprise my community and personal experience as an endorphine addict. Your work is extensive and I have searched for essays regarding your personal thoughts in this vein, and finally decided I would just ask you if you had anything sitting around for me to chew on. Poetry, quotes, whatever.

If you don't have time I understand, but if you have had any sparks on this subject I would greatly appreciate your input. (Saw you spent time at IU, I was born and raised in Bloomington.)

Thanks for writing, Katie. I enjoyed browsing your site. Here are some essays of mine on outdoor themes that might interest you. I am not a climber, strictly speaking, but a hiker, backpacker, runner and mountainbiker. And although I love high places, I can't say I like exposure, so the little climbing I have done has been nerve-wracking. Anyway, here are some short pieces you may like:

Strenuous, but Without Destination
Today's Infernal Hike
Pack it In, Pack it Out
The Range of Light
Desert Hiking in Summer
Moonsets and Microclimates
The Pleasures of the Mountain Bike
Running at Sunrise with Thoreau
Phantom Runners
Runner, Jogger, Plodder
Ruminations After a Road Race; Philippians 4:13

Some of you will be surprised to hear that the term originates with Karl Marx. He contrasted Unterbau (infrastructure) with Ueberbau (superstructure). The infrastructure is the material of a society's economic productivity, its industrial base, together with natural resources. It also comprises the relations of production including the division of labor and the distribution of property and wealth. The superstructure comprises the ideology of a society, its 'consciousness' (Bewusstsein) as incorporated in its dominant class. To the superstructure belong religion and theology, politics, the educational system, language, the legal system, the arts and sciences, the entertainment industry, etc.

The Marxist idea, roughly, is that the infrastructure determines the superstructure, and that the latter, as refecting the former, serves to legitimate it. Hence the superstructure's ideological function. But what is ideology? See here.

Potentially embarrassing questions for Marxists: What about Marxist theory itself? Is it but ideology? If yes, then why should I take it seriously? If no, then how does it escape infrastructural determination? And if it escapes, then how can you be so cocksure that my brand of 'bourgeois idealism' does not also escape?

Contemporary correct use of 'infrastructure' is of course not as specific as the Marxist use. But if you are unaware of the term's origin you will not be able to assess properly its Stellenwert, to use an untranslatable German word. (It means something like 'positional value or sense within a constellation of related concepts.')

'Infrastructure' is not a buzzword and should not be used as one. You will not sound intelligent by using it unless you use it correctly.

I will explain one aspect of Heidegger's notorious Seinsfrage, an aspect centering on the role of the copula in predicative sentences/judgments. True-blue Heideggerians may not recognize much of their Master here, but I'm a thinker not an exegete. I will also consider what Adorno has to say in criticism of Heidegger in the section on the copula in Negative Dialektik.

1. Consider a simple predicative sentence such as 'The sky is blue,' or simpler still, 'Al is fat.' The sense of the sentence is built up from the senses of its constituent terms: 'Al' and 'fat' clearly play a role, but what about 'is'? Is 'is' perhaps redundant?

Instead of writing 'a is F' one could write 'Fa' as one does in standard symbolic logic. And there are natural languages in which there either is no copula or in which the copula can be omitted. In Turkish, for example, one can say Deniz mavi thereby expressing what we express in English by 'The sea is blue' but cannot express (in standard adult English) by 'The sea blue.' But of course Turkish does have a copula. Since Turkish is an agglutinative language and makes heavy use of suffixes, the copula is appended to the adjective mavi as a suffix thereto. Thus, Deniz mavidir. And in the case of substandard English — 'Me one bad dude,' 'Coffee hot' — the copula is implied. There are also cases in which copulation is expressed by a word that grammatically cannot be a copula: 'He be stoned.'

In the case of 'Fa,' the natural thing to say is that the sign for the copula is the immediate juxtaposition of 'F' and 'a' in that order. So there is a copula in 'Fa,' though there is no separate sign for it. The copula is the juxtaposition. I conclude that the word 'is' is redundant, but that what it expresses, the copulation, is not. Copulation can be expressed in different ways, or even left unexpressed but implied; what is impossible is that there be no copulation. For without it there are no complete thoughts and no declarative sentences.

