star slight

that game's stupid

2011-12-26T00:04:00.000-08:00

because it’s all luck and no skill.

And the distribution of talent and intelligence isn’t a matter of luck?

whilst at CVS.

2011-12-05T10:24:00.000-08:00

After I swiped my credit card, the cashier handed me a coupon.
“Next week, if your purchase is thirty dollars or more, you get twenty dollars off.”
“Wow, what I deal!” I said, “Is this some special thing that only I get?”
“No. It’s a special promotion we’re doing for all of our customers.”
“Oh,” I said, “…I thought I was special.”
I turned away with a look of defeat on my face.
“But you are special!” she genuinely protested, smiling ardently.
“Not for that reason.” I ejected in retort, half smiling.
She smiled back. Her cheeks were ablush with confession.

on the Dark Ages.

2011-11-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

“If we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

Since the Fall there have been (at least) three kinds of Dark Ages.

The first kind is the Enlightened Dark Age. This is the Dark Age that realizes its own darkness.

The Dark Age of the Second Order is the age that understands what a Dark Age is but fails to realize that it is in one.

The third, or Darkest Age, is the age that is not only unaware of its own darkness, but it has completely forgotten what a Dark Age is.

“Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”

Could it be that, with the work of Christ in place, the necessary and sufficient condition for saving faith is the act of choosing to see myself as I am?

(We must not forget asking for forgiveness and repentance, but in the natural order of things these simply follow choosing to see one's self in the presence of Christ.)

why do I find it so hard

2011-11-17T09:48:00.001-08:00

to write the next line?

on being "scientific".

2011-11-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

This is more absurd than anything Aristotle ever said, and apparently this absurdity is a consequence of our best science. If that's true, so much the worse for our best science.

that's just the way it is.

2011-11-12T12:28:00.000-08:00

Suppose (per impossible) that time ended a moment ago. When we look back on all the facts, the principle of plenitude would tell us that that

(P) the only possibilities were what actually happened.

And (P) is equivalent to

(P)’ Whatever did not happen was not possible.

Here’s a reason to think (P)’ is true. If something else could have equally been the case that wasn’t actually the case, then there’s no sufficient reason why what actually happened happened as opposed to what could have happened. And if there’s something that happened but equally could not have happened, then there’s a feature about the world that is fundamentally inexplicable. That is, there’s some feature about the world that just is the way it is, and there’s nothing more we can say about it. That is, if (P) is true, then

Because (C) cannot be right (so the argument goes), and ~(P)’ implies (C), we should accept (P)’.

I think (P)’ is more absurd than (C), so I’ll gladly deny (P)’ at the cost of accepting (C).

I think most persons (philosophers included) deny (P)’ not realizing that their denial entails (C). And then, when they come to think of (C) itself independently of (P)’, they reject (C), not realizing that the denial of (C) entails (P)’. I wish these persons would make up their minds and be consistent about this.

on [the state of] human nature.

2011-11-12T11:33:00.001-08:00

The “close door” button on elevators doesn’t work until after the door fully opens.

(A) Had the “close door” button worked before the elevator door fully opens, then someone would have illicitly prevented another person from entering the elevator.

(B) Had the apple rolled off the table, then it would be on the ground.

Why am I more sure of the truth of (A) than (B) despite the fact that I think the persons that would make (A) true are not necessitated to do what they do in the way that I think the things that would make (B) true are necessitated to do what they do?

maybe.

2011-11-07T10:32:00.001-08:00

Should I still call it an “undertow” if it’s up to my chin?

for the Devil's advocate.

2011-11-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

“God wants to dispose the will more than the mind. Perfect clarity would serve the mind and harm the will.”

Pascal

on Kate Durbin on the omnipresence of fashion.

2011-10-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

From an interview of hers found here.

I’ll start with her nub first:

“…Fashion is seen culturally as the most ubiquitous and feminine and therefore the lowest of the arts, the most shallow and market-driven. Teenage girls are obsessed with fashion, as are drag queens. Serious people, “authentic” people, do not care about fashion. But the whole of life is a costume show, and it is one with deadly serious consequences…”

“Also, it is crucial to note that the costume show -- that is, life itself -- is unavoidable. So anyone who thinks he is not “into” fashion is fooling himself. Even if you live at a nudist colony, you are part of the show. If you have a body, you are part of the show.”

Right, I’m willing to grant for the sake of argument that one must have some kind of fashion and that one must have some degree of concern for her fashion. But surely it doesn’t follow from this that everyone is “into” fashion in the same degree and in the same respect anymore than we could say that everyone is gluttonous because everyone must eat food and thereby must have some concern for it. Again: it’s certainly true that in some utterly trivial sense that an Amish person is “into” fashion, but if we try to conclude from this that the Amish person’s preoccupation with fashion is thereby the same in degree and in kind as that of Madonna’s, we’re simply equivocating.

“Fashion is seen culturally as the most ubiquitous and feminine and therefore the lowest of the arts, the most shallow and market-driven. Teenage girls are obsessed with fashion, as are drag queens. Serious people, “authentic” people, do not care about fashion. But the whole of life is a costume show, and it is one with deadly serious consequences.”

From what I said above, apparently the whole of life is not a costume show, or at least it doesn’t have to be.

“While there can be deadly consequences for our fashion choices, fashion is a way to both play with and debunk the cultural narrative.”

Right, one tyrant often overthrows another. But pure and unadulterated virtue can and will break the thesis/antithesis inertia. Thus is the power of Faith, Hope, and Love.

you just are your constitution.

2011-10-28T00:09:00.001-07:00

“How do you love someone who refuses to be loved?”

“You don’t because you can’t.”

“What if her refusing to be loved is something she can’t help? Suppose she has some horrible psychological disorder or some deep emotional scars, neither of which were brought about by anything she chose?”

“The Spartans had no problem bashing in the skulls of their own weak and deformed babies. Sometimes life is just tragic.”

“Apparently the Kingdom of God is not at hand.”

“Not in this world, my friend.”

“Amen to that.”

________________________

"It's not that I don't accept God, you must understand, it's the world created by Him I don't and cannot accept."

Aristotle's cloak.

2011-10-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

Even though Donnie and Gretchen never actually were, they could have been, and that matters.

on whether God can be mocked.

2011-10-25T00:36:00.000-07:00

“…without you, everything falls apart.”

Trent Reznor on the human condition in relation to God.

“I'm gonna show you where it’s dark, but have no fear.”

moral responsibility.

2011-10-24T11:40:00.000-07:00

If you’re ever curious about how one could kill a man without being morally responsible for it, please read Billy Budd.

some things are better left unsaid.

2011-10-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Despite the half-baked villains, uninspired plot, and (extremely well done) gratuitous violence, Drive captured the way it feels to live in the infinite chasm between moments. Most of us anxiously anticipate the middle of the moment where the uncommon is the focal point and everything else is just background. Drive inverts the spectrum, forcibly showing us how the seemingly drab background has its own vibrant backbeat. Sometimes (most times?), it’s what isn’t said that matters: the suppressed blaze of a brow, the awkward quiver of a lip, the blank stare into nowhere, the slowness of silence, or the expression of an expressionless face. This is how I usually see the world, actually, and I’m glad someone out there understands.

One meta-critique: Ryan Gosling’s character, much like Tyler Durden in Fight Club, could never ever be an actor, a minore an actor playing this very character. Furthermore, the authenticity that Drive comes so close to capturing is destroyed by the very act of displaying it, a fortiori when the medium is the silver screen. You simply can’t talk about what’s better left unsaid. Those who get it don’t need to hear it; those who don’t, won’t; and those who think they get it will write stupid blog posts about it.

“Well, why the hell are you talking about it, then?”

To show how stupid it is to try.

Also: The movie captures what it’s like to live in L.A., and the soundtrack as a whole is the utter epitome of the pink word ‘Drive’ written in cursive. Awesome.

Addendum: Perhaps the dubious villains and the “eh” plot were on purpose? I doubt anyone is that clever.

*Plot [sic] Spoiler*

On reflection, I’m convinced my prima facie impression was correct. The reason why the knife fight in the last scene between Gosling’s character (henceforth GC) and Bernie is chronologically spliced up and concurrent with their “prior” Chinese restaurant conversation is because we’re watching GC running various subjunctive conditionals through his mind about what Bernie would do. GC knows that if he’d go head to head with Bernie, his chances of coming out on top would be 50/50. Those aren’t horrible odds, given the conditions, but why settle for them if you could do better? Furthermore, having a full on scuffle in broad daylight would attract the kind of attention that would eventually come back to haunt GC. To get the edge on Bernie, then, GC acts as if he isn’t expecting Bernie to stab him. By coming off as if his guard were down, Bernie would go for a quicker yet less-lethal blow, for it’s better to incapacitate quickly and then kill than to lower your odds of killing altogether by delivering a potentially more fatal yet slower blow. But, as it actually pans out, GC anticipates Bernie’s anticipation that GC isn’t anticipating Bernie stabbing him, which means that Bernie is caught completely off guard when GC stabs him back without flinching.

Isn’t it weird how counterfactuals—would be facts that aren’t facts—can contribute causally to the actual facts?

Had GC not reasoned counterfactually, then GC wouldn’t have done what he actually did.

the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

2011-10-13T00:32:00.000-07:00

“…one moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?”

on being a person.

2011-10-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

Suppose you had been born into a set of conditions qualitatively identical to those of John Wayne Gacy Jr. (viz.,—suppose you were born into the same environment and with the same genetic make up and so on and so forth). Would you have, by that very fact, made the identical choices that he did make? Could you have chosen to act differently than he in fact did?

1. If your answer is “YES” to the “Would you…?” and “NO” to the “Could you…?” questions: It seems that you’re committed to the idea that what one does at any particular moment is a logical consequence of all the facts that are true of a person at that particular moment. I.e., that the sufficient reason that necessitates whatever one does is some combination of her psychology/physical constitution plus her environment, and that’s it.

Problem for 1.: No one ever had a choice about the conditions she was born into. I.e., no one chooses where she is born or to whom she is born, and no one has a choice about her genetic makeup. Well, if no one has a choice about the initial conditions that one is born into, and all of her subsequent actions/choices are the product of these initial conditions, it seems that one is no more responsible for what one does at the age of 23 than what one does at the age of 1 day old. But if that’s right, then it seems someone like John Wayne Gacy Jr. is no more responsible for the evil he did than a redwood is responsible for crushing a lumberjack.

2. If your answer is “NOT NECESSARILY” to the “Would you…?” and “YES” to the “Could you…?” questions: It seems that you’re committed to the idea that what one does at any particular moment may or may not be the logical consequence of all the facts that are true of a person at that particular moment. I.e., that the combination of one’s psychological/psychical constitution plus her environment may not be sufficient to necessitate whatever she does.

Problem for 2: If there is a situation where one chooses to do something and this choosing to do something is not a logical consequence of her psychological/physical constitution plus her environment, then it seems that there is no ultimate reason why she did what she did other than the brute fact that she simply decided to do whatever it was she decided to do. And if this is right, trying to completely understand why we do what we do in terms understanding our psychological/physical constitution and our environment will turn out to be an abject failure. In the words of Chisholm, “there can be no science of man,” for like God, and unlike ordinary material objects, we can move things without ourselves being moved by anything at all.

“Let Us make Man in Our Image...” (Gen 1:26)

how bizarre.

2011-10-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

“One is tempted to try: ‘It follows from the physical laws that if the match is struck against that surface (at the specified force and angle) and everything is normal then the match ignites’, but this brings the very strange predicate ‘normal’ into the story. Besides, maybe conditions weren’t ‘normal’ (in the sense of ‘average’) at the time. (In infinitely many respects, conditions are always ‘abnormal’: a truism from statistical theory.)”

Hilary Putnam, “Why There Isn’t a Ready-Made World” (Putnam’s emphasis)

Observation 1: How strange (ironic?) that the predicate ‘normal’ is strange. For isn’t what we normally predicate ‘normal’ of is that which is common or familiar—viz., what’s normal? And if so, aren’t we by that very fact very acquainted with the meaning of ‘normal’ in such a way that the predicate ‘normal’ is anything but strange?

Tangent 1 of Observation 1: Could there be such thing as the inherently strange that’s such that even if it were to be as normal (common) as can be, it wouldn’t be any less queer? E.g., suppose that, due to a massive toxic waste spill, every person develops the fully functioning genitalia of both sexes that enable individual persons to impregnate themselves. Wouldn’t that smack of being absolutely bizarre however common it might be?

Observation 2: Putnam says that as far as the ‘average’ sense of ‘normal’ goes, in as many respects as can be imagined and then some, things are “always ‘abnormal’.” Doesn’t this imply that, at least on some level, it’s normal for things to abnormal? And if that’s right, how is it the case that conditions are always abnormal?

fatalism and divine foreknowledge.

2011-09-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

p ↔ Tp
~p ↔ Fp
~(p ^ ~p)
p v ~p
∴ Tp v Fp

Is this argument valid? If so, bivalence follows the conjunction of a semantic non-contradiction and excluded middle. Assuming that propositions designating any (and all) future times are propositions (a modest thesis, if any is), logical fatalism is not different in kind than the problem of divine foreknowledge and (libertarian) freewill.

Here’s my parity argument:

If the above argument is valid, then anyone who affirms:

(1) (semantic) non-contradiction.

(2) excluded middle.

and that

(3) There is some future time t1 where I have the power to either F or not F,

is inconsistent with herself.

And according to the problem of divine foreknowledge and libertarian free will, anyone who affirms that

(3) God knows right now that I will F at some future time t1.

and

(4) I have the power to either F or not F at t1,

is inconsistent with herself.

Well, so be it. Let it be that anyone who holds the conjunction of (1), (2), and (3) is inconsistent with herself, and let it be the case that anyone who holds the conjunction of (3) and (4) is inconsistent with herself. Well, despite the inconsistency of (1), (2), and (3), one is rational for affirming all three of them at once. And since one is rational in affirming (1), (2), and (3) all at once, so too is one who affirms both (3) and (4). Therefore, one who holds to (3) and (4) is rational.

sentence of the year.

2011-09-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

“Cow pies are cow indicators; furthermore, there wouldn’t be non-cow-caused cow pies if there weren’t cow-caused cow pies, although there could certainly be cow-caused cow pies even if there weren’t non-cow-caused cow pies.”

Plantinga (who else!) discussing what he takes to be an implausible consequence of Fodor’s theory of content.

so why do you do philosophy?

2011-09-11T17:14:00.000-07:00

I used to just look at the sunset, but now I melt into it.

excluded middle vs. bivalence.

2011-09-06T20:45:00.000-07:00

For clarity and brevity let’s just stick with propositions with singular terms. According to the Principle of Excluded Middle (PEM), for any proposition p (e.g., ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Socrates is not wise’), there’s *only* two kinds: there’s the ones that say something of something and there’s the ones that deny something of something. Let’s call the former ‘p’ and the latter ‘~p’. To put PEM in symbols we could scribble the following:

PEM: p v ~p

Notice what’s absent in PEM. PEM doesn’t say anything about whether the p’s and ~p’s are true or false. For all PEM might care it might be the case that both p’s and ~p’s are true, or both false, or one half true and the other half neither true nor false, or one half true and false but the other half only false, and so on. The point is that PEM says *nothing* about truth and falsity, so from a logical point of view, PEM implies *nothing* about whether a single proposition is anything at all, much less true or false or pink or blue or all (or none) of the above.

So that’s why we need (among other things) Bivalence, which says that all propositions p (e.g., ‘Socrates is wise’ and ‘Socrates is not wise’) are only either true or false. In other symbols:

B: Tp v Fp

Assuming that ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ are contraries (that they cannot apply to the same subject (e.g., a proposition) at the same time), we get a semantic version of what Aristotle called the Principle of Non-Contradiction:

PNC: ~(Tp ^ Fp)

PEM’s being true implies that there are only p’s and ~p’s. B’s being true implies that all the p’s and ~p’s are true or false. PNC says that the p’s and ~p’s that are true are not false and vice-versa.

My hunch is that Aristotle thought that PEM and B are really the same since he thought of a proposition as an assertion that something is the case, which is tantamount to saying that the proposition one is asserting is true.

Aristotle also thought that truth depends upon being, but not vice-versa. That is, that we are entitled to infer Socrates’ sitting from knowing that ‘Socrates is sitting’ is true, and vice-versa. But the truth of the latter depends on the former in a way that that the former does not depend on the latter. That is, because Socrates’ sitting obtains, the proposition ‘Socrates is sitting’ is true, but Socrates’ sitting does not obtain because the proposition ‘Socrates is sitting’ is true, but rather the opposite is true, that Socrates’ sitting makes the proposition ‘Socrates is sitting’ true. The idea is that the world *makes* propositions true or false, but propositions don’t make the world do anything.

For this reason (on my view) Aristotle rejected B (or something like it) about contingent propositions regarding the future. Since tomorrow’s sea battle doesn’t exist (it’s TOMORROW!) there’s nothing to make the proposition ‘there is a sea battle tomorrow’ either true or false. And hence, so much for B.

in Him all things live and move and have their being.

2011-09-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

Today during my lecture I felt more alive than I have in a long time. I gave the following perfunctory definition of logic: [who the hell do I think I am to give a definition of logic? Then again, who the hell is anyone to think she can give a definition of logic?]:

Logic: what is necessary for both thought and reality.

What inspired my definition was my reflection on the apparent continuity and isomorphism between what is necessary for something to be thinkable and for it to be real. For instance, in order for something to be thinkable, it must obey the principle of non-contradiction. To think of anything at all it’s impossible to think of it being X and not being X at the same time and in the same respect. And the same seems to hold for reality. Not only is something’s being both X and not X unthinkable, for anything to be it cannot be both X and not X. And the same criterion seems to be operative in the articulation of any logical axiom, even when a purported axiom ends up falling short of this standard.

Anyway, I then thought about my definition in context to John 1:1-3, where St. John identifies Christ with the logos, which is the Greek word for (among other things) logic.

“In the Beginning was that which is necessary for thought and reality, and that which is necessary for thought and reality was with God and that which is necessary for thought and reality was God. Through that which is necessary for thought and reality all things were made; without that which is necessary for thought and reality nothing was made that has been made.”

Seems right to me.

Also: I like this.

on a wonderful thing.

2011-08-30T00:53:00.000-07:00

To my God, regarding my cat, Atramentaceous.

As you do for all things, whatever
You hold every fiber of her being together, as if
She, in particular, is worthy of your attention.
She’s a cat, for Christ’s sake.
You invented Catness. You made Catness be what it is.
For in you all things live and move and have their being.

How is it that a manifestation of you is nothing other than
The quirkiness of a cat?
How is that you, in your unfathomable profundity
Made a tiny little being that purrs?

some of my students' answers.

2011-08-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

Their fourth notecard question was:

“Do you think a statement can be true even if no human being knows it?”

Their answers (my comments in the brackets):

“Yes.”

“No.” [!]

“There is no correlation between truth and what we know, so yes.” [!]

“Of course: suppose nobody found out the world was sphere; it would still be true.”

[philosophy major]

“Yes because no” [?]

“Yes. There are truths that have not yet been developed enough to become knowledge.”

[I hate those underdeveloped truths!]

“Absolutely.”

“No, because for a statement to be true it should be well proven and widely accepted.”

[! ! !— absurd but interesting. What’s cool about this one is that for it to be true, it would itself have to be well proven and widely accepted, and assuming that the widespread disagreement (confusion) sampled above on this very question is not endemic to my two classes, this statement’s being true would imply that the statement is neither true nor false [or maybe just false?]. But that’s already assuming that the statement is well proven and widely accepted, which it wouldn’t be if it weren’t already well proven and widely accepted. In a word: nothing could be true unless this statement was proven and widely accepted first, but how could that condition be true in the first place if this statement isn’t already proven and widely accepted?]

“The statement may be true by chance, so yes.”

[Those lucky statements!]

“No, truth is a concept completely created by humans.”

[So true!] [?]

self-vitiating.

2011-08-13T19:40:00.001-07:00

I’m pretty sure there’s a fallacy looming in the woodwork, but I’m not sure where or what it is.

The argument. According to a whole slew of persons, some of whom I know and others whom I do not, it’s impossible for things to be perfect in this life. Some persons have inferred from the supposed truth of this that it’s somehow wrongheaded, or unreasonable, or perhaps even sinful to expect other persons to be perfect. The idea seems straightforward: if it’s impossible for me to be perfect, then it’s unreasonable for you to expect me to be perfect, and since it’s sinful to be unreasonable, it follows that it’s sinful for you to expect me to be perfect.

So far so good.

But now suppose that one of my imperfections is that I expect others to be perfect. Well, if you think it’s wrong for me to expect others to be perfect, and it is indeed wrong for anyone to do so, then it’s equally wrong for you to expect me to not expect other persons to be perfect. For suppose that I’m completely perfect save for the fact that I wrongfully expect others to be perfect. Well, if that’s my only imperfection, expecting me to not expect others to be perfect would in this case saddle you with expecting me to be perfect, which would make you guilty of the very thing you’re accusing me of.

The most obvious way out of this is to point out that the argument is sound but that one of the antecedents of one of its conditions is false. Namely, that though it’s true that it would be wrong of you to expect me to not expect others to be perfect if I were perfect save for the fact that I expect others to be perfect, it’s simply not true that I’m perfect save for the fact that I expect others to be perfect, and so this argument is moot.

Fair enough. But this response will only get me off your back for a few seconds. Lest you believe that it’s always wrong to expect anyone to do what’s right at all, you must think that that there’s some threshold of relative perfection that is such that if I were to obtain it, it would be wrong for you to expect me to be any more perfect. Let’s call this state of relative perfection perfect relative perfection.

Well, suppose for one second or so I obtained the elusive but wholly possible state of perfect relative perfection. I take it that I’ve obtained such a state at least once or twice since there’s got to be at least one point where I did the best I could have. And surely, if there was a time when I did the best I could have, at that very moment I must have ipso facto obtained a state of perfect relative perfection. For how could I do the very best I could have and not be perfectly relative perfect? Well, so be it. But suppose that in my perfect relative perfection I nevertheless expected others to be perfect. Well, if you were around at the time and expected me not to expect others to be perfect, then you would have been guilty of the very thing you would have been accusing me of.

The moral of the story is this. So long as I’m in a state of perfect relative perfection but I nonetheless expect other persons to be perfect and you think I’m wrong to do so, then you’d be wrongfully expecting me to be more perfect than I would be. And hence, your ethical position would be self-vitiating. And whatever your ethical positions might me, I hope you'd agree with me that you should never adopt an ethical position that’s self-vitiating.

the necessity of the past redux.

2011-07-05T13:51:00.000-07:00

Let PAST be the conjunction of every true proposition about the past. The necessity of the past thesis says that the past is necessary. In other symbols:

(NP) PAST.

Since the necessity operator ‘’ is equivalent to ‘~◊~’ (i.e., it is not possible that not), the truth of NP is equivalent to

(NP’) ~◊~PAST.

If NP’ is true, it follows that there are no contingent truths about the past, since for P to be contingent, P must be both not necessary and not impossible. But surely there is at least one contingent truth about the past. For example, though it’s true that

(P) Atra was on the mat,

P could have been false. In other symbols:

(PC) P ∧ ◊~P.

If (PC) is true, then (NP’) is false, for (~◊~P ∧ ◊~P) is a formal contradiction. Ergo, etc.

on the necessity of the past.

2011-07-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

Some philosophers think that the past is necessary. But if these philosopher think the past is necessary in just the same way that two and two being four is necessary, this cannot be right.

Let’s suppose that any fact about the past is necessarily true in just the same way two and two is four is necessary, that is necessary simpliciter. We might formalize this thesis as

(PN) For any p, if p is true and about the past, then p is necessarily true.

Now consider some fact about the past, that

(1) Two plus two equals four.

Since (1) was true yesterday, the conjunction of (PN) and (1) entail

(2) Necessarily, “two plus two is four”

as well as (2)’s de re rendering, that

(2’) Two plus two is necessarily four.

Well, here things seem fine, at least by way of (2) and (2’). Even if someone might be suspicious of (PN), she shouldn’t be suspicious of it because (2) and (2’) are among (PN)’s consequences.

But now let’s consider another fact about the past, that

(3) Atra was on the mat.

Since (3) picks out a fact about yesterday, the conjunction of (PN) and (1) entail

(4) Necessarily, “Atra was on the mat”

as well as (4)’s de re rendering:

(4’) Atra was necessarily on the mat.

But this cannot be right. If we’re supposing that the “necessity” in (4) and (4’) is to be understood as necessary simpliciter, then the truth of (4) entail each of the following:

(4’’) There is no possible world where Atra was not on the mat.

(4’’’) It is impossible that “Atra was not on the mat.”

And since what is necessary and what is impossible exclude what is contingent, the truth of (4) entails that

(4’’’’) It was not a contingent fact that “Atra was on the mat.”

And perhaps most damningly, (4) entails that

(4’^x5) Atra could not have not been on the mat.

But (4) through (4’^x5) are all false: Despite the fact that Atra was on the mat yesterday, Atra could have not been on the mat; it’s a contingent fact that Atra was on the mat; It was possible for Atra to not be on the mat; and there is at least one possible world where Atra is not on the mat. And hence (PN) is false, or at least it needs a lot of work.

I think this shows that for any truth that is not necessary simpliciter, the following principle

(*) p → ~◊~p

is false.

And if (*) is false, then for any truth that is not necessary simpliciter, the following principle

(~*) p ^ ◊~p

is true.

This seems to suggest that any non-determinist is committed to synchronic possibility.

fatalism.

2011-07-03T16:06:00.000-07:00

Suppose it’s true that excluded middle (EM) holds—viz., that any proposition p, it’s necessary that p or not-p. Symbolically:

(EM) (p ∨ ~p)

Now suppose that bivalence holds—viz., that for any proposition p, it’s necessary that either p is true or p is false. Symbolically:

(B) (Tp ∨ Fp)

Let’s also suppose EM and B are necessarily equivalent. Symbolically:
`
(EM/B) [(p ∨~p) ^ (Tp ∨ Fp) ^ (p ↔Tp) ^ (~p ↔Fp)]

Okay now for fatalism. Fatalism (as I understand it) is the thesis that the future is fixed—viz., that anything that might happen in the future, what will happen must happen such that there is only one possible future.

Some have argued that from EM/B fatalism follows. Here’s the argument:

Consider the proposition

(1) There will be sea battle tomorrow.

By EM/B it follows that (1) is either true or false right now. Furthermore, if (1) is true right now, then no one can prevent tomorrow’s sea battle, for it impossible for anyone to make a true time-indexed proposition false. And vice-versa. If (1) is false right now, then no one can prevent the non-occurrence of tomorrow’s sea battle, for it is impossible for anyone to make a false time-indexed proposition true. Since (1) was arbitrarily chosen, this argument can be generalized for any future-tensed proposition. That is, let p_f pick out any future-tensed proposition. It follows from EM/B that p_f is either true or false right now. Furthermore, if p_f is true right now, then no one can prevent it, for it is impossible for anyone to make a true time-indexed proposition false. And the same goes if p_f is false. If p_f is false right now, then no one can prevent it, for it is impossible for anyone to make a false time-indexed proposition true. And this is just the thesis of fatalism, which said that the future is fixed in such a way that there is only one possible way the future can be.

It should be noted that this argument relies on a very weak and nearly uncontroversial principle of logical entailment that says if p is true then it necessarily follows that p is true. Symbolically:

(LE) (Tp ⊃ Tp) ^ (Fp ⊃ Fp)

(LE) is equivalent to

(LE’) (Tp ⊃ ~◊Fp) ^ (Ftp ⊃ ~◊Tp)

Here’s a way of symbolizing the argument for fatalism from EM/B and LE:

(EM/B) [(p ∨~p) ^ (Tp ∨ Fp) ^ (p ↔Tp) ^ (~p ↔Fp)]
(2) Any future-tensed proposition p_f is a proposition.
(3) ∴ [(p_f∨~p_f) ^ (Tp_f∨ Fp_f) ^ (Tp_f ↔ p_f) ^ (Fp_f ↔ ~p_f)]
(LE’) (Tp ⊃ ~◊Fp) ^ (Ftp ⊃ ~◊Tp)
(4) (Tp_f ⊃ ~◊Fp_f) ∨ (Fp_f ⊃ ~◊Tp_f)
(5) ∴ ~◊Fp_f ∨ ~◊Tp_f

a reductio of classical moral psychology?

2011-07-02T14:08:00.000-07:00

If one could intentionally and knowingly commit a horrendous evil, then one could intentionally and knowingly eat poop. But no one can intentionally and knowingly eat poop. Therefore, no one could intentionally and knowingly commit a horrendous evil.

p = one could intentionally and knowingly commit a horrendous evil.
q = one could intentionally and knowingly eat poop.

(1) p ⊃ q
(2) ~q
(3) ∴ ~p

If no one could intentionally and knowingly commit a horrendous evil, then no one who commits a horrendous evil is morally responsible for the horrendous evil she commits.

r = no one who commits a horrendous evil is morally responsible for the horrendous evil she commits.

(4) ~p ⊃ r
(3) ~p
(5) ∴ r

John Wayne Gacy Jr. committed a horrendous evil. Therefore, John Wayne Gacy Jr. is not responsible for the horrendous evil he commited.

r = No [one who commits a horrendous evil] is [that which is morally responsible for the horrendous evil she commits].
(7) All [John Wayne Gacy Jr.] is [one who commits a horrendous evil].
(8) No [John Wayne Gacy Jr.] is [that which is responsible for the horrendous evil he commits].

This argument is valid.

So if you think is (8) is false (i.e., that John Wayne Gacy Jr. is in some way morally responsible for at least one of the horrendous evils he committed), then you must deny at least one of premises (1) through (7). Which one would you deny, and for what reason?

I’d deny (2). I think it’s possible that someone can intentionally and knowingly eat poop. As crazy as that may seem, I think it’s infinitely less crazy than (8)! And therefore, etc.

I suspect that most people would deny (1). Though I have no independent argument for it, I’m confident that anyone who thinks long and hard about (1) will see that it’s true.

on an inscription at the oracle at Delphi.

2011-07-01T01:57:00.000-07:00

“…for everyone is orthodox to himself.”

—John Locke

“…when you find that you’re a villain in the story you have written.”

—Death Cab

Glaucon: It’s a strange image you’re describing, and strange prisoners.
Socrates: They’re like us…

—Plato

I hate confrontation. When someone confronts me I almost always feel profoundly disoriented and slightly nauseous. The reason why, I think, is because up until right before the confrontation I think of myself as okay. My good intentions seem to match up well with their consequences, and I’m like, “Hey, you’re doing alright—at least for the most part.” But when someone says otherwise, I’m forced to see myself how she sees me, and it’s usually ugly and unbearable. For who can think of herself as ugly and not long for annihilation?

It reminds me of the prisoners in Plato’s cave. After their liberator frees them from their shackles and they look at how the world really is, they become overwhelmed and disoriented because nothing looks familiar. Living a lie for so long lets us get used to it. We’re able to build a thick and crusty wall of faux justifications and tired excuses so that we can live with ourselves—even if no one else can. And when those who love us muster the courage to save us from ourselves and say something, we stick with the familiar and see our liberator as a threat. Like a dog returns to its vomit, we gladly shut out the light and return to the darkness to nurse our rotten wounds.

Of course, this unfortunate situation highlights the necessity of community. If there’s one thing I’m very confident about it’s that the inner recesses of my soul are hardly transparent to my mind’s eye, even if they don’t appear opaque. And even in the times when things are as transparent as they seem, I can usually make up any reason under the sun to avoid a closer look.

But, I’d also like to stress that mere community alone is not sufficient to fix the problem. Plato’s prisoners had community, and they seemed to notice neither their own chains nor those of their neighbor. This is probably because we tend to gravitate toward persons who share our own values, and this often means persons with our same vices. I take it that this is why we'll never see a drunkard and a sober alcoholic hanging out much.

Perhaps a less obvious reason why mere community isn’t going to cut it is that the soul is a very difficult place to navigate (the word ‘catacomb’ comes to mind) and it’s very easy to do serious damage to it in the very interest of trying to restore it. If a heart surgeon were to use a butter knife to operate on a patient with coronary heart disease, she’d end up doing more damage than the disease itself. A fortiori, given how much more tender and delicate one’s soul is, using blunt and dull instruments with shaky or unskilled hands can nearly destroy it. So please, be careful…

I know I need to be more open than I am and I need to put myself in position to let others help me see myself. This I can do. I just hope that your hands are gentle, your sighs are full of insight, and your scalpel is sharp.

Also, here’s my summer jam. It reminds me of how I feel. On this day. Which is like most days.

and they will become one flesh.

2011-06-29T23:58:00.001-07:00

Perhaps I’m simply missing the obvious (and if so, please let me know)—but I regularly hear pastors talk of agape love as The Highest form of love—for it’s supposedly the kind of love that’s “self-sacrificial, inclusive, and unconditional.” Well, if so, why the heck does Paul and John liken the Church’s relationship to Christ to that of the union between a husband and wife? Though I’d think of the love between a husband and a wife as properly self-sacrificial, that kind of love I would call er0tic (i.e., romantic), which is entirely exclusive and conditional. But perhaps the “condition” here is “faith”. And since the Church, though (in some sense) greater than the sum its parts, is not an entity over and above the members that compose it (viz., the individual believers), we can drop the “exclusive” component of er0s or just amend it to mean “exclusive of anyone not in the Church.”

Even though this makes Jesus out to be polygamist (which—unless you’re an elder—the Biblical writers don’t seem to have a problem with), I like the idea of God’s relationship to us as that of groom to a bride, for it suggests that God is rapturously in love with us and finds us seksy. (Assuming, of course, His attitude towards us is like Jacob’s to Rachel and not Jacob’s to Leah!).

So yeah, back to my point. It seems that Paul is suggesting that er0s as opposed to agape is The Highest form of love.

Or perhaps, more modestly: agape is drenched with er0s.

you've got to be kidding me.

2011-06-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

(thanks matt)

on moral capitulation.

2011-06-28T14:10:00.001-07:00

Suppose that someone says that F-ing is wrong, but she is elated when F-ing becomes legal. It seems to me that we’d be right to think that this person was disingenuous when she said that she thought F-ing was wrong.

Let’s look at a putative example. Suppose Sam tells us that he thinks that slavery is wrong, but becomes elated when it’s made legal. How is Sam not being disingenuous when he says that he thinks slavery is wrong?

In fairness, sometimes things are a bit more complicated. Suppose that Sarah says that she’s genuinely opposed to prostitution, but when it becomes legal she says she supports its decriminalization.

How could Sarah genuinely oppose prostitution and yet be okay with it being legal? Doesn’t the latter suggest that she doesn’t genuinely believe the former?

Maybe not. Suppose that though Sarah genuinely believes that prostitution is wrong she also believes that prostitution is an act of a certain kind that she doesn’t believe the government has any business making laws about. Or suppose that she believes that prostitution should be illegal, but the practical enforcement of it is either ineffective or inefficient or both. If either one were the case, it seems that Sarah could genuinely believe that prostitution is wrong and yet still support its decriminalization.

Notice, though, that in Sarah’s case she’s not elated about prostitution becoming legal. She accepts its decriminalization begrudgingly since, after all, she thinks that it’s wrong. So let’s suppose that Sarah doesn’t express mere reluctant acceptance when prostitution becomes legal, but instead exuberant joy. It seems to me that this would betray her disingenuousness when she claims that prostitution is wrong. Call me crazy.

So, my original claim still stands: if someone says that F-ing is wrong but becomes elated when F-ing is made legal, she’s most likely disingenuous when she says F-ing is wrong.

I call one who disingenuously espouses moral claims a Rakitinist, duly named after the atheist seminarian from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

L.P.

2011-06-27T00:08:00.000-07:00

Remember in Cheyenne at my Grandparents’ house? You were taking a shower before we went to bed. While I was waiting for you in our basement room, I remembered that my youth pastor had told us once that the best way to show persons that you love them is to serve them. So I decided to fold all of your clothes and stack them nicely on the dresser you were using. When you came back I gestured toward them so you’d notice.

You just laughed at me.

It was true —I was desperate for your love. But hey, we were just junior high kids, right? I’m sure I’ll get over it.

I hope they were worth it.

on how to write a real tragedy.

2011-06-26T22:52:00.000-07:00

Remember Rosaline? She was Romeo’s beloved of whom he insisted that “One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun / Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun.” Well, Romeo’s sentiments were soon to be cast into the nihilistic tides of forgetfulness when Juliet arrived on the scene. This, I think, was the moral of the story: had Romeo and Juliet not committed suicide, Juliet would have become the new Rosaline and Romeo would have found himself a new Juliet. Thus is the profundity of romantic love. But, of course, we never would have bought into such a true story, so Shakespeare had his lovers commit suicide at the climax of their passion, knowing full well that instead of getting the hint, we’d romanticize it as the tragic fate of two star-crossed soul mates.

Well, the joke’s on us.

Compare her face with some that I shall show, 
I will make thee think thy swan a crow.
– Benvolio on Rosaline (to Romeo)

Since you’ve been gone, since you’ve moved on
the razors make my stomach turn
my heart feels as if it will forever burn.

But once you’re really gone, and once I can really move on
the curves of another I’ll find just as smooth
the milk of which will equally soothe.

on one half of virtue.

2011-06-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

“You see,” said he, “the difference between you and her is this. She is unjust, but does not want to be just. In her injustice she’s completely okay with herself. But you, on the other hand — though you’re just as unjust as she is, you don’t want to be. You’re unjust but not okay with it. And that’s all the difference in the world.”

_______________________

“Even if, by a special disfavor of fortune or by the niggardly provision of a stepmotherly nature, this will should wholly lack the capacity to carry out its purpose —if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing and only the good will were left (not, of course as a mere wish but as the summoning of all means insofar as they are in our control) —then, like a jewel, it would still shine by itself, as something that has its full worth in itself.”

Kant, Metaphysics of Morals 4:394

on reducing the first person to the third.

2011-06-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Is there a possible world qualitatively identical to this one wherein I am the one reading this blog and you are the one who wrote it?

If your answer is “no”, you must think that there are certain qualities that are actually true of you and not actually true of me without which you would not be you. What are those qualities?

___________________

My answer:

It depends on what might count as a quality. If a necessary feature of qualities is that each one can be multiply instantiated (i.e., they can occur in more than one subject at the same time), then my answer is “yes.” I think it’s possible that every quality (in this sense) that is actually true of me could be true of you and vice-versa.

But, if it’s not necessary for a quality to be multiply instantiated, then my answer is “no.” What quality that is actually true of me without which I would not be me? My Derekeity, or Derekness. If I lose that, then I most surely would not be me.

But since Derekeity is the only thing I need to be the particular person that I am, it’s entirely possible that you could be the one who wrote this blog and I be the one who is reading it. So long as your unique and incommunicable attribute is attached to the person who writes this blog and my Derekeity is attached to the person who reads it, then it’s possible.

___________________

FAQ

What the hell is Derekeity?

I can’t describe it, because any adjective I might use would be picking out qualities that are possibly true of persons distinct from me, and Derekeity is wholly unique and incommunicable.

If you can’t describe it, how can we know what it is like?

Here’s how. Get to know me, and then list every single characteristic you know is true of me that might be captured by a possible common adjective or some conjunction thereof. The attribute or characteristic that you’re aware of and that’s left over or is not captured on the list is identical to my Derekeity.

I call this method the distillation method of knowing persons.

December 24th, MCMXLI.

2011-06-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

It is Christmas Eve and the blizzard has finally loosened its grip. The left over crisp breeze strikes a minor chord in the chimes suspended over the porch. The skies are clear, if drab and off-white, and the skeletal branches of the leafless trees scratch at it as they sway in the wind. Smokestacks billow a dark and sooty brown just above the horizon; its fumes complement the wintry decay. Far off and deep in the wood can be heard the faint voices of children lost in their play. Their joyful giggling and laughter transfigure the scene, if only for a moment, until the overwhelming silence drowns them out again. Throwing a snowball at his older brother, the youngest one misses and hits a gray cinderblock wall instead. Noticing this unnatural edifice amongst the pure white snow and tender ferns for the first time, the boy looks up past the barbed wire and sees a guard at his post. Struck by the soldier’s stillness, looking off into the abyss, the child cocks his curious head to the right. The boy’s arms dangle to his sides, while his crimson mittens open wide toward the world. The guard, noticing life for the first time, turns his head and unconsciously smiles at his little admirer. The boy, feeling understood, snaps his body to attention and salutes the soldier. The child now realizing his friends are far off, and hearing them call for him, returns to his previous forgetfulness and runs toward his companions. His little footprints in the snow fall before a heavy wrought iron fence. Its epigraph reads: “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

the show goes on.

2011-06-18T04:35:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time [this last Monday] I was running right about here [A]. And then, coming from right about here [B], I hear a volley of nine or ten or eleven shots go off between a pair of undercover cops and a few gangstas. No joke. I ran “like the dickens,” as my grandpa used to say.

Concurrent with this event was Lupe Fiasco on my iPod telling me that

“say hip-hop only destroy
tell em’ look at me boy
hope your son don’t have a gun
and that would be a d-boy.”

No joke.

felix culpa.

2011-06-18T03:48:00.002-07:00

I often think about how queer it is that I would rather be in a room with Adam than with Stalin. Scratch that—I’d want to be good friends with Adam. I find him attractive, and intriguing. I think we’d have a whole lot in common. But this is strange. For on the Christian story, he walked with God. Whatever that phrase is supposed mean, it must mean that he saw and beheld Goodness itself, unadulterated, and without confusion. We’re told that he, unlike any of the rest of us, save for the God-man, was without blemish. He inherited no vice, for God called nature “good” and there were no vicious characters from whom he could have. Nor did Adam have the misfortune of being hurt or abandoned by the ones whom he loved. For again, God was capable, Adam was complete in Eve, and God called nature “good.”

And yet, it wasn’t enough. Adam beheld his own Maker, his own Heavenly Father—and saw that in Him all things live and move have their being, including himself—and he still said:

I don’t need you.

Under such conditions, Jesus’ forgive them Father for they know not what they do is simply inapplicable.

Even the atheist should recognize that if God really exists, this at least as bad as anything Stalin ever did. Actually, it’s infinitely worse…

I think my fondness for Adam over Stalin betrays my latent atheism.

on stupid phrases.

2011-06-18T03:48:00.001-07:00

“…and his art and life merged.”

As if they weren’t always already?

moral psychology: contra the classical view.

2011-06-15T21:01:00.000-07:00

Moral psychology is, among other things, the study of how our moral views motivate or influence how we act in moral contexts. Right now I’d like to discuss what I take to be something like the Classical View on the matter:

(CV) An agent S can neither willfully nor consciously perform action F unless she genuinely believes that F is ultima facie good.

I call CV the “classical view” because from what I can tell, the list of philosophers who advocate something akin to CV is long and prestigious. Some names that come to mind include Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, arguably Augustine, perhaps Aquinas (even though a colleague of mine would disagree), Spinoza, Hume, Mill, and C.S. Lewis.

I find CV as dubious as it is hard to deny. I’ll explain why in reverse order.

CV is hard to deny because it has a very straightforward and compelling rationale in its favor. Let’s suppose that CV isn’t true and that an agent can willfully and consciously perform F while all the while believing that F is not ultima facie good. What exactly would this look like? Suppose that someone plops a pile of manure on my plate. Could I willfully and consciously eat the manure on my plate while believing that doing so is absolutely disgusting and that nothing good, either in itself or extrinsically, would come from it? It seems to me that I couldn’t: It’s simply impossible for me willfully and consciously do that. In order for me to willfully and consciously eat the manure I’d have to think that doing so would be good in some respect or other, and until then there’s just no way I could. And this is just what CV says.

In the previous example it’s easy to see why CV might be so compelling—but let’s see how CV might fair in other, less benign, contexts. Suppose that a young boy named Joe has a knack for rounding up and hanging the stray cats in his neighborhood. CV says that this is only possible if Joe takes it to be ultima facie good to hang cats. But, how could he? What good could possibly come out of hanging cats? Notice now that CV does not say that what an agent does must be ultima facie good for her to willfully and consciously do it—rather, CV says that the agent must only genuinely believe that what she willfully and consciously does is ultima facie good. CV isn’t suggesting that for Joe to hang cats it has to be good (that would be all too easy to refute), but rather, Joe has to think he’s getting some ultima facie good out of hanging cats. And, perhaps not surprisingly, this is what we usually think. Though we wouldn’t hang cats precisely because we don’t see the good in it, if Joe does, doesn’t he have to believe that there’s some good in it? Or else why in the world would he be doing it in the first place? And so we think, and it usually is the case, that kids who hang cats do get some perceived good out of it. We explain their behavior by suggesting that pleasure in itself is a good thing, and so these kids must be getting pleasure out of being cruel, and this is why they hang cats. Otherwise, they simply wouldn't do it. If Joe were like the rest of us and thought that hanging cats is just as disturbing as eating manure is disgusting, he wouldn’t do it. But since Joe doesn’t think that hanging cats is disturbing—on the contrary he takes pleasure in it—Joe willfully and consciously does what he does precisely because he believes it to be an ultima facie good. And this is exactly what CV says.

To go even further, think of the most heinous acts you can think of—those of Ted Bundy or Jeffery Dahmer, say. Though we might not think that what they did is ultima facie good, they must have thought that it was or else they would have been just like us and they wouldn’t have the things they did. It’s only because they thought that there was some ultima facie good that they could have willfully and consciously done what they did. I take it that the only way I could eat a plate of manure is if I genuinely thought it was good, and so a fortiori, given how much worse their acts were than eating manure, they must have thought that doing what they did was ultima facie good.

But now we’re in position to see why CV is dubious for the same reason that it’s hard to deny. If it’s really true that we cannot F unless we sincerely think F is ultima facie good, then it follows that we never do anything evil willfully or consciously. And if this is right, then the difference between Ted Bundy and us is not a matter of the goodness of our intentions or motivations. The only difference between us is that what we believe is good is actually good, and what Ted Bundy believed is good is not. And it gets worse. If CV is true, then it follows that Ted Bundy could not have believed differently than he did. For him to be able to believe differently, he would have had to think that what he believes to be good is actually evil. But, if he genuinely believed that what he did was good, then ipso facto he couldn’t have believed what he genuinely thought to be good to be evil any more than I could make myself believe that eating manure is not disgusting. Whenever I think of something that I think is good and attempt to force myself to think it’s not good, I can’t, and salva veritate for the things that I think are evil.

But this means that the difference between Ted Bundy and us is a matter of luck, and if that’s right, then it’s hard to see how he’s any more responsible for the harm he did than I would be for accidentally hitting a pedestrian with my car during a violent earthquake.

All this to say that if CV is true, we don't lose morality altogether, but we do seem to lose moral responsibility. And for this reason I reject CV. It is possible for me to think that something is ultima facie evil and yet willfully and consciously still do it. I do it all the time, in fact, but don’t ask me how it’s possible. I have no idea.

so what are my chances? I mean, objectively

2011-06-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

In the first chapter entitled “Loomings” of Melville’s Moby Dick (or, The Whale), Ishmael (a character who’s also the narrator) ponders why it might be that he, rather than some other bloke, who is about to play the character he’s about to play on the whaling voyage. Let’s enter into his psyche and see how he frames the question:

“And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that part of the bill must have run something like this:

“Grand contested Election of the Presidency of the United States.”

“whaling voyage by one ishmael.”

“BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.”

…I cannot tell you why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces…”

That is, why is that it is Ishmael who is to go whaling, as opposed to being a presidential candidate, or a soldier in Afghanistan? And, of course, we could ask the same question for the one who is the presidential candidate or who is the Afghan soldier. Is there some sufficient reason why the Fates (or God or whoever or whatever) decided it was to be Ishmael and not, say, Ahab, or Elijah, to play the role? An affirmative answer to this question amounts to a view that Leibniz advocated, namely, that the reason why it was Ishmael and not some other person is because to be Ishmael is to be (among other things) a bloke who’s going on a whaling voyage. On this view, to ask “why me?” is like asking, “why is a cat a cat, or flower or flower?”—viz., it’s a silly question. Just as it’s silly to wonder why a flower is indeed a flower, so is it silly to wonder why Ishmael must live Ishmael’s life. To generalize Leibniz’ thesis, we get something like the following:

(L) For any subject S and any predicate P, if S has P it is because P is part of what it means to be S.

(L) strikes me as one of the most absurd theses I’ve ever heard. It would entail that Stalin could not have been a douche bag, or that I could not be typing this right now.

But, back to our original question, so as to figure out why it was Ishmael, and not, say, Elijah who goes on the whaling voyage instead. It might be suggested that the reason why is because Ishmael had certain qualities or dispositions, like wanting to go to sea, and Elijah didn’t, and so this is the reason why Ishmael went on the voyage and not Elijah. Understood one way, this answer is really only superficially distinct from (L), for it suggests that to be Ishmael just is to be such that you want to go to sea. And if this answer is meant in a way that does not entail (L) it just relocates or pushes our original question to another level. That is, even if we accept that the reason why Ishmael went on the whaling voyage is because he wanted to go to sea, we can now ask: why was it Ishmael and not Elijah who is such that he wanted to go to sea? Indeed, it seems that any answer q for some question ‘why p?’, we could equally ask ‘why q?’, and so on ad infinitum. But suppose the p’s and q’s don’t go on forever and they stop at p*. It seems to me that the *only* reason why we could stop and no longer have to ask ‘why p*?’ is if p* is such that, unlike the rest of the p’s and q’s, it is necessarily true—that it’s impossible that ~p* be true. But if this is the right story, if ultimately the reason why it is Ishmael who goes on the whaling voyage and not Elijah is because there is some p* that is necessarily true and p*’s truth necessitates (viz., is sufficient for) the truth of all the p’s and q’s that get us to the fact that it’s Ishmael who goes on the whaling voyage, it seems that we’re left with the following thesis:

(L’) For any proposition p or q that is true, there is some p* that (a) is necessarily true, and (b) is sufficient to make both p and q true.

The problem with (L’), though, is that it has the same consequence of (L). If there is some p* that is necessarily true and its being true is sufficient to necessitate the fact that Ishmael goes on the whaling voyage, it follows that it’s impossible that Ishmael not go on his whaling voyage. And so we should reject (L’) for the same reason we rejected (L).

Well, is there some third option? I think so: perhaps there is no reason why it was Ishmael who went on the whaling voyage and not Elijah. If this is right, we can generalize to the following thesis:

I find (C) absurd, but not nearly as absurd as (L) and (L’). Therefore, (C).

_______________________________

Excursus

I once asked a girl, “You don’t think we’d work even in the best possible world wherein there’s no sin?”

“No,” she said, “because I wouldn’t be me in such a world.”

What a dark saying, that she wouldn’t be herself in the best possible world. I think what she meant was something to the effect of, “In a world with no sin—in the best possible world— I wouldn’t exist. And neither would you for that matter.”

The reason why my USP 45 stays locked in my safe during those “endless nights” is because I believe and hope with every fiber of being that she’s damn wrong. Not so much that we wouldn’t be “together” in the best possible world (though that thought itself can throw me into the abyss), but that we couldn’t be in the best possible world.

two equally foolish theses.

2011-06-11T21:32:00.001-07:00

1. Being the best parents possible, and thereby doing the very best for your children, ensures or makes it highly likely that your children will grow up to be morally upright and have no major psychological issues.

False. Persons are not plants (pace Freud, Nietzsche, Skinner, et al). If God couldn’t do it for Adam, what in the hell makes you think that man is more capable?

2. Not being the best parents possible, and thereby doing the very best for your children, is inconsequential to whether or not your children will be morally upright and have no major psychological issues.

False. Just because persons aren’t plants, that doesn’t make them islands. Being a good parent might not be a sufficient condition for the child’s flourishing, but from this it does not follow that being a good parent isn’t necessary for it.

The Kingdom of God

2011-06-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

Between the worship and the sermon this older man saw me sitting by myself and he joyfully introduced himself to me. His name is Dave. Dave is from Torrance and he has been unemployed for the last two and half years. His first day of training at Goodwill starts on Monday. As I answered his “get to know you” questions, he listened intently to everything I had to say. After the sermon he insisted that I eat with him in the rec room, as they were serving $1 dollar tacos and tamales. Joy emanated from his countenance as he insisted on paying for me.

___________________

“…and God’s ways are beyond our comprehension!” exclaimed the preacher as a tinge of tension and irony took over his smile.

“Do you understand that?”

the anti-razor.

2011-06-04T00:14:00.001-07:00

“Whenever an affirmative proposition is truly stated of things, if one thing does not suffice to account for that proposition’s truth, then one must posit two things, and if two do not suffice, then three, and so on to infinity.”

pseudo-Campsall, Logica 41.19 (Pasnau’s trans., Metaphysical Themes, p. 291)

Aristotle is a non-vegetable, and someone else is not.

2011-06-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

Suppose Max, a Cretan, says, “All Cretans are liars.” Assuming that the quantifier ‘all’ in conjunction with the term ‘Cretans’ is to be understood divisively (i.e., denoting each and every Cretan), we seem to have a paradox on our hands. For…

Suppose it’s true that “all Cretans are liars”, then it’s false, for Max, being a Cretan, would be telling the truth, in which case it’s false that “all Cretans are liars.” Alas, it seems to be the case that at the moment when Max says, “All Cretans are liars”, his statement becomes both true *and* false at the same time.

Assuming truth and falsity are contraries (viz.—that it’s a contradiction to predicate truth and falsity of the same subject at the same time), Aristotle was apparently not only begging the question when he argued in Metaphysics Gamma that the principle of non-contradiction is necessarily true (a pseudo-charge, given that Aristotle readily admits that the defense of any genuine first principle must, being a first principle, be employed in its own defense), Aristotle was a vegetable—that is, he wasn’t being rational—for in fact there are “true” contradictions!

Well, the Cretan “paradox” above is no reason to think Aristotle was a vegetable.

On the Contrary: let’s suppose that prior to the moment before Max says “all Cretans are liars” it’s true that

(1) All Cretans are liars.

Well, by the “question begging dogma” of the necessity of logical entailment, if p is true at time t, then it follows necessarily that ~p is false. Symbolically

LE: (p/t ⊃~~p/t) [Necessarily, if it’s true that p at t then it’s true ~~p at t]
equivalently: [Necessarily, if it’s true that p at t then it’s false that ~p at t]
Well, let p = (1). By LE we get
(2) ((1)/t ⊃ ~~(1)/t) [Necessarily, if it’s true that “All Cretans are liars” at t then it’s false that “All Cretan are not liars” at t].
Now, as we’ve already supposed, let the antecedent of (2) be true, i.e.,
(3) (1)/t
by modus ponens
(4) ~~(1)/t.
But, now suppose that while (4) is true, Max says “all Cretans are liars”. But this would entail a contradiction, for at the moment Max says, “all Cretans are liars”, he’s telling the truth since he’s lying. But if such were to happen, the following would be true
(5) (~~(1)/t ^ ~(1)/t)
which is equivalent to
(5’) (~(1)/t ^ (1)/t)
Which is a contradiction and thereby impossible simpliciter.
All this to say, if it’s true that
(1) All Cretans are liars
then it would be logically impossible for any Cretan, such as our Max, to say so. And if it’s impossible for any Cretan to say that “all Cretans are liars”, then there’s no paradox, for no proposition would be both true and false.

Ergo, Aristoteles non vegetabili et Sacerdos est.

de re et de dicto.

2011-06-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, after trying to get to the bottom of the difference, it seems to me that it amounts to this:

de re is when we’re talking about a thing.

de dicto is when we’re not talking about a thing but a proposition.

In the philosophy of language this distinction is important because it helps us disambiguate what we might mean when we ascribe beliefs to agents. Suppose we say

(1) Jim believes that “someone stole my bananas.”

The problem with (1) is that the scope of ‘someone’ is ambiguous between someone in particular vs. someone in general. It could be that Jim is thinking of somone in particular, let’s say Sam, in which case (1) should be read as

(1’) Jim believes that “Sam stole my bananas.”

In (1’), what Jim believes is that someone (a thing) named ‘Sam’ stole his bananas. Since Jim has a particular thing (Sam) in mind, (1) read as (1’) is ascribing a de re belief to Jim.

But suppose that Jim has reason to think someone stole his bananas, but he doesn’t know whom. If this were the case then (1) should be interpreted to as

(1’’) Jim believes that “some person or other stole my bananas.”

Because in (1’’) Jim doesn’t have any particular individual in mind, what he believes is that a particular proposition is true, namely that “some person or other stole my bananas”. Because Jim believes a certain proposition is true and not something of some particular thing, (1’’) is ascribing a de dicto belief to Jim.

_____________________

Excursus

Armed with this distinction, I’d like to flesh out more fully my attempt to dissolve the sentential liar’s paradox.

(2) Sentence (2) is false.

Supposedly, if (2) is true, then it’s false, for to say of itself truly that it is false is to say something false. But, if (2) is false, then it is true, for if (2) is false, then it says something true of itself, and is therefore true. And hence the paradox.

My objection amounts to this: the collection of symbols that includes and follows the first instance of the symbol ‘(2)’ above is a concrete thing, just like ‘my desk’ and ‘jcw’. Being a mere thing (res) it cannot be true or false anymore than ‘my desk’ and ‘jcw’ can be true or false. Why not? Well, truth and falsity are predicates not of concrete things (de rerum), but of propositions (de dicta). That is, propositions like “the house is red” and “jcw is generally cool” can be true or false. Furthermore, there cannot be propositions unless there are concrete things that do or do not have “ordinary” predicates. That is, the existence of any and all propositions with ‘jcw’ as the their subject depend on the concrete existence of ‘jcw’ and whatever “ordinary” predicates he may or may not have (e.g., jcw’s being generally cool, and the like). Once there is the state of affairs jcw’s existing a whole slew of propositions can thereby exist and be true or false, depending on whether they accurately describe the thing jcw. In sum, since the collection of symbols that includes and follows the first instance of the symbol ‘(2)’ above is a thing (res) and not a proposition (dictum), it cannot be true or false. And since it is neither true nor false, is no more paradoxical than (and equally meaningless as) saying“jcw is false”.

“Well,” I hear someone asking, “if the collection of symbols that includes and follows the first instance of the symbol ‘(2)’ above cannot be true or false, can’t the following proposition be true or false?”:

(3) Proposition (3) is false.

No, (3) can be neither true nor false because (3) is not a proposition. In order for it to be a proposition it needs to have a concrete thing (res), and not a proposition, as its subject. And furthermore, for (3) to be true or false the predicate said of the concrete thing acting as its subject must be an “ordinary” one, unlike truth and falsity. As such, there is no such proposition denoted by (3), and hence, the non-proposition (3) ispso facto cannot be true or false. And if it’s neither true nor false, it cannot be paradoxical.

_____________________

Now onto modality de re and de dicto. From what I can tell the difference is whether a modal predicate (i.e. necessary, contingent, possible, impossible) is true of a thing (modality de re) or true of a proposition (modality de dicto). So here’s a putative example of modality de re:

(4) Louis is possibly five feet tall.

Notice that the “possibly” comes between the copula and the predicate, and as such (4) is predicating ‘possibly five feet tall’ of a thing (res)—namely Louis. Hence, (4) is an instance of modality de re. Now consider

(5) Possibly “Louis is five feet tall.”

Since the “Possibly” is outside of the proposition “Louis is five feet tall”, (5) is attributing a predicate not to a thing (res), but to a proposition (dictum), and hence (5) is an instance of modality de dicto. And of course, since saying “Louis is five feet tall” is equivalent to an assertion, (5) is equivalent to

(5’) “Louis is five feet tall” is possibly true.

On Aristotle’s view, (4) and (5) are interchangeable. Furthermore, since both (4) and (5) are propositions, both are made true by the state of affairs S Louis’ being possibly five feet tall. Since truth depends on reality we can infer S’s obtaining from knowing either (4) and (5), but (4) and (5) bear an asymmetrical dependency relation to S. Namely, S ‘makes’ or ‘necessitates’ the truth of (4) and (5), but the truth of (4) and (5) do not ‘make’ or ‘necessitate’ S’s obtaining.

chivas regal 12.

2011-06-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

Whenever I go south on the 605 from the 105
I see a cluster of treetops that clear the heights
of the interchange. Let it be that nature overcomes man. (I heard on the radio once that if civilization were to collapse, cats (even domesticated ones) wouldn’t have to adapt in order to survive.)
But anyway, I imagine that you and I hop the concrete
and we land in that ever-green place
suspended by tension
protected from the earth
and held hidden from the world.
Don’t you remember when you popped your head out from
Underneath the branch? Wearing your hoodie.
So long ago.

The “Lazy Aristotle” Fallacy

2011-05-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

Otherwise known as “confusing the natural with the common” or “the ‘normal’ equivocation”. The word ‘normal’ signifies at least two different terms or concepts that are entirely distinct in themselves, even though they might be related in very fundamental ways (hence the confusion). Here are the two senses I have in mind and as I would distinguish them:

Normal₁= what is the most frequent; what is common; whatever happens the majority of the time.

Normal₂= what is normative (i.e., what should or ought to be the case).

Here is an example that at once shows the difference between these two senses and also that there is *no* reason to think that they must coincide.

Suppose the world’s water supply is contaminated in such a way that it makes every single dog have three legs or, if a certain dog has yet to be born, it is born with only three legs. It seems to me that in the sense of normal₁, the following statement would be true:

(1) It is normal for dogs to have only three legs.

If the ‘normal’ in (1) means frequent, common, or what happens the majority of the time, then of course it is true. How could it be the case that each and every dog has only three legs but and it not be ‘common’ for them to have only three legs?

But clearly, even though (1) might be true in the normal₁ sense it is patently false if taken in the normal₂ sense. That is, even though it might be the case that all dogs have only three legs, it most certainly is not the case that all dogs should or ought to have only three legs. On the contrary, as Aristotle would put it: it is the nature of a dog to have four legs, and therefore all dogs should have four legs.

The basic upshot is this. Suppose that some act F happens most of the time. Nothing follows about whether F should happen most of the time. And vice-versa. Suppose F ought to happen. Nothing follows about whether F will in fact happen all of the time or even most times.

Here are some more putative cases where normal₁ and normal₂most certainly do not coincide:

From what I hear, binge drinking is not uncommon on college campuses, yet it seems that binge drinking should be uncommon.

Binge drinking is at best normal₁ but not normal₂.

Prior to the Civil War, slavery in the South was very common, yet it should not have been.

Slavery was normal₁ but surely not normal₂.

In 1930’s Germany anti-Semitism might have been common, yet if it was, it should not have been.

Anti-Semitism may have been normal₁ but surely not normal₂.

What is especially vexing about the fallacy is that you often hear people using some fact about what is normal₁ as evidence to think that the act in question is normal₂, which either equivocates on the two senses or begs the very question at hand or both. Here is an example:

(2) Homosexuality is wrong because it is not normal.

The inference here is something like this:

(3) Homosexuality is not normal.

(4) Therefore, homosexuality is wrong.

If ‘normal’ means normal