Maverick Philosopher

Not as far as I can see. If by 'objectively true' we mean true whether or not any subjects exist, then it seems that (~1) is true only if there are subjects who make assertions. In this case, then, undeniability does not entail objective truth. It is also quite clear that undeniability does not entail necessary truth. (~1) is contingently true: true in some, but not all, possible worlds.

Now let's consider a juicier example, the Law of Non-Contradiction which, in its property version, can be put like this:

LNC. (F)(x)~(Fx & ~Fx)

which is to say: for any property F-ness, and any object x, it is not the case that x is F and x is not F. For example, nothing is both red and non-red.

This is subject to the usual three qualifications: an object cannot be F and not F (i) at the same time, (ii) in the same respect, and (iii) in the same sense. Thus a ball could be both red and non-red at different times, or red and non-red in respect of different hemispheres, or in different senses: Jack can be both red and non-red at the same time if 'red' in its first occurrence refers to a color, and in its second occurrence to a political affiliation.

Now Aristotle was quite clear that first principles like (LNC) are non-demonstrable. They are so basic that they cannot be proven. Since a proof cannot be circular, (LNC) cannot be derived from itself or from any logically equivalent proposition. To use (LNC) to prove (LNC) would be to beg the question. It is also clear that no proof can have infinitely many inferential steps. So what justifies (LNC)? Is it perhaps unjustifiable, a dogmatic posit? Is it a groundless assumption?

One might just announce that (LNC) is self-evident, that it is self-justifying, that it 'glows by its own epistemic light.' But then how respond to someone like Heraclitus who sincerely maintains that it is not self-evident?

In Metaphysics Gamma, 3, 4, Aristotle can be read as using retortion, or proof by refutation, to establish (LNC). Since he cannot, on pain of begging the question, resort to a direct proof in the case of this most fundamental of all principles, "the surest principle of all," (1005b10) he must try to show that anyone who denies (LNC) falls into performative inconsistency. As I read Aristotle, the key idea is that (LNC) is " a principle one must have to understand anything whatever. . . ." (1005b15) It is a principle that governs all understanding, all definite and determinate speech.

As such, (LNC) seems to function as a semantic constraint: one cannot mean anything definite or make any definite judgment unless one abides by, and thus presupposes, the principle that no subject of discourse both has and does not have a property at the same time and in the same respect. To counter the (LNC)-denier, Aristotle simply demands that the man say something, that he express the same idea to himself and to another, "for this much is necessary if there is to be any proposition (legein, dicere) at all." (1006a20) If the (LNC)-denier says nothing, then "he is no better than a plant" (1006a15) and one can ignore him. But if he says anything definite at all, then he makes use of (LNC). For suppose he asserts 'The arrow is at rest.' He thereby commits himself to 'It is not the case that the arrow is not at rest.' If he asserts both 'The arrow is at rest' and 'The arrow is not at rest,' then, far from making two assertions, he does not even make one. He expresses no definite thought since he violates a principle observance of which is necessary for making sense.

The idea here is that he who asserts something contradictory asserts nothing at all: a necessary condition of there being a definite thought, a definite proposition, is that (LNC) be satisfied. The retortion might be spelled out as follows. The denier states

2. (LNC) is false.

But in making this definite statement, a statement that opposes what the (LNC)-affirmer states, the (LNC) denier commits himself to

3. It is not the case that (LNC) is not false.

But the commitment to (3) is tantamount to an acceptance of (LNC). So the denier's performance -- his stating of (2) -- 'contradicts' the content of (2).

But what exactly does the retortion show? Does it show that (LNC) is true of reality, or does it show merely that it is true of thought-contents? Is it an ontological principle or is it merely a law of thought, a principle that governs how we must think if we are to make sense to ourselves and others? Is it an ontological principle or merely a transcendental one?

I am not clear about this, or about the value of retortion as a philosophical procedure. Which is why I blog on.

1. Either doxastic suspension is voluntary or it is not.

2. If suspension is voluntary, a matter of decision rather than evidence, then all the laborious investigation of arguments and counterarguments in support of the insight that neither thesis nor counterthesis can be established is pointless. One just decides to suspend belief.

3. But if suspension is involuntary and caused by the evident fact that no thesis or its negation can be established, then one has dogmatically accepted something, namely, that neither thesis nor antithesis can be established.

Therefore

4. The examination of the arguments pro et contra is either unnecessary or, if necessary, issues in dogmatism.

In perhaps simpler terms: Either my suspension of judgment as regards the Big Questions is a matter of decision in which case argument examination is irrelevant, or my suspension is not a matter of decision but one of evidence. But if it becomes evident to me that no thesis can be established, then, in acquiescing in this compulsive evidence I dogmatically accept a proposition, and indeed one that transcendes the mundane, thereby abandoning skepticism.

Is the dilemma bogus?

Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos was published in 1928 by A. Francke AG Verlag, Bern. A translation by Hans Meyerhoff appeared under the title, "Man's Place in Nature." (Beacon Press, 1961) The book is not an "inspiring ethical meditation" but a contribution to philosophical anthropology, as Scheler makes clear in the third paragraph of the preface: "This essay represents a brief and highly condensed summary of my views on some of the main topics of the 'Philosophical Anthropology' on which I have been at work for a number of years . . . ." (p. 3)

My guess is that Kimball is confusing Man's Place in Nature with Scheler's main ethical work, Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik which first appeared in the years 1913-1916. A translation by Manfred S. Frings and Roger L. Funk of the the fifth edition (1966) of the German text appeared under the title, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1973).