It follows that the problem of copulative being cannot be dismissed by saying that there are natural or artifical languages in which there is no separate sign for the copula.

2. But it doesn't follow from the necessity of copulation that there is a problem of copulative being: copulation might be purely logical or semantical rather than ontological. In 'Al is fat,' 'Al' refers to Al, all 250 lbs of him, and 'fat' refers to the property of being fat. Does 'is' have a referent as well? Are there three things in the world: Al, fatness, and the copulative link? This leads to trouble very quickly. If the copulative link is a tertium quid, a third thing, then what will link it to Al and fatness? After all, the fact of Al's being fat is not a mere sum of Al + copulative link + fatness, any more that the true sentence 'Al is fat' is a mere list of 'Al,' 'is,' and 'fat.' If the copulative link is a tertium quid, then we are embarked upon Bradley's regress.

The copula 'is' is not a stand-alone expression like 'Al.' Traditionally, this is expressed by saying that 'is' is not categorematical but syncategorematical: its meaning is a co-meaning, a meaning together with, and only together with, the expressions flanking it. No doubt the copula 'is' has a meaning; but it would be a mistake to hypostatize or reify it, to make of it a separate entity.

3. That Heidegger is guilty of a hypostatization and ontologization of the copula is essentially Adorno's charge:

In every predicative judgment, 'is' has its meaning, as have the subject and the predicate. But the state of affairs is a matter of intentionality, not of being. The copula is fulfilled only in the relation between subject and predicate. It is not independent. Heidegger, in misplacing it beyond the sole source of its meaning, succumbs to that reified thought to which he took exception. (Negative Dialectics, p. 101. I have slightly emended Ashton's trans.)

Adorno's main point is that the copulative 'is' is syncategorematic or synsemantic. It does not have meaning independently or on its own in the way a proper name does. It welds subject and predicate together into a state of affairs (Sachverhalt) that subsists merely on the intentional plane, as an object of thought, or content of judgment, but not in reality. Thus there is nothing in reality corresponding to the copulative 'is.' There is no Being (Sein) to which 'is' refers. Heidegger's talk of Being (das Sein) as different from beings (das Seiende) is due to illicit reification or hypostatization. Not only is this reification illicit, it contradicts Heidegger's constant insistence that Being is not itself a being. Adorno speaks of Heidegger's extrapolation from the copula to Being and considers this to rest on a confusion of the general meaning of the copula 'is' with the specific meaning it acquires in particular judgments.

The copulative 'is,' Adorno claims, is like an "occasional expression." In contemporary Anglo-analytic terms, it is like an indexical such as 'I,' 'here,' or 'now.' The first-person singular pronoun has a general meaning: 'I' said by me has the same general meaning — the same Kaplanian character — as 'I' said by you. But when I say 'I' I refer to me, while when you say 'I' you refer to you. From the fact that 'I' has a general meaning, it does not follow that every use of 'I' has the same referent. Similarly, from the fact that the copulative 'is' has the same general meaning in each predication, it does not follow that the 'is' in each predication refers to one and the same entity, Being. There is no Being in distinction from beings, any more than there is a Universal Ego distinct from particular egos.

4. Can Heidegger be defended against Adorno's charge that his Being is nothing but a reification (Verdinglichung) of the copula? Well, Heidegger himself insists that Being is not a being. Being is neither a being nor a property of beings. Nor is Being a concept. If it were, it would be the emptiest of empty abstractions. Being is a Third that mediates between concepts and beings, but is not itself something mediated. It resembles a metaphysical Absolute as Adorno suggests. So Heidegger would plead innocent to the charge of reification. For Adorno to make the accusation stick, he has to prove that there is no Third possible between concepts and beings. If he simply assumes this, he begs the question against Heidegger. Similarly, if he simply assumes that everything is mediated, that there is nothing that is not a member of the all encompassing system of intermediating entities, then he begs the question against Heidegger. For Heidegger's whole project is to think Being in its difference from beings. This implies that Being is transcendent of beings.

