Maverick Philosopher

If you ask me to read your ‘stuff,’ I may wonder whether you take it seriously and whether I should. But if you ask me to read your work, then I am more likely to take you seriously and give you my attention. Why use ‘stuff’ when ‘work’ is available? Do you use ‘stuff’ so as not to appear ‘stuffy’? Or because you have a need for acceptance among the unlettered? But why would you want such acceptance? Note that when ‘stuff’ is used interchangeably with ‘work,’ the former term does not acquire the seriousness of the latter, but vice versa: ‘stuff’ retains its low connotation and ‘work’ drops out. The net result is linguistic decline. As George Orwell might well have said, any effacing of a distinction cannot be good for thought.

No doubt there is phony formality. But phony informality is just as bad. An example of the latter is false intimacy, as when people address complete strangers using their first names. This is offensive, because the addresser is seeking to enjoy the advantages of intimacy (e.g., entering into one’s trust) without paying the price.

‘Ass’ is another word gaining a currency that is already excessive. One wonders how far it will go. Will ‘ass’ become an all-purpose synecdoche? Run your ass off, get your ass in gear, work your ass to the bone, get your ass out of here . . . ask a girl’s father for her ass in marriage? In the expression, ‘piece of ass’ the reference is not to the buttocks proper, but to an adjoining area. ‘Ass’ appears subject to a peculiar semantic spread. It can come to mean almost anything, as in ‘haul ass,’ which means to travel at a high rate of speed. I don’t imagine that if one were hauling donkeys one could make very good time. So how on earth did this expression arise? (I had teenage friends who could not refer to a U-Haul trailer except as a U-Haul Ass trailer.) Or consider that to have one’s ‘ass in a sling’ is to be sad or dejected. Here, ‘ass’ extends even unto a person’s mood. Robert Hendrickson (Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, p. 36) suggests that ‘ass in a sling’ is an extension of ‘arm in a sling.’ That may be, but how does that get us from the buttocks to a mental state? I was disappointed to find a lacuna where Hendrickson should have had an entry on ‘haul ass.’

‘Ass’ seems especially out of place in scholarly journals unless the reference is to some such donkey as Buridan’s ass, or some such bridge as the pons asinorum. The distinguished philosopher Richard M. Gale, in a recent piece in PHILO (Spring-Summer 2003, p. 132) in which he responds to critics, says near the outset that “...my aim is not to cover my ass. . . .” Well, I’m glad to hear it, but perhaps he should also tell us that he has no intention of ‘sucking up’ to his critics either.

In On the Nature and Existence of God (1991), Gale wonders why anyone would “screw around” with the cosmological argument if Kant is right that it depends on the ontological argument. The problem here is not just that “screw around” is slang, or that it has a sexual connotation, but that it is totally inappropriate in the context of a discussion of the existence/nonexistence of God. The latter is no joking matter, no mere plaything of donnish Spielerei. If God exists, everything is different; ditto if God does not exist. The nonexistence of God is not like the nonexistence of an angry unicorn on the far side of the moon. As Nietzsche appreciated (Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, sec. 27), the death of God is the death of truth. But to prove that Nietzsche was right about this would require a long article or a short book. One nice thing about a blog post is that one can just stop when the going gets tough by pleading the inherent constraints of the genre.

Time to stop screwing around with this stuff and get my ass into the sack.

Intensifiers are words like 'very,' 'really,' 'actually, 'extremely,' 'insanely,' and so on. They typically modify an adjective or adverb. 'That book is insanely expensive.' 'She talks extremely fast.' Some border on the oxymoronic: 'She is insanely intelligent.' In the three examples just given the adjective/adverb is genuinely modified by the intensifier. In some cases, however, the modification is wholly redundant. 'What she said is absolutely true' conveys no more than 'What she said is true.' Compare 'What she said is undoubtedly true.' 'Undoubtedly' is an intensifier that adds to the sense of 'true': 'undoubtedly true' convey a different content than 'true.' But 'absolutely true' and 'true' convey the same content.