A minor point? Yes, but worth making if it motivates a few of you to read Scheler's rich but neglected work.

This strikes me as just so much whistling in the dark. How can one be so cocksure that physical death is the annihilation of the self? Shakespeare's Hamlet, in the soliloquy lately quoted, saw the difficulty:

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause . . . .

And is evil "readily endurable"? See for yourself whether that proposition stands up to a close reading of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago or any other catalog of human horrors.

The Hellenistic systems, the systems of late antiquity (Stoicism, Skepticism, and Epicureanism), despite their riches and insights offer us no real solution to the human predicament, a fact of which Augustine was well aware.

Whether or not there is a cure, man cannot be his own doctor.

The advantage of the epistemic approach is that it rescues us from the rank absurdity, pointed out by Hume, of having to say that there are laws of nature that admit of exceptions. Since our understanding is imperfect, our formulations of the laws of nature will some of them if not all of them admit of exceptions. But it is hard to credit the idea that the laws themselves could admit of exceptions.

The epistemic approach, however, has a drawback. It seems to undercut the evidentiary value of miracles, a point made by Antony Flew. But I won't repeat what I said in an earlier post and in replies to an astute objection by commenter Spur.

In Kant's philosophy or religion, however, miracles have no role to play except perhaps in the rise and spread of a religion:

If a moral religion (which must consist not in dogmas and rites but in the heart's disposition to fulfill all human duties as divine commands) is to be established, all miracles which history connects with its inauguration must themselves in the end render superfluous the belief in miracles in general; for it bespeaks a culpable degree of moral unbelief not to acknowledge as completely authoritative the commands of duty -- commands primordially engraved upon the heart of man through reason -- unless they are in addition accredited through miracles: "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." (John 4, 48) (Ibid., p. 79)

Kant is saying in effect that miracles have no role to play in the validation of a religion since the needs of a true and moral religion can be supplied by reason alone. Miracles play a role only in the rise and spread of a religion; once it has taken hold, they are superfluous. And not only are they superfluous, any reliance on them for evidentiary purposes is morally censurable.

. . . the universal laws of nature are decrees of God following from the necessity and perfection of the Divine nature. Hence, any event happening in nature which contravened nature's universal laws, would necessarily also contravene the Divine decree, nature, and understanding; or if anyone asserted that God acted in contravention to the laws of nature, he, ipso facto, would be compelled to assert that God acted against His own nature -- an evident absurdity. (tr. Elwes, Dover, p. 83)

It follows from this that miracles are to be construed epistemically:

Further, as nothing happens in nature which does not follow from her laws, and as her laws embrace everything conceived by the Divine intellect, and lastly, as nature preserves a fixed and immutable order; it most clearly follows that miracles are only intelligible as in relation to human opinions, and merely mean events of which the natural cause cannot be explained by a reference to any ordinary occurrence, either by us, or at any rate, by the writer and narrator of the miracle. (p. 84, emphasis added)

In sum, since the course of nature, being ordained by God, cannot be contravened, miracles ontically construed are impossible. Talk of miracles, therefore, is simply talk of events we cannot explain. Miracles are thus parasitic upon our ignorance. They are natural events that simply surpass our limited human comprehension. To a perfect understanding nothing would appear miraculous. That is the first main point that Spinoza makes in his chapter "Of Miracles."

The second main point is that neither God's nature, nor his existence, nor his providence can be known from miracles, but can be known only from the fixed and immutable order of nature.

Spinoza's argument, expressed in my own way, is something like the following. If we take miracles ontically, as actual interruptions or contraventions of the order of nature, and thus of the will of God, then not only are they impossible, but they can provide no basis for knowledge of God. If, on the other hand, we take miracles epistemically, as events the causes of which we do not understand, then in this case as well we have no basis for knowldge of God. For we cannot base knowledge of God on ignorance, and events are miraculous only due to our ignorance of their natural causes.

Spinoza concludes his defense of his second main point with the surprising claim that belief in miracles leads to atheism:

If, therefore, anything should come to pass in nature which does not follow from her laws, it would also be in contravention to the order which which God has established in nature for ever through universal natural laws; it would, therefore, be in contravention to God's nature and laws, and, consequently, belief in it would throw doubt upon everything, and lead to Atheism. (p. 87)

Bradley on Bibliolatry

In the last conversation I had with him . . . He spoke bitterly of the Christian Church in our country, chiefly on the charge of an alleged 'idolatry' of the text of the Bible, a fault not, I think, really common among Anglicans at the present. He commended the Roman Church for its discouragement of promiscuous Bible-reading, but held that it did not go far enough. He would have the Church, he said, cease to appeal to any literature from the past and insist directly upon its own inherent authority as the living voice of the divine Spirit.

Bradley on Purgatory

Possibly some of my readers who know Bradley only from his books may be surprised at a remark called from him by a passing reference in the same conversation to Purgatory. "But what do you mean by Purgatory? Does it mean that when I die I shall go somewhere where I shall be made better by discipline? If so, that is what I very much hope." In another mood, no doubt, he might have dwelt on the intellectual difficulties in the way of such a hope, but it was characteristic, or at least I thought so, that he evidently clung to it.