5. My own view is that there is plenty to criticize in both Heidegger and Adorno. But on the topic of the copula, something like Heidegger's position is defensible. Let me try to argue this out.

It is quite clear that 'is' in 'The sky is blue' does not designate some separate individual being, whether it be a predication relation or anything else. Still, the copula plays a role and does a job: it expresses the linkage of subject and predicate. After all, Al is fat. And even if he is not in reality fat, he can be (falsely) thought to be fat, and the propositional content of that thought, his being fat, is not the mere sum of the sense of 'Al' and the sense of 'fat.' So the linkage is not nothing. It is what transforms items not capable of having a truth-value into a structure that is capable of having a truth-value. Neither Al, nor the sense of 'Al,' has a truth-value. But 'Al is fat' has a truth-value. So the copulative 'is' plays a crucial role even though it lacks a specific referent. The problem is to understand that role.

We seem to face an aporia. On the one hand, the copulative link, or predicative tie, is not an entity in addition to Al and fatness, on pain of Bradley's regress. (Adorno does not mention Bradley's regress, but it could be taken as a manifestation of the illicit reification which Adorno does allege.) On the other hand, the link is not nothing. If it is not something and not nothing, then we have a contradiction.

Should we just accept this contradiction? Let us explore the contradiction of copulative being a bit further. Suppose 'Al is fat' is true. Then the state of affairs, Al's being fat, obtains. But analysis reveals only an individual and a property, but no being. Yet without the copulative link there would be no state of affairs at all. On the one hand the state of affairs is just its two constituents; on the other is it more than its two constituents.

As far as I can see, Adorno offers us no solution to this contradiction at all. He speak of a general meaning of 'is' common to all predicative states of affairs. But this cannot be what binds together the constituents of any particular state of affairs. Adorno glides right past the problem amd leaves us with the contradiction.

One way to avoid the contradiction is by saying that the copulative link is made by the mind: the linking of subject and predicate representations in a judgment derives from mental synthesis. In Kantian terms, the representations are combined in the unity of one consciousness. A judgment is a unity of constituents, not a mere sum of constituents. But the ground of this unity cannot be located within the judgment as a further constituent. Otherwise we get Bradley's regress. One solution is to locate the unifier outside the judgment as the synthesizing mind whose combinative activity creates a sense-structure capable of being true or false.

Now suppose the judgment is true. If it is true that Al is fat, then fat Al exists, and indeed exists outside the mind of the judger. In that case, pace Adorno, the state of affairs is not merely a matter of intentionality; it is also a matter of being. But the existence of fat Al cannot depend on the subjective synthesizing of an empirical judger. It is an objective fact, true of all actual and possible judgers. In Kantian terms, the 'is' therefore points back to the transcendental or objective unity of apperception. Now if we think of Heidegger's Sein in analogy to Kant's transcendental (objective) unity of apperception, then we can see how it escapes Adorno's charge of hypostatization.

Being is not a being, but a transcendental condition of the manifestation of beings; it is also not a concept or category, but the vehicle of all concepts. As such it is aThird that mediates between subject and object, but is not itself mediated by anything. And of course this is why the neo-Hegelian Adorno objects it it. For him, nothing escapes mediation, Vermittlung, as we shall see in future installments.

Although there is plenty of need for further explanation, what I have said suffices to show that Adorno's charge that Heidegger hypostatizes the copula fails. Hiedegger is on to a genuine problem the solution to which is by no means obvious.

You say you are capo di tutti capi in the actual world in respect of such-and-such? That may be so, but for how long? It is quite easy to be flying high in April, but shot down in May. And what about all the other possible worlds in which you exist, not to mention the ones in which you do not exist? To really be the best in respect of F-ness you would have to be maximally F (assuming F-ness admits of degrees) in every possible world. You would have to necessarily F (F is every possible world) and not just essentially F (F is in every possible world in which you exist). But to be really the best it is not enough to be the best in respect of one attribute; you would have to be necessarily F for all values of 'F.' But you wouldn't want to be the best in respect of slovenliness or stupidity, so it looks as if being the best entails being the ens reallisimum. But the competition for that job is stiff indeed.