Many different words can be used as intensifiers. On television the other night a pundit remarked, "John Kerry didn't respond to the Swift Boat ads and it literally sunk his campaign." 'Literally sunk' is nonsense if 'literally' is being used as the antonym of 'figuratively.' Political campaigns, because they do not literally float, cannot be literally sunk. If they are sunk, that is a figure of speech. So, being charitable, I will say that the pundit was using 'literally' as an intensifier. I will not accuse him of not knowing what 'literally' means. Though I shrink from saying that meaning is use — see Why Meaning Cannot be Identified with Use — meaning has something to do, a lot to do, with use. Why can't a person use 'literally' as an intensifier? I don't recommend this nonstandard usage of course, being the linguistic prick that I am; but though prickly I also try to be charitable and open-minded.

I suggest that there are wholly redundant modifiers that appear to entail, but do not entail, logical contradictions. I suggest that in 'I can't get no satisfaction' and 'I ain't got no money,' 'no' functions as an intensifier and not as a sign for negation. If that is right, then these examples are not examples of double negatives. An example of a double negative construction is 'It is not uncommon____.' Here it is indeed the case that the two negation signs cancel with a positive upshot. But this is not the case in the ungrammatical 'I don't know nothing,' 'I ain't got no money,' 'I can't get no satisfaction,' and the like.

The following, therefore, is just plain false: "A double negative is the nonstandard usage of two negatives used in the same sentence so that they cancel each other and create a positive." We are also told that 'I don't want nothing' means the same as 'I want something.' That is simply false. It means that same as 'I don't want anything.'

Now what about double affirmatives? Eddy Zemach once commented on a paper I read at the American Philosophical Association. A tough commenter, but a gentleman of the old school. Later he told me and some others a story about Sidney Morgenbesser and John Austin. Austin had claimed in a lecture that although many languages feature double negatives that add up to an affirmative, no language features double affirmatives that amount to a negative. Morgenbesser's brilliant reply came quickly, "Yeah, yeah." To this we might add 'yeah, right,' and 'yeah, sure.' These are genuine double affirmatives that convey a negative meaning.

So I am inclined to drop strictu dictu. I should take the advice I myself give in On Throwing Latin, and a Jab at Both Sides of the Continental Divide. I do strive to practice what I preach.

But I will continue to pepper my prose with the unexceptionable mirabile dictu, horribile dictu, difficile dictu, and the like, ceteris paribus of course. And I will not apologize for my use of 'big words' such as ambisinistrous, animadversion, preternatural, desueteude, incarnadine, et cetera.

"Why not forget the foreign ornamentation and just say what you want to say clearly and simply and in plain English?" Well, sometimes I do exactly that. But I refuse to be bound by any one style of writing, or to pander to the appallingly limited vocabularies of my fellow citizens.

It just now occurs to me that it wasn't strictu dictu that I picked up from C. B. Martin but holus-bolus. Holy-moly, that too looks like bogus Latin. Perhaps the estimable Dr. Gilleland will render his verdict on this construction as well.

'Decoy' is an alienans adjective unlike 'male' and 'female' which are specifying adjectives. 'Decoy' shifts or alienates the sense of 'duck' rather than adding a specification to it. The same goes for 'roasted' in 'We are having roasted duck for dinner.' A roasted duck is not a duck but the cooked carcass of a duck. Getting hungry?

Other examples of alienans adjectives: 'artificial' in 'artificial leather'; 'male' in 'male chauvinism'; 'white' in 'white chauvinism' (from 1950's CPUSA parlance); 'negative' in 'negative net worth.' But 'artificial' in 'artificial insemination' is not an alienans adjective in that artificial insemination is indeed insemination, albeit by artificial means. Whatever the means, you are just as pregnant.

It is interesting to note the ambiguity of 'male chauvinist.' It could refer to a chauvinist who is male, or it could refer to someone who is not a chauvinist but who resembles a chauvinist in respect of his excessive love and attachment, not to his country, but to his sex. The ambiguity hinges on whether or not 'male' is functioning as a specifying or as an alienans adjective.