Bradley a Mystic

Bradley's own personal religion was of a strongly marked mystical type, in fact of the specific type common to the Christian mystics. Religion meant to him, as to Plotinus or to Newman, direct personal contact with the Supreme and Ineffable, unmediated through any forms of ceremonial prayer, or ritual, and like all mystics in whom this passion for direct access to God is not moderated by the the habit of organised communal worship, he was inclined to set little store on the historical and institutional element in the great religions.

Bradley on the Incarnation

Thus while the conception of the meeting of the divine and the human in one 'by unity of person' lay at the very heart of his philosophy, he was wholly indifferent to the question whether the ideal of the God-Man has or has not been actually realised in flesh and blood in a definite historical person. Like Hegel, he thought it the significant thing about Christianity that it had believed in the incarnation of God in a definite person, but also, like Hegel, he seemed to think it a matter of small importance that the person in which the 'hypostatic union' was believed to have been accomplished should be Jesus the Nazarene rather than any other, and again whether or not the belief was strictly true to fact. The important thing, to his mind, was that the belief stimulates to the attempt to the achievement of 'deiformity' in our own personality.

D1. X necessitates-1 Y =df X transmits to, or confers upon, Y the property of being absolutely necessary.

D2. X necessitates-2 Y =df X is logically sufficient for Y.

Earlier, I explained how that which is necessitated-2 can be contingent and so not (absolutely) necessary. Now if we interpret 'inclines without necessitating' in terms of (D1), then 'reasons incline without necessitating' comes out true within the determinist's scheme. We can take 'incline' to mean necessitate-2 and 'necessitating' to mean necessitating-1. But then the result borders on triviality. Of course reasons necessitate-2 without rendering that which they necessitate-2 absolutely necessary!

Consider an example. If determinism is true, then my blogging now is necessitated-2 by a set of conditions including the reasons (motives) I have for blogging. But no determinist who, like Leibniz, accepts that there are logically contingent objects and states of affairs will say that these conditions render my blogging absolutely (as opposed to hypothetically) necessary -- to acquiesce for the moment in Leibniz's terminology. My blogging now is a crystal-clear example of a logically contingent state of affairs. Or will you say that there is a contradiction or some other form of incoherence involved in my not blogging now?

For 'Reasons incline without necessitating' to have a substantial, non-trivial, meaning, therefore, it must mean that reasons incline without necessitating-2. But then the slogan is inconsistent with determinism.

So take your pick. On the first of the apparently only two possible readings, the slogan is consistent with determinism but says something barely worth saying. For again, sophisticated logical fatalists, theological fatalists, and determinists do not maintain that the state of afairs or event necessitated in one of these three ways is absolutely (as opposed to hypothetically) necessary. But on the second reading, the slogan turns out to be inconsistent with determinism.

Now what is the difficulty that the waffle phrase is supposed to paper over? The difficulty is to reconcile free will and determinism. It sounds reassuring to hear that reasons incline without necessitating. If I am merely being inclined by my reasons, then it seems as if I really am free in the end. It sounds comforting to hear that when I act for a reason I am acting freely despite the fact that I could not have done otherwise. The equivocation exposed above makes it seem to Leibniz that he is saying something substantial when he is really saying something quite trivial.

My point is that the 'inclines but does not necessitate' slogan has no univocal meaning and so should not be employed by Leibniz or a latter-day Leibnizian. Such a person should forthrightly affirm that determinism is true and that therefore reasons and other causes necessitate-2. On a determinist scheme such as Leibniz's, there cannot be any reasons that incline without necessitating. Perhaps a version of compatibilism can still be made to work. But no good purpose is served by the waffle slogan, 'Reasons incline but do not necessitate.'

I believe that Leibniz would agree with what I have just said, though he couches the point in a terminology which is not the best possible. He speaks of absolute and hypothetical necessity. Thus he would say that the object's being red, though a logically contingent STOA, is hypothetically necessary as opposed to absolutely necessary. I don't like this way of talking for the simple reason that the hypothetically necessary is precisely not necessary, but contingent. (This makes 'hypothetical' in 'hypothetical necessity' an alienans adjective.) I prefer to speak of the necessitated rather than of the hypothetically necessary. But let's not quibble over terminology. Zu den Sachen selbst!

Suppose determinism is true and an action of mine is determined by previous and present casual conditions including reasons (motives). If follows that the action is necessitated by these conditions together with the laws of nature. But as I just got finished saying, the necessitated need not be necessary: my action, though determined and thus necessitated, is contingent. It is as clear as day that my action's being necessitated does not confer upon it (absolute) necessity. Or in Leibniz's jargon: an action's being hypothetically necessary does not confer upon it absolute necessity.

Now suppose my action is 'morally significant.' Crooking my right index finger is not a morally significant action; but it it would be if the crooking were the pulling of the trigger of a gun aimed at a bipedal varmint. The question is: Am I morally culpable if I shoot a man down in cold blood if determinism is true? Or does the truth of determinism relieve me of moral culpability? I say it does, Leibniz says it doesn't.

My thesis is that Leibniz's reason for saying that the truth of determinism does not relieve one of moral responsibility is a bad reason. His reason is that an action's being determined does not make it absolutely necessary. This is a bad reason since it amounts to an ignoratio elenchi. The issue is not whether the action is contingent or necessary: all will agree that it is contingent. The issue is whether an action that is determined and indeed predetermined by a set of conditions some of which antedate the birth of the agent can be said to be free in a sense that supports attribution to the agent of moral responsibility. This is a very tough question, and not one that can be resolved by pointing out what is obvious, namely, that an action's being necessitated does not make it (absolutely) necessary.

If you carefully study the following excerpt from an abstract of L's Theodicy, you will see, I hope, that I am right in my criticism. I have added bolding. The entire document is available here.

III. Objection. If it is always impossible not to sin, it is always unjust to punish. Now, it is always impossible not to sin; or, in other words, every sin is necessary. Therefore, it is always unjust to punish. The minor of this is proved thus:

1. Prosyllogism. All that is predetermined is necessary. Every event is predetermined. Therefore, every event (and consequently sin also) is necessary.

Again this second minor is proved thus:

2. Prosyllogism. That which is future, that which is foreseen, that which is involved in the causes, is predetermined. Every event is such. Therefore, every event is predetermined.

Answer. I admit in a certain sense the conclusion of the second prosyllogism, which is the minor of the first; but I shall deny the major of the first prosyllogism, namely, that every thing predetermined is necessary; understanding by the necessity of sinning, for example, or by the impossibility of not sinning, or of not performing any action, the necessity with which we are here concerned, that is, that which is essential and absolute, and which destroys the morality of an action and the justice of punishments. For if anyone understood another necessity or impossibility, namely, a necessity which should be only moral, or which was only hypothetical (as will be explained shortly); it is clear that I should deny the major of the objection itself. I might content myself with this answer and demand the proof of the proposition denied; but I have again desired to explain my procedure in this work, in order to better elucidate the matter and to throw more light on the whole subject, by explaining the necessity which ought to be rejected and the determination which must take place. That necessity which is contrary to morality and which ought to be rejected, and which would render punishment unjust, is an insurmountable necessity which would make all opposition useless, even if we should wish with all our heart to avoid the necessary action, and should make all possible efforts to that end. Now, it is manifest that this is not applicable to voluntary actions, because we would not perform them if we did not choose to. Also their prevision and predetermination are not absolute, but presuppose the will: if it is certain that we shall perform them, it is not less certain that we shall choose to perform them. These voluntary actions and their consequences will not take place no matter what we do or whether we wish them or not; but, through that which we shall do and through that which we shall wish to do, which leads to them. And this is involved in prevision and in predetermination, and even constitutes their ground. And the necessity of such an event is called conditional or hypothetical, or the necessity of consequence, because it supposes the will, and the other requisites; whereas the necessity which destroys morality and renders punishment unjust and reward useless, exists in things which will be whatever we may do or whatever we may wish to do, and, in a word, is in that which is essential; and this is what is called an absolute necessity. Thus it is to no purpose, as regards what is absolutely necessary, to make prohibitions or commands, to propose penalties or prizes, to praise or to blame; it will be none the less. On the other hand, in voluntary actions and in that which depends upon them, precepts armed with power to punish and to recompense are very often of use and are included in the order of causes which make an action exist. And it is for this reason that not only cares and labors but also prayers are useful; God having had these prayers in view before he regulated things and having had that consideration for them which was proper. This is why the precept which says ora et labora (pray and work), holds altogether good; and not only those who (under the vain pretext of the necessity of events) pretend that the care which business demands may be neglected, but also those who reason against prayer, fall into what the ancients even then called the lazy sophism. Thus the predetermination of events by causes is just what contributes to morality instead of destroying it, and causes incline the will, without compelling it. This is why the determination in question is not a necessitation - it is certain (to him who knows all) that the effect will follow this inclination; but this effect does not follow by a necessary consequence, that is, one the contrary of which implies contradiction. It is also by an internal inclination such as this that the will is determined, without there being any necessity. Suppose that one has the greatest passion in the world (a great thirst, for example), you will admit to me that the soul can find some reason for resisting it, if it were only that of showing its power. Thus, although one may never be in a perfect indifference of equilibrium and there may be always a preponderance of inclination for the side taken, it, nevertheless, never renders the resolution taken absolutely necessary.

Clearly, the proposition P expressed by 'BV writes on 25 September 2006' is logically contingent. There is no logical necessity that I write tomorrow or on any day. Both my writing tomorrow and my not writing tomorrow are logically possible. But given that God foreknows that P, P must be true. That is,

1. Necessarily (if God foreknows that P, then P is true).

We note that the necessity in (1) attaches to the conditional, not to its consequent. This is a case, then, of necessitas consequentiae, not of necessitas consequentiis. In L's jargon, (1) is a case of hypothetical necessity. The consequence is necessary, not the consequent. From (1) one cannot infer

2. If God foreknows that P, then necessarily P is true.

So far, so good. If a proposition is known, by God or by anyone, then it must be true; but that is consistent with saying that the proposition known is contingently true. Given that I know that I am blogging, then I must be blogging; but that is not to say that I am necessarily blogging: I might not have been blogging now.

What I don't understand, though, is the last sentence in the passage quoted. The last sentence strikes me as false. L. seems not to appreciate that if a contingent state of affairs is necessitated by something other than the agent, then there is a prima facie difficulty about reconciling it with freedom of choice. The source of necessitation might be divine foreknowledge (theological fatalism), or the laws of logic (logical fatalism), or the past and the laws of nature (determinism). No matter what the source of necessitation, one cannot dissolve the problem of reconciling free will and the necessitation of the act willed simply by pointing out the difference between hypothetical and absolute necessity.

In other words, L. appears to be taxing the fatalist and the determinist with a sophomoric error, namely, that of confusing (1) and (2) above. But no sophisticated fatalist or determinist need make that error.

For what is the essence of occasionalism if not the view that no natural or 'secondary' cause is a true cause, and that there is only one true cause, namely, God the 'primary' cause? Although occasionalism is often discussed as an ad hoc solution to the problem of mind-body interaction 'occasioned' by Cartesian dualism, occasionalism is a general theory of causation, and there was occasionalism long before Descartes. The doctrine can be traced back at least to al-Ghazali. Here is a good little article by William Hasker that fills in some of the details.

It is easy to see why occasionalism would be found attractive by Muslim thinkers. For the occasionalist, God is omnipotent not only in the sense that he can do anything (subject to certain logical and non-logical restrictions that I have discussed elsewhere); he is also omnipotent in the far stronger sense that anything that gets done gets done by God. He has not only the power to do all; he has and exercises all the power.

Of course, Hume does not bring God into his theory of causation. But for Hume, as for the occasionalist, no natural cause is a true cause since no such cause produces, or brings into existence, its effect. The relata of the causal relation are events, and the latter are Humean "distinct existences." To say that e1 causes e2 is just to say that (i) e1 temporally precedes e2; (ii) e1 and e2 are spatiotemporally contiguous, and that (iii) whenever an event of e1's type occurs, an event of e2's type occurs. That's all she wrote. There is no producing, no bringing about. Good empiricist that he is, Hume denies what he does not see. More precisely: he doubts the existence of that for which there is no corroboration in sensory impressions. Hume operates with a Principle of Significance according to which the validation of any idea requires tracing it back to sensory impressions; but such ideas as causal power, causal production, and causal necessity cannot be cashed out in terms of sense impressions.

These three conditions in Hume's empiricist analysis can be satisfied by events between which there is no real-world connection such as a transfer of energy or momentum. On the Humean scheme, all there is in the world is regular succession. This is tanatamount to saying that e1's occurrence is merely the occasion, not the true (productive) cause, of e2's occurrence.

Now common sense and Miss Anscombe both insist that the root idea of causation is that the cause is the source of its effect, that "Effects derive from, arise out of, come of, their causes." (Anscombe in Sosa and Tooley, eds. p. 92) Now if you accept Anscombe's point, and I do, then it seems accurate to say that Hume's regularity theory of causation is occasionalism without God. (David Lewis and others have noticed that there is also a counterfactual analysis of causation in Hume's texts; but let's not worry about that now.)

Surely there must be more to causation 'in the objects' than regular succession. If so, then perhaps theists would be within their epistemic rights in putting God to work in the theory of causation. As I once heard J. N. Findlay say, "God has his uses."

One question is whether it is even possible to live without contention-inspiring beliefs. If it is not possible, then the beliefless life cannot be an ideal for us. 'Ought' implies 'can.' If we ought to do something, then it must be possible for us to so it. The same holds for ideals. Nothing can count as a genuine ideal for us unless its realization is at least possible by us. Now I have argued elsewhere that not even the skeptic can avoid some contention-inspiring doxastic commitments. So I incline to the view that the beliefless life is not possible for us and hence not an ideal for us either.

But even if the beliefless life were possible for us, it would still not be choice-worthy. For our very survival depends on our knowing the truth about matters difficult to discern. For example, is global warming real, and if it is does it pose an imminent threat to human survival? What about the threat to civilization of militant Islam? How much of a threat is it?

These two issues are extremely contentious. Acrimonious and ataraxia-busting debate rages on both sides of both of these issues. But obviously it does matter to the quality of our lives and the lives of our children and other world-mates what the truth is about these questions. It certainly made a difference to the quality of the lives of the workers in the Trade Towers on 9/11 that militant Islamofanatics targeted them. Their quality of life went to zero. Just one bomb can ruin your entire day.

So how could it possibly be right to say that the highest life is the life of belieflessness? If I suspend belief with respect to every contentious matter, every matter likely to induce mental perturbation, not to mention bloodshed, then I suspend belief with respect to the Islamofascist threat. But then I show indifference to my own well-being. It doesn't matter whether you agree with me about the threat of militant Islam. Perhaps you are a leftie who thinks that global warming is more of a threat. Then run my argument using that example.

Mental tranquillity is a high value, and no one who takes philosophy seriously can want not to possess more of it. But it cannot be the highest value. The happy life cannot be anything so passive as the life of ataraxia. We need a more virile conception of happiness, and we find it in Aristotle. For the Stagirite, happiness (eudaimonia) is an activity (ergon) of the soul (psyche) in accordnace with virtue (arete) over an entire life. His is an active conception of the good life even though the highest virtues are the intellectual virtues. The highest life is the bios theoretikos, the vita contemplativa. Though contemplative, it necessarily involves the activity of inquiry into the truth, an activity that skepticism, whether Pyrrhonian or Academic, denigrates.

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.

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.

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.«

Since that which is compounded out of something so that the whole is one, not like a heap but like a syllable-now the syllable is not its elements, ba is not the same as b and a, nor is flesh fire and earth (for when these are separated the wholes, i.e. the flesh and the syllable, no longer exist, but the elements of the syllable exist, and so do fire and earth); the syllable, then, is something-not only its elements (the vowel and the consonant) but also something else, and the flesh is not only fire and earth or the hot and the cold, but also something else:-if, then, that something must itself be either an element or composed of elements, (1) if it is an element the same argument will again apply; for flesh will consist of this and fire and earth and something still further, so that the process will go on to infinity. But (2) if it is a compound, clearly it will be a compound not of one but of more than one (or else that one will be the thing itself), so that again in this case we can use the same argument as in the case of flesh or of the syllable. But it would seem that this ‘other’ is something, and not an element, and that it is the cause which makes this thing flesh and that a syllable. And similarly in all other cases. And this is the substance of each thing (for this is the primary cause of its being); and since, while some things are not substances, as many as are substances are formed in accordance with a nature of their own and by a process of nature, their substance would seem to be this kind of ‘nature’, which is not an element but a principle. An element, on the other hand, is that into which a thing is divided and which is present in it as matter; e.g. a and b are the elements of the syllable.

The syllable ba is a whole of two parts b and a. But it is more that the mere 'heap' or collection of its two parts. If the whole exists, then the parts exist. But if the parts exist, it does not follow that the whole exists. Therefore, the whole is not identical to its parts: it is its parts and something more. The problem is to specify what this 'something more' is.

The same problem arises for many sorts of wholes, though we ought to dismiss Aristotle's example of fire and earth composing flesh. That is primitive physiology, but the problem, being one of general ontology, survives the rejection of the primitive physiology.

Aristotle speaks of "something else" as that which make the difference between the mere sum of vowel and consonant, on the one hand, and the syllable, on the other. Call this "something else" U, for 'unifier.' U is that which unifies b and a. Now U is either an element (a simple) or a compound composed of elements.

Suppose U is an element. Then what we have is b, a, and U. We have a collection of three items. But the existence of these three items does not entail the existence of ba. Therefore, ba cannot be identical to these three items: it must be something more than them. Now if you introduce U* to do the job that U failed to do — the job of unification — then the problem arises once again. You have four disconnected items. Adding a further element U** obviously does no good and issues in an infinite regress.

An infinite regress may or may not be vicious, but in this case it appears to be vicious. For what we want is an account of unity, but if we try to account for unity by postulating a special unifying constituent, we are left with the problem of explaining the unity of this unifier with the constituents it is supposed to unify. At no stage in the regress do we arrive at something more than a mere 'heap' or collection.

So U cannot be an element. But if U is a compound, then the same problem arises as arose regarding ba, namely the problem of explaining how it is more than a mere 'heap' of its constituents.

What then is U if it is neither a simple nor a compound constituent of the thing whose unity it is supposed to explain? Aristotle's answer is that the substance of a thing is that which unifies it. This substance is not an element but a principle. Aristotle's answer in terms of substance or nature is obscure, as obscure as his conception of substance. But that is a huge topic and not my present concern.

What interests me is not Aristotle's (defective) answer, but his clear grip on a central problem of metaphysics -- one that no one has satisfactorily solved -- and his equally clear anticipation of a form of argumentation that in recent times flies under the flag, 'Bradley's Regress.' Bradley of course approaches the problem differently as one about relational facts involving external relations. But it is the same general problem, namely, that of the unity of a complex.

If anyone is interested, I explore this problem in painful detail in Chapter VII of A Paradigm Theory of Existence.

Suppose we think about the bolded sentence. Being a 'self-reference freak,' the first thing that comes to my mind is this: Does the sentence in question express a dogmatic belief, or not? If it does, then every argument for it can be offset and neutralized by a counterargument. If it does not, then what does it amount to? But I won't pursue this line of critique in this post. Instead, I will examine just one of Sextus Empiricus' arguments against the existence of causes.

Sextus tries to show that there are good arguments for the existence of causes but also equally good arguments for their nonexistence. This is supposed to lead to the conclusion that reason is impotent to decide such a question and that a doxastic commitment either way is groundless. We should therefore, Sextus thinks, suspend our belief. Practice of this epoche is supposed to contribute to ataraxia.

Here is one of the arguments against the existence of causes. I won't quote the murky passage, except for isolated phrases, but instead give the gist of the argument in clear terms:

1. Suppose C causes E at time t.
2. Either C exists "qua cause" at t or C does not exist "qua cause" at t.
3. If the latter, then C cannot produce E.
4. If the former, then C must exist "as a cause" prior to C's producing E.
5. But causes and effects are relative to each other: a cause is a cause of an effect, and vice versa.
Therefore
6. C, qua cause of E, cannot be prior to E.
Therefore
7. C cannot be the cause of E.

In sum: the cause must precede the effect, but it cannot since cause and effect are correlative, each being what it is only in relation to the other.

Curiously, I found this same argument in the Indian philosopher Nagarjuna. (Did Sextus make the journey to the East?) But surely it is probatively worthless. You may as well argue that since a parent is relative to child, the parent cannot pre-exist the child and so cannot be the cause of the child.

The mistake is at line 5: although it is true that the concept cause and the concept effect are correlative in that there cannot be a cause without an effect or an effect without a cause, it does not follow that something that is a cause did not or could not exist without its effect. Thus Bill and Hillary are parents only in virtue of the fact that there is a person who is their child; but Bill and Hillary existed before becoming parents and could have existed without every becoming parents. Furthermore, their generative power does not depend on its exercise, and so does not depend on Chelsea's existence.

Sextus confuses the concept cause with an instance of it. The concept cause cannot be what it is without the concept effect. But that is not to say that something that is a cause cannot exist without an effect. Compare: no husband without a wife, and no wife without a husband. So if Tom is a husband, then he has a wife. But it does not follow that Tom cannot exist without a wife.

Many of Sextus' other arguments are also worthless. This prompts a question: Is it merely a dogmatically held belief that every argument for a philosophical (theological, etc.) thesis can be opposed by an equally good counterargument? Or is it a reasoned belief? But how can it be a reasoned belief if the argumentation the skeptic employs is faulty?

But suppose all the reasoning the skeptic employs in support of his neutralization thesis (or his impotence of reason thesis)is valid. Call this his Total Argument. Do not his principles require that his Total Argument be opposed and neutralized by an equal and opposite total argument, one in support of the decidability of some philosophical theses by reason?

In other words, if reason is impotent, does not its impotence extend to proving its own impotence? But if the impotence of reason cannot be rationally established, then it is merely dogmatically believed in.

Is pity perhaps a 'wastebasket emotion,' one that ought to be discarded or eliminated? Is it perhaps an incorrect emotion? That there are correct and incorrect emotions is an eminently defensible thesis, almost as defensible as the idea that there are true and false beliefs.

Worry, for example, is a useless emotion, and to that extent incorrect. Either the dreaded event occurs or it does not. If I worry that it occur and it does occur, then I suffer twice, once from the worry and once from the event itself. But if I don't worry, then I suffer only once if the event occurs and not at all if does not occur. So Alfred E. Neuman might have been on to something: "What, me worry?"

But my topic is pity, compassion, commiseration. Spinoza defines pity as follows: Commiseratio est tristitia, concomitante idea mali, quod alteri, quem nobis similem esse imaginamur, evenit. (Ethica, Pars III. De Affectibus, Definitio XVIII. "Commiseration is sorrow together with the idea of an evil that has happened to someone whom we imagine like ourselves." My German translation shows Mitleid for commiseratio. That conveys the notion of suffering-with, com-passion and supports my contention that commiseration, pity, and compassion are interchangeable terms.

Proposition 50 in Part Four (Of Human Bondage) of the Ethics reads: Commiseratio in homine, qui ex ductu rationis vivit, per se mala, & inutilis est. "Pity in a man who lives in accordance with the guidance of reason is in itself evil and unprofitable." Spinoza's argument (demonstratio) for proposition 50 goes something like this:

Pity is sorrow; sorrow is evil; so, pity is evil. The good that issues from pity, moreover, can be attained without the troubling affect. We can undertake to free from misery the man we pity "from the dictate of reason alone." We can and we should. So pity in one who lives in accordance with reason is mala et inutilis, bad and unprofitable.

So we who live in accordance with reason should do what we can to prevent ourselves from being touched by pity. This is not to say that pit is bad and useless in those who do not live by reason. If the only way they will be moved to alleviate the suffering of others is by pity, then that is surely better than if they act neither from reason nor from pity and do nothing.

Cognate questions: How are Nietzsche's views on pity (Mitleid) like and unlike those of Spinoza? Is Buddhism with its emphasis (in the First Noble Truth) on sarvam dukkham predicated on a mistake?

Propositions of this kind [relations of ideas] can be discovered purely by thinking, with no need to attend to anything that actually exists anywhere in the universe. . . . Matters of fact . . . are not established in the same way; and we cannot have such strong grounds for thinking them true. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it doesn't imply a contradiction and is conceived by the mind as easily and clearly as if it conformed perfectly to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow is just as intelligible as - and no more contradictory than - the proposition that the sun will rise tomorrow.

One question that arises is whether Hume's Fork was anticipated by any earlier philosopher. Leibniz of course makes a distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact that is very similar to Hume's distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. See, for example, Monadology #33. In a very astute comment, Spur details the similarities and concludes:

Leibniz and Hume have the same basic distinction in mind, between those truths which are necessary and can be known a priori, and those which are contingent and can only be known a posteriori. The two philosophers use slightly different terminology, and Leibniz would balk at Hume's use of 'relations between ideas' in connection with truths of reason only, but the basic distinction seems to me to be the same.

I deny that the basic distinction is the same and I base my denial on a fact that Spur will admit, namely, that for Leibniz, every proposition is analytic in that every (true) proposition is such that the predicate is contained in the subject: Praedicatum inesse subjecto verae propositionis. See here. I argue as follows. Since for Leibniz every truth is analytic, while for Hume some truths are analytic and some are not, the two distinctions cannot be the same.

To this, the Spurian (I do not say Spurious) response is:

The [Leibnizian] distinction is between two kinds of analytic truths: those that can be finitely analyzed, and those that can't. This is an absolute distinction and there are no truths that belong to both classes. Even from God's point of view there is presumably an absolute distinction between necessary and contingent truths, though perhaps he wouldn't view this as a distinction between finitely and non-finitely analyzable truths, because his knowledge of truths is intuitive and never involves analysis.

I grant that the two kinds of analytic truths form mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. But I deny that this suffices to show that "the same basic distinction" is to be found in both Leibniz and Hume.

One consideration is that they do not form the same mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. Though every Humean relation of ideas is a Leibnizian truth of reason, the converse does not hold. I think Spur will agree to this. But if he does, then surely this shows that the two distinctions are not the same. I should think that extensional sameness is necessary, though not sufficient, for sameness.

But even if the two distinctions were extensionally the same, they are not 'intensionally' the same distinction.

Consider Judas is Judas and Judas betrays Christ. For both philosophers, the first proposition is necessary and the second is contingent. But Leibniz and Hume cannot mean the same by 'contingent.' If you negate the first, the result is a contradiction, and both philosophers would agree that it is, and that it doesn't matter whether the proposition is viewed from a divine or a human point of view. The negation of the second, however, is, from God's point of view a contradiction for Leibniz, but not for Hume. For Leibniz, the betrayal of Christ is included within the complete individual concept of Judas that God has before his mind. So if God entertains the proposition Judas does not betray Christ, he sees immediately that it is self-contradictory in the same way that I see immediately that The meanest man in Fargo, ND is not mean is self-contradictory.

Of course, for Leibniz, it is contingent that Judas exists: there are possible worlds in which Judas does not exist. But given that Judas does exist, he has all his properties essentially. Thus Judas betrays Christ is contingent only in an epistemic sense: we finite intellects see no contradiction when we entertain the negation of the proposition in question. Given our finitude, our concepts of individuals cannot be complete: they cannot include every property, monadic and relational, of individuals. But if, per impossibile, we could ascend to the divine standpoint, and if every truth is analytic (as Leibniz in effect holds via his predicate-in-subject principle), then we would see that Judas betrays Christ is conditionally necessary: necessary given the existence of Judas.

'Contingent' therefore means different things for Leibniz and Hume. Contingency in Hume cuts deeper. Not only is the existence of Judas contingent, it is also contingent that he has the properties he has. This is a contingency rooted in reality and not merely in our ignorance.

Perhaps my point could be put as follows. The Leibnizian distinction is not absolute in the sense that, relative to the absolute point of view, God's point of view, the distinction collapses. For God, both of the Judas propositions cited above are analytic, both are necessarily true (given the existence of Judas), and both are knowable a priori. But for Hume, the distinction is absolute in that there is no point of view relative to which the distinction collapses.

I'm stretching now, but I think one could say that, even if Hume admitted God into his system, he would say that not even for God is a matter of fact knowable a priori. For the empiricist Hume the world is radically contingent in a way it could not be for Leibniz the rationalist.

The purpose of Stoic prosoche is to keep the passions in check since it is the passions, our unregulated desires and exaggerated fears, that lie at the root of our suffering. In Pali Buddhist terms, tanha is at the root of dukkha. The cure for suffering, therefore, involves a mortification or deadening (from L. mors, mortis = death) and eventual extirpation of the passions. The therapy is radical: one digs down to the roots to deaden and uproot them.

We are the patients of our passions, not their agents. The word says as much. Assailing us as they do from without, they are not in our power. So to get the passions under our control we need to beat a retreat to the Inner Citadel, the space wherein we are in control. This involves a temporal reduction (re-ducere) from the past to the present, and from the future to the present. For the passions spring from the past and the future. To put it precisely, the passions spring from past-directed and future-directed thoughts. I hate you because I recall your wronging me in the past; I fear you because I anticipate what you will do to me in the future. What if I lust after your body? Here too past and future intentionality is at work. I recall that pleasure is to be had when flesh rubs against flesh and I anticipate the frottage to come.

The past is the realm of regret, rancor, resentment, and the like. The future is the realm of worry, fear, Angst and the rest. Neither the past nor the future are in our control. The past is no longer and the future is not yet. The present alone is real. And the present alone is in our control.

But the (specious) present possesses duration or spread. So strictly speaking it is only the punctual present that lies within the Inner Citadel. Slicing the specious present thin enough, we cut to the core of our control. Only that must be borne, since it alone exists, and surely that can be borne.

Epictetus believes that there is strong and absolute difference between the things that are in our control (eph’ emin) and the things are are not. Externals, including our body, are not in our control; internals are. But be careful with this term “internals.” For Epictetus much of our inner life is also not in our control. Perception isn’t, memory isn’t, imagination isn’t. The only part of our inner life that is in our power is the activities of ruling faculty, reason. Reason forms judgments and makes decisions. These alone are in our power.

In an earlier post, I suggested that the Epictetan distinction is more charitably read as between that which is possibly (potentially) in our control and that which is not possibly in our control, where 'control' is elliptical for complete control. Now it is clear that externals (body, property, progeny, reputation) are not possibly in anyone's complete control.

But what about internals such as memories? Are they at least potentially in one's complete control? I suggested that they are. But my blogospherean tutor, who certainly knows the Stoics better than I do, and reads them in Greek to boot, seems to disagree in the passage quoted supra. He says that memory is not in our control.

Suppose I am assailed by some unpleasant memory. Even if its arising is not in my control, surely its entertaining, once it appears on the horizon of awareness, is. I decide whether to feed the memory or squelch it. It's up to me, and if I want to wallow in an unpleasant past, that is my choice. With practice, one can become pretty good at squelching memories. (Purgation of memory is a standard spiritual exercise.)

Let's take it a step further. A true adept should be able to stop the very arisal of memories, at least for certain periods of time. This would be accomplished by a resolute attending to the present, an attending as resolute and focussed as that of a cat upon a bird she is stalking.

So it is not clear to me why memories could not be brought within the ambit of the Stoic self-control.

Nevertheless, the very existence of mental states is not even potentially within my complete control. So here is a definite limit to the Stoic system of self-therapy. Even if I have the power to cause my mental states to cease to exist -- and it is not obvious that I do have this power -- I surely do not have the power to bring my mental states into being and to sustain them in being from moment to moment. That is a fit task for a deity, while I am at best the mere image of a deity: God-like, but no god.

Internals, then, are only potentially and conditionally in my complete control: they are potentially in my complete control on condition that these internal states are supplied from elsewhere.

What we need is a balanced critique of the Stoics: one that recognizes their tremendous insight into the mind's power to regulate itself, but that also admits that they have given us no finally satisfactory solution to our existential predicament.