A little thought along these lines should convince one that the project of besting others is doomed from the start. In the end we are all going to lose at the comparison game, the game of "competitive finite selfhood," to borrow a fine phrase from a fine book by A. E. Taylor. So why not try to be oneself? It is impossible to be the best, but the actualization of one's individuality is within the realm of possibility. Not easy, given the toxic state of contemporary society, but possible.

Collateral reading: Kierkegaard, Royce.

If Al and Bill are talking philosophy, the first thing that has to occur, if there is is to be any forward movement, is that the interlocutors must pin each other down terminology-wise. Each has to come to understand how the other is using his terms. It is notorious that key philosophical terms are used in different ways by different philosophers.

The following is a partial list of terms used in different ways by different philosophers: abstract, concrete, object, subject, fact, proposition, world, predicate, property, substance, event.

Take 'fact.' For some, it is a matter of definition that a fact is a true proposition. But as I use the term, a fact is the truth-maker of a true proposition. Suppose you use 'fact' as interchangeable with 'true proposition.' Then I can accommodate you by distinguishing between facts-that and facts-of. Thus, the fact that Bill is blogging is made true by the fact of Bill's blogging. But we must sort out these definitional questions if we are to make any progress with the substantive issues. A substantive question would be: Are there facts? Obviously, we cannot make any headway with this until we agree on how we are using 'facts.'

And of course we can't stop here. If you say that a fact is a true proposition, then I will ask you how you are using 'proposition.' Do you mean the sense of a context-free declarative sentence? Are propositions for you abstract objects? But now we need to get clear about 'abstract' and 'object.' Do you use 'object' and 'entity' interchangeably? Or can there be objects that are not entities and entities that are not objects? (An hallucinated pink rat might count as an object that is not an entity, and a being that has never been the accusative of any intellect might count as an entity that is not an object.) Someone who uses 'object' in such a way that there is no object without a (thinking) subject is not misusing the word: that is a traditional use. But equally, a person who uses 'object' to mean entity is not misusing it either. So the use of 'object' needs clarification.

One might use 'abstract' and 'concrete' as follows: X is abstract (concrete) iff X is causally inert (causally active/passive). But I know of at least one name philosopher who uses 'abstract' interchangeably with 'nonspatiotemporal.' On this usage, God would be an abstract object, while on the first definition God would be concrete.

Note that an abstract entity on either of these two definitions can be a substance (another word with about ten meanings!), i.e., a being capable of independent existence. But 'abstract' is used by philosophers as diverse as Hegel and Keith Campbell (the Aussie trope theorist) to refer to non-independent objects. And indeed, their use is the classical, and etymologically correct, use.

And so it goes. Suppose Carla is present at Al and Bill's discussion. Will she help or hinder? Experience teaches that, for the most part, three's a crowd: the Third Man, in her zeal to throw in her two cents, will only interfere with the protracted preliminary clarification that Al and Bill need before they can get to work on the substantive questions that interest them.

Note: The above applies to face-to-face discussions, not to on-line exchanges.

I suggest that you first read the Tropes entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. As for whether trope theory permits a solution to Bradley's regress, I return a negative answer in my draft Trope Theory Meets Bradley's Regress. You may also want to consult my article, "Relations, Monism, and the Vindication of Bradley's Regress," Dialectica vol. 56. Fasc. 1 (2002), pp. 3-35, and my article, "Bradley's Regress Argument and Relation-Instances," The Modern Schoolman vol. LXXXI, no. 3 (March 2004), pp. 159-183.

They don't make movies like this any more. HollyWeird liberals don't know how. They'll snow you with meaningless special effects and gratuitous sex and violence in every possible permutation, but they are well-nigh incapable of delivering decent dialog, or stories of human interest, let alone stories that illustrate philosophical themes or raise philosophical or moral questions.

One issue raised by The Treasure of the Sierra Madre concerns the status of moral conscience. Is it merely a social construct whose validity evaporates in the wilderness? Or is it a source of transcultural moral insight? In one scene, Dobbs, the Bogie character, tells his young partner, Curtin, that he "sounds foolish out in this wilderness" airing his Sunday-School scruples about cheating the old man (the Huston character) of his supplies and gold. Later, after shooting Curtin and leaving him for dead, Dobbs wrestles with his conscience while trying to fall alseep. "If you believe you have a conscience, then it will pester you to death. If you don't believe you have a a conscience, what can it do to you?"

There is a nihilistic streak in far too many liberals and leftists which makes them want to pander to the basest instincts in people. So if a HollyWeird liberal were to re-make this film, Dobbs' shooting of Curtin would be probably shown in gory detail so as to incite blood lust. In the actual film, the shooting is not shown; only the upshot is: we see a wounded man in the dirt. For only the latter is needed for the story. This was the way things were done until about the time of Peckinpah in the '60s. But the nihilists of the Left are not interested in a human story, they are interested in degrading people in order to line their own pockets. Of course, they will hide behind their right to 'free expression' as if this justified anything and everything.

Mirabile dictu, Jim Goad's Redneck Manifesto, which I had checked out of the ASU library, was recalled shortly thereafter by another patron, probably some no-good, terbacky chawin' redneck. I was planning to 'blog it' as they say, but that will have to wait. Goad's book is interesting, to say the least. Steven Yates, philosophy Ph.D. and very good writer, reviews Goad here.

Mangan thinks that one cannot get away nowadays with 'guinea.' I don't know. A fellow graduate student applied it to your humble correspondent back East in the 1970s. My impression is that there is more anti-Italian prejudice -- not that it is any big deal -- in the East than in the West. I didn't encounter any until I headed East. I once had a Lithuanian girl friend in Boston whose mother used to warn her: "Never bring an Italian home." I never did get to meet Darci's mom.

Blacks need to learn from Jews, Italians, the Irish, and others who have faced abuse. Don't whine, don't complain, don't seek a government program. Don't try to cash in on your 'victim' status, when the truth is that you are a 'victim' of liberal victimology.

If you want me to judge you as an individual, by the content of your character and not by the color of your skin, then behave like an individual: don't try to secure advantages from membership in a group.

Take a leaf out of Condi Rice's book. She's black, she's female, and she's Secretary of State. And her predecessor in the job was a black man, Colin Powell. It sure is a racist society we have here in the USA. And that Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court -- isn't he a black dude?

Get the needle out of your arm, and that soul-killing rap noise out of your ears. Listen to the late Beethoven piano sonatas. May I recommend Opus #s 109, 110, and 111? Mozart is also supposed to be good for improving your mental capacity. We honkies want you to be successful. And we don't care what color you are. It's not about color anyway. It's about behavior. Work hard, practice the ancient virtues, and be successful. If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. Don't let Brother Jesse or Brother Al tell you otherwise.

Don't get mad, be like Rudy Giuliani. Can you imagine him making a big deal about being called a greaseball, dago, goombah, wop, guinea . . . ? Do you see him protesting Soprano-style depictions of Italian-Americans as mafiosi?

For example, the evils of capitalism are routinely condemned, yet some of the most vocal of these critics are doing quite well exploiting the system they decry. MIT professor Noam Chomsky, arguably the most prominent and looniest of the loony left, has called capitalism a “‘grotesque catastrophe’ and a doctrine ‘crafted to induce hopelessness, resignation, and despair.’” Yet Chomsky is “himself a shrewd capitalist, worth millions, with money in the dreaded and evil stock market, and at least one tax haven to cut down on those pesky inheritance taxes that he says are so important.” Apostles of economic redistribution via the income tax like Chomsky are very clever at making sure that somebody else’s nickel will fund their utopian schemes. Chomsky has set up an irrevocable trust to shelter his money, with his tax attorney and his daughter as trustees.

[. . . many more telling examples . . .]

Of course, hypocrisy is no respecter of political persuasion, and conservatives have their own examples, from virtuecrats with gambling problems to family-values guys with mistresses –– as liberals and their shills in the press are fond of reminding us. But as Schweitzer notes, conservatives view humans as flawed creatures whose nature it is to sin and fall short. This pessimistic view of human nature means that conservatives expect people to fail to live up to their ideals. They see this failure, and the hypocrisy that often attends it, as part of the human condition, not correctible by reason or psychological technique, which is why traditional checks on human behavior like guilt and shame are so important. To liberals, on the other hand, people are basically good and fail because of their environment, things like poverty, bad neighborhoods, bad schools, inadequate nutrition, etc., conditions that could be corrected if the state would simply intervene and spend the money. The liberals Schweitzer skewers, however, are all rich and famous, so they have no excuse for not living the virtue they preach. Their failure to live up to the ideals they want to impose on everybody else is thus a repudiation of their assumptions, whereas for conservatives such failure confirms their belief in a flawed human nature. (Emphasis added)

The bolded passage addresses the fundamental and apparently unbridgeable difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives take a sober and realistic (not pessimistic!) view of the world and the people in it. They are reality-based, and put no faith in utopian schemes. Like good Aristotelians, they take the actualities of the present and the past as a reliable guide to what is possible, rather than the future-oriented fabrications of a high-flying reason cut loose from experience. Potency is known through act and not through Lennonesque and Leninesque 'imagining.' (The allusion, of course, is to John Lennon's "Imagine.")

Liberals and leftists, by contrast, joined by many anarchists and libertarians, labor under the misapprehension that human beings are inherently good, and would achieve an optimal condition either through massive statist intervention, or the elimination of the state altogether. Strange bedfellows these, but lying together in the bed of a common illusion.

However matters stand with beliefs, it is hard to see how anyone could take an eliminativist line with respect to desires and pains. I want to protest: my lust is a DATUM — a given in plain English — and neither a theoretical posit nor a product of conceptualization. Suppose you and I are looking at the same plant. You say, "That's a cactus!" I reply, "That is not a cactus, but a succulent; every cactus is a succulent, but not every succulent is a cactus." In this example, conceptualization is at work: one and the same physical object is being conceptualized differently by me and you. My conceptualization is more accurate than yours and functions as a replacement for it. But although my desire for a beer falls under the concept desire, my desire is not external to me in the manner of the plant; I live my desire. It is an Erlebnis as Husserl would say. And though it is directed to something transcendent of my consciousness, the act with its qualitative character is a real part of my consciousness. As immanent to my consciousness, it is not something I have a theory about. It is something I live through. I endure my desire; I don't gawk at it theoretically. It is not something about which I could be substantially mistaken, so mistaken that a day might come when I would say, "I used to think I desired women, but meanwhile I have become convinced that there are no desires at all."

One cannot replace folk psychology (FP) with a better theory (one couched in neuroscientific terms perhaps) unless it is a theory. What I have been suggesting, however, is that it is not a theory. If this is right, then there is just no chance that in the future we will re-conceptualize that in us which we now folk-psychologically conceptualize as desire in some radically different way that makes no mention of desire or cognate mentalistic notions.

But don't we give folk-psychological explanations, and doesn't the fact that we do this show that folk psychology is a theory? Suppose Sally is angry, and we want to figure out why. Talking to her we find out that she is in dire financial straits and needs a substantial raise in pay. Her boss promised her one, and in expectation of the fulfillment of the promise, Sally ran up some credit card debt. But it turns out that the boss was unable to deliver on his promise. Hence, Sally's anger. This suggests an explanation involving a folk-psychological 'law':

L. If a person P is promised X confidently by a person Q whom P trusts, and P needs/desires X and expects the fulfillment of the promise, and Q is unable to deliver on the promise, then, ceteris paribus, P will become angry at Q.

To get an explanation in the familiar deductive-nomological style, we simply instantiate the variables in (L) with 'Sally,' 'boss,' and 'raise' and add the premise that Sally is promised a raise by the boss.

But is this the only way to explain Sally's angry behavior? Must we assume that FP is a theory? There is also a mental simulation view of FP. Very roughly, on this model we would understand Sally's angry behavior by 'putting ourselves in her shoes,' by imagining ourselves in her situation and then running a simulation 'off-line' as it were. For details click on the above link.

The main point is that eliminativism in the philosophy of mind requires the notion that FP is a theory; so any considerations that speak against this assumption are considerations that speak against eliminativism.

I find it strange that while behaviorism in the philosophy of mind is pretty much dead, eliminative materialism is not. For while the former borders on the merely preposterous, the latter is positively loony. What the (analytical) behaviorist does it to identify mental states with behavior (linguistic or non-linguistic) and/or with dispositions to behave. Thus my belief that it is about to rain is nothing other than my rummaging for an umbrella in the closet, and the like. This theory is so implausible that an old joke suffices to refute it: After having sex, one behaviorist says to the other, "It was good for you, how was it for me?" (I confess to being quick and Searle-y, but this is a weblog!)

The (analytical) behaviorist, however, does not deny that they are beliefs and desires, thereby retaining a grip on his sanity. His project is not eliminativist but identitarian. There are beliefs and desires, he thinks; it is just that what they are are bits of behavior and/or behavioral dispositions. But there is a wrinkle here that Collins ignores, namely, the position of eliminative behaviorism. This is the view that there are no beliefs, desires, and the like. What there is is behavior, the description of which, in the fullness of time, will not be couched in mentalistic terminology, but perhaps in the austere jargon of kinematics, or perhaps in something more robust, but shy of the irreducibly mental.

Both the eliminative materialist and the eliminative behaviorist deny the existence of beliefs and desires, sweeping them into the dustbin wherein reside phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous ether; the difference, however, is that the 'successor theory,' the theory that is to replace folk psychology is different in the two cases. For the eliminative behaviorist, it doesn't matter what is going on inside the skull. For the eliminative materialist, however, that is where the action is.

22 December 1874. Written in the South of France. – Gioberti says that the French mind assumes only the form of truth and, by isolating this, exaggerates it, in such a way that it dissolves the realities with which it is concerned. I express the same thing by the word speciousness. It takes the shadow for the object, the word for the thing, the appearance for the reality and the abstract formula for the truth. It does not go beyond intellectual assignats. Its gold is pinch-beck, its diamond paste; the artificial and the conventional suffice for it. When one talks with a Frenchman about art, language, religion, the State, duty, the family, one feels from his way of talking that his thought remains outside the object, that it does not enter its substance, its marrow. He does not seek to understand it in its inwardness, but only to say something specious about it. This spirit is superficial and yet not comprehensive; it pricks the surface of things shrewdly enough, and yet it does not penetrate. It wishes to enjoy itself in relation to things; but it has not the respect, the disinterestedness, the patience and the self-forgetfulness that are necessary for contemplating things as they really are. Far from being the philosophic spirit, it is an abortive counterfeit of it, for it does not help to resolve any problem and it remains powerless to grasp that which is living, complex and concrete. Abstraction is it original vice, presumption its incurable eccentricity and speciousness its fatal limit.

The French language can express nothing that is budding or germinating; it depicts only effects, results the caput mortuum, and not the cause, the movement, the force, the becoming of any sort of phenomenon. It is analytical and descriptive, but it does not make one understand anything. . .

The thirst for truth is not a French passion. In everything, what appears is more relished than what is, the outside than the inside, the style than the stuff, the glittering than the useful, opinion than conscience. . . .

As a sharpening of wits, controversy is often, indeed, of mutual advantage, in order to correct one's thoughts and awaken new views. But in learning and in mental power both disputants must be tolerably equal: If one of them lacks learning, he will fail to understand the other, as he is not on the same level with his antagonist. If he lacks mental power, he will be embittered, and led into dishonest tricks, and end by being rude.

The only safe rule, therefore, is that which Aristotle mentions in the last chapter of his Topica: not to dispute with the first person you meet, but only with those of your acquaintance of whom you know that they possess sufficient intelligence and self-respect not to advance absurdities; to appeal to reason and not to authority, and to listen to reason and yield to it; and, finally, to cherish truth, to be willing to accept reason even from an opponent, and to be just enough to bear being proved to be in the wrong, should truth lie with him. From this it follows that scarcely one man in a hundred is worth your disputing with him. You may let the remainder say what they please, for every one is at liberty to be a fool - desipere est jus gentium. Remember what Voltaire says: La paix vaut encore mieux que la verite. Remember also an Arabian proverb which tells us that on the tree of silence there hangs its fruit, which is peace.

Here is the same passage in the German original:

Das Disputieren ist als Reibung der Köpfe allerdings oft von gegenseitigem Nutzen, zur Berichtigung der eignen Gedanken und auch zur Erzeugung neuer Ansichten. Allein beide Disputanten müssen an Gelehrsamkeit und an Geist ziemlich gleichstehn. Fehlt es Einem an der ersten, so versteht er nicht Alles, ist nicht au niveau. Fehlt es ihm am zweiten, so wird die dadurch herbeigeführte Erbitterung ihn zu Unredlichkeiten und Kniffen [oder] zu Grobheit verleiten.

Die einzig sichere Gegenregel ist daher die, welche schon Aristoteles im letzten Kapitel der Topica gibt: Nicht mit dem Ersten dem Besten zu disputieren; sondern allein mit solchen, die man kennt, und von denen man weiß, daß sie Verstand genug haben, nicht gar zu Absurdes vorzubringen und dadurch beschämt werden zu müssen; und um mit Gründen zu disputieren und nicht mit Machtsprüchen, und um auf Gründe zu hören und darauf einzugehn; und endlich, daß sie die Wahrheit schätzen, gute Gründe gern hören, auch aus dem Munde des Gegners, und Billigkeit genug haben, um es ertragen zu können, Unrecht zu behalten, wenn die Wahrheit auf der andern Seite liegt. Daraus folgt, daß unter Hundert kaum Einer ist, der wert ist, daß man mit ihm disputiert. Die Übrigen lasse man reden, was sie wollen, denn desipere est juris gentium, und man bedenke, was Voltaire sagt: La paix vaut encore mieux que la vérité; und ein arabischer Spruch ist: »Am Baume des Schweigens hängt seine Frucht der Friede.«

You might find "Augustine's Trinitology and the Theory of Groups" by Thomas Ryba in Augustine: Presbyter Factus Sum to be of interest. Ryba argues that the notion of a non-transitive identity relation (such that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but the Father is not the Son or Holy Spirit, etc.) can coherently be conceptualized in set theory, meaning that the Augustinian notion of the Persons as "subsistent relations" is at least logically possible. Ryba took a similar position to you regarding the value of such a demonstration in showing whether the doctrine is coherent and rationally believable, even though we must presume that Augustine didn't have any such thing in mind.

Thanks for putting the site together, BTW. I lurk here from time to time, and I always find something interesting. I confess to being quite curious about your differences with Barry Miller on existence, as I found his defense of divine simplicity in A Most Unlikely God based on his theory to be the most convincing treatment I had encountered in my (albeit-limited) investigation of the subject, so I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on that whenever you happen to get around to them. (Hyperlinks added by BV)

Thanks for the kind words and the reference to Ryba. The book you mention is checked out of the local university library, but I found another by Ryba which I will get today. As for Barry Miller, I reviewed A Most Unlikely God for Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review (vol. XXXVIII, no. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 614-617). I'll see if I can post the review on this weblog. You might say that Miller and I are workers in the same vineyard, but we have some differences on the topic of existence that I haven't discussed in print. I need to dust off some old manuscripts and perhaps post some of the material here. Thanks for the encouragement, and best wishes. BV.