The really interesting examples are the philosophical ones.

Take 'relative truth.' How is 'relative' functioning here? Is 'relative' a specifying adjective? That would imply that there are two kinds of truth, relative and absolute. But surely that is nonsense. Truth is truth. If you have truth at all you have something absolute. Indeed, 'absolute' is a redundant qualifier and is brought in only to undo the semantic mischief wrought by those benighted souls who insist on speaking of relative truth. Relative truth is not truth, but something else, something that gets confused with truth, namely, the property of being believed.

Now how about 'open border'? An open border is one across which anyone at anytime can pass freely without control. Such a border is arguably no border at all. It resembles a border but is a poor substitute for one. 'Open' is arguably an alienans adjective in 'open border.'

Well, the question is kind of a non sequitur, if you will, and what I mean by that — or a null set. And that is that if you’re saying let’s turn back the clock, and Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein, therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in. But he didn’t do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in. I supported the president’s decision based on what we knew at that time. I think we were underprepared and underplanned for what came after we knocked down Saddam Hussein.

Romney's response was quite good especially given the pressure he was under. But why did he spoil it be inserting unnecessary terminology that he obviously doesn't understand? It makes no sense to refer to a question as a non sequitur. A non sequitur is either an invalid argument or a proposition that abbreviates or 'telescopes' an invalid argument. For example, 'If the war in Iraq were serious, then we wouldn't be trying to fight it with an all-volunteer force.' That is a non sequitur in that the consequent of the conditional proposition does not follow from the antecedent. Non sequitur just means 'It does not follow.' But an interrogative form of words does not express a proposition. (Possible exception: rhetorical questions; but the question posed to Romney was not rhetorical.) So to refer to a question as a non sequitur shows a serious lack of understanding.

Romney should have replied simply as follows. 'It was not a mistake to invade Iraq since at the time the decision was made, that was the right course of action given what we knew.'

It is also nonsensical to refer to a question as "a null set." For one thing, there is only one null set. Talk of 'a' null set suggests that there are or could be several. More importantly, a question is not a set, let alone a set with no members. "But isn't a question a set of words?" Well, there is for any question the set of words in which it is formulated, but that set is not identical to the question. But I won't go any further into this since, although it leads into fascinating question in metaphysics and the philosophy of language, it leads away from the point I want to make.

"And what point would that be?" Never bullshit! You make yourself look stupid to people who really know. Never pretend to know what you don't know. Don't try to impress people with fancy jargon unless you really know how to use it. Concern for truth dictates concern for precision in the use of language.

A statement cannot count as a lie unless it is made with the intention to deceive. That's the long and the short of it. If you don't understand that, you don't understand what a lie is. To stretch 'lie' to cover any old falsehood is to misuse the word.

Suppose you KNOW that Oswald acted alone, and suppose that, intending to deceive your audience, you confidently assert that he did not act alone. Then you have lied. But it doesn't follow that the false proposition Oswald did not act alone is a lie. Your stating of it is a lie, but the proposition stated cannot be called a lie given that plenty of others state it sincerely believing it be true. To rightly assert of a proposition that it is a lie one would have to establish that it is false, and then establish that everyone who asserts it is motivated by an intention to deceive. Satisfying both of those conditions is a tall order.

My point is purely linguistic, not historical. I am not at all clear what exactly Medved's thesis is. Is he saying that the onerousness of the Versailles conditions played no role in causing WWII? That sounds false. Surely Hitler exploited the German perception that the conditions imposed were unjust. Is Medved saying that the harsh conditions cannot be used to justify the War? That sounds right. Causation is not justification despite their seeming conflation in the phrase casus belli.

But I take no position on either the identity or the truth-value of Medved's assertion. I object only to his misuse of the word 'lie.' Linguistic vandalism is a trademark of the Left. Unfortunately, conservatives sometimes fall into it. Still, Medved's lectures on this Memorial Day, including excerpts from Roosevelt's fireside chats, are very good. Are there any liberal talk jocks that do anything as worthwhile?

I welcome challenges like this one, at once both trenchant and civil. One is never quite done with learning the mother tongue, and he who preaches good writing ought to practice it as well. One will fail of perfection, but one should aim at it. So let me concede right way that 'omnibus term of abuse' is slightly better than 'portmanteau term of abuse.' Slightly better, because not exposed to Mike's reasonable objection based as it is on a standard dictionary definition of 'portmanteau word.' But let's see what could be said in defense of my usage which, if I am not mistaken, is not merely my usage.

1. A portmanteau is a large traveling bag according to my Webster's dictionary. Webster's also shows an adjectival meaning: "combining more than one use or quality." There is a separate entry for 'portmanteau word.' Such a word is a blend of two words. Thus 'smog' combines 'smoke' and 'fog' and 'motel' 'motor' and 'hotel.' A blend is not the same as a compound word: 'bagpipe' is a compound word but not a blend. 'Alphanumeric' is an interesting case inasmuch as it blends two words one of which is itself a portmanteau word ('alphabetical').

2. Although 'racism' is not a blend of two words in the way 'brunch' is a blend of 'breakfast' and 'lunch,' 'racism' as used by many on the Left today satisfies the adjectival meaning: "combining more than one use or quality." Thus many lefties lump together many distinct notions in the concept of a racist. Thus you are racist if you merely point out some fact about race, or if you use the word 'niggardly' which suggests 'nigger' to some, etc. These lefties are thus using 'racist' to express a carry-all or portmanteau concept.

3. I am a philosopher; Mike is a classicist. My focus is more on concepts and realities while his is more on words. (An indirect indication of this is that I am very scrupulous about the use/mention distinction while Mike is not -- no criticism intended. The purpose of the scrupulosity is to keep ever in view the distinction among words, senses/concepts, and referents.) Is 'racism' a portmanteau word? No. But I suggest that it can be reasonably thought of as a portmanteau concept in accordance with the second dictionary meaning above cited.

Whatever one’s stand on this issue, it is a genuine one that ought not be occluded by the use of a silly PC expression. Note that I haven't taken any position on the morality of homosexual practices. My point is the more subtle one that the issue ought not be hidden from view by the use of a question-begging and question-burying epithet.

Conservatives need to be reminded that they only play into the hands of their opponents when they adopt such terms as ‘homophobia.’ When leftists hijack a semantic vehicle, conservatives should attempt to regain control, not go along for the ride.

2. 'Islamophobia.' Similar remarks are pertinent here. There is nothing phobic about opposition to radical or militant Islam. To fear it is quite rational. Militant Islam and Islam are presumably distinct. And I rather doubt that Islam as such is the problem. Still, someone (Robert Spencer?) who thinks that Islam as such is the problem cannot be accused of suffering from any phobia. So when I heard the liberal Karen Armstrong use 'Islamophobia' or a cognate during a C-Span presentation, my estimation of her dropped several notches lower.

3. 'Native American.’ I am a native Californian. That means I was born in California. Last time I checked, California was a state of the USA, though this may change. Given that ‘America’ denotes the USA, it follows that I am a native American. Why can’t our dear liberals wrap their heads around such a simple piece of reasoning? No doubt, ‘Indian’ is a misnomer; but to replace one misnomer with another is hardly progress. If you say that I can’t be a native American because my ancestors came from Italy, then I will point out that the ‘native Americans’ originally came from Asia across the Bering Strait.

4. 'Assault weapon.’ This is a question-begging epithet used by liberals to preclude rational debate about semi-automatic long guns. The latter, non-emotive, expression is the one that a reasonable person would use in debating such issues as whether to renew a law banning them. The liberal uses ‘assault weapon’ to appeal to people’s fear of being assaulted thereby rendering rational debate more difficult. The idea is to suggest that semi-automatic rifles could only be used to assault people. Their use in legitimate self-defense, not to mention such recreational activities as target-shooting, is thereby ignored. But why, our liberal friends querulously ask, would anybody need such a weapon? Well, suppose you live in a border town like Douglas, Arizona. Every night your property rights are violated by illegal Mexican aliens and OTM’s (other-than-Mexicans), a non-null subset of which are Islamic militants. The federal government, a legitimate function of which is border control, does little or nothing to stop the incursions. The handgun that an average American might use to defend his property and family might not be adequate in a situation like this.

Of course, the use of emotive language is not confined to liberals. Referring to a fetus as a ‘baby’ makes it more difficult to think clearly about abortion.

5. 'Undocumented Worker.' A fourth example of how Political Correctness interferes with rational thought and speech is provided by the substitution of ‘undocumented worker’ for ‘illegal alien.’ Note first that the two terms are not coextensive: an illegal alien need not be a worker; he might be a petty criminal or an ideology-fueled terrorist. And an undocumented worker might be a citizen who is a contractor or vendor not in possession of the requisite licenses to ply his trade. Second, there is nothing offensive about ‘illegal alien’: it is an accurately descriptive term. By definition, anyone who violates a law does something illegal, and anyone who comes from another country is an alien.

6. 'Immigrant.' The increasing use of 'immigrant' for 'illegal immigrant' is an obvious trick used by libs and lefties to confuse the issue. The problem with liberals (and also many libertarians and Wall Street Journal open-border types who think economic questions trump all others) is not that they are too stupid to grasp the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, but that they are out to win even at the cost of destroying the terms of the debate. They merit our contempt and vigorous opposition.

Some of his female students feel that Windbag is a ‘chauvinist.’ But what they mean is that he is a ‘male chauvinist.’ So here is a second example of the omission of a needed qualifier. A chauvinist is someone who believes his country is the best in all or most respects. The word derives from ‘Chauvin,’ the name of an officer in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army. This fellow was convinced that everything French was unsurpassingly excellent. To use ‘chauvinist’ for ‘male chauvinist’ is to destroy a perfectly useful word. If we acquiesce in this destruction, what then are we to call Chauvin? A ‘country-chauvinist’?

Note also that Chauvin was himself a male chauvinist in that he was both a male and a chauvinist. Thus ‘male chauvinist’ is ambiguous, having different meanings depending on whether we take ‘male’ as a specifying adjective or as a sense-shifting (alienans) adjective. I plan to expatiate further on this important and seductive distinction on a later occasion.

While we are on this chauvinist business, there was a time when ‘white chauvinist’ was in use. Those were the days before leftists seized upon ‘racism’ as their bludgeon of choice, their portmanteau term of abuse. Vivian Gornick in The Romance of American Communism (Basic Books 1977, p. 170) tells the tale of a poor fellow who was drummed out of the American Communist Party in the 1950's on charges of ‘white chauvinism.’ His crime? Serving watermelon at a garden party. And you thought that Political Correctness was something new? PC originated with the CP.

But this world of ours is made on an entirely different pattern, and the casuistic question here is most tragically practical. The actually possible in this world is vastly narrower than all that is demanded; and there is always a pinch between the ideal and the actual which can only be got through by leaving part of the ideal behind. There is hardly a good which we can imagine except as competing for the possession of the same bit of space and time with some other imagined good. Every end of desire that presents itself appears exclusive of some other end of desire. Shall a man drink and smoke, or keep his nerves in condition? — he cannot do both. Shall he follow his fancy for Amelia, or for Henrietta? — both cannot be the choice of his heart. Shall he have the dear old Republican party, or a spirit of unsophistication in public affairs? — he cannot have both, etc. So that the ethical philosopher's demand for the right scale of subordination in ideals is the fruit of an altogether practical need. Some part of the ideal must be butchered, and he needs to know which part. It is a tragic situation, and no mere speculative conundrum, with which he has to deal. (The Will to Believe, Dover 1956, pp. 202-203, emphases in original)

One who can appreciate that this is good writing is well on the way to becoming a good writer. The idea is not so much to imitate as to absorb and store away large swaths of such excellent writing. It is bound to have its effect. Immersion in specimens of good writing is perhaps the only way to learn what good style is. It cannot be reduced to rules and maxims. And even if it could, there would remain the problem of the application of the rules. The application of rules requires good judgment, and one can easily appreciate that there cannot be rules of good judgment. This for the reason that the application of said rules would presuppose the very thing — good judgment — that cannot be reduced to rules. Requiring as it does good judgment, good writing cannot be taught, which is why teaching composition is worse even in point of frustration than teaching philosophy. Trying to get a student to appreciate why a certain formulation is awkward is like trying to get a nerd to understand that pocket-protectors are sartorially substandard.

But what makes James' writing good? It has a property I call muscular elegance. The elegance has to do in good measure with the cadence, which rests in part on punctuation and sentence structure. Note the use of the semi-colon and the dash. These punctuation marks are falling into disuse, but I say we should dig in our heels and resist this decadence especially since it is perpetrated by many of the very same politically correct ignoramuses who are mangling the language in other ways I won't bother to list. There is no necessity that linguistic degeneration continue. We make the culture what it is, and we get the culture or unculture we deserve.

As for the muscularity of James' muscular elegance, it comes though in his vivid examples and his use of words like 'pinch' and 'butchered.' His is a magisterial weaving of the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the particular. Bare of flab, this is writing with pith and punch. And James is no slouch on content, either.

C. S. Lewis somewhere says something to the effect that reading one's prose out loud is a way to improve it. I would add to this Nietzsche's observation that

Good prose is written only face to face with poetry. For it is an uninterrupted, well-mannered war with poetry . . . (Gay Science, Book II, Section 92, tr. Kaufmann)

A well-mannered war, a loving polemic. There is a poetic quality to the James passage, but the lovely goddess is given to understand that truth trumps beauty and that she is but a handmaiden to the ultimate dominatrix, Philosophia. Or to coin a Latin phrase, ars ancilla philosophiae.

Finally, a corollary to the point that one must read good books to become a good writer: watch your consumption of media dreck. Avoid bad writing, and when you cannot, imbibe it critically.

Companion Posts: Zinssner on Writing; More Zinssner on Writing; Orwell on Good Writing.

If this were an isolated example, then you could accuse me, with justification, of being a pedantic ass. Some of you will do so in any case. But I could give a hundred similar examples, and you hope I won't.

Slang and slovenliness have their places and there is some here. But shouldn't C-Span be held to a higher standard than this here weblog? For a blogger to blur the boundary between slang and formal discourse is par for the course: we bloggers are experimenting, often playfully, with a new medium. But there should be precincts in which formal discourse is preserved.

I once had an idiot of a student who complained about my 'high-brow' language. I felt disgust for her and her ilk: the people (including administrators and professors) who think a university exists to pander to a paying clientele and sink to the level of the surrounding society. But that's a separate rant with several subtopics: abdication of authority; the misuse of student teaching evaluations; the political correctness that allows a moron such as Ward Churchill to be hired and get tenure. . . .

A 'customer of size' is defined by Southwest Airlines as one who is "unable to lower the armrests (the definitive boundary between seats) and/or who compromise[s] any portion of adjacent seating . . . ."

As one who has been 'compromised' by obese flyers on more than one occasion, I can only applaud the policy if not the PC expression.

The tort against English is similar to that of dropping qualifiers. Thus a high quality journal is referred to as a 'quality' journal. But since every journal has some quality, high, low, or middling, why should 'quality' get to stand in for 'high quality'? Why should 'intercourse' get to go proxy for 'sexual intercourse'? Since we all have some color or other, why are only some of us 'people of color'? And since all of us have some size or other, why do some bear the distinction of being 'customers of size'?

'Fat' is perhaps rude. But what is wrong with 'obese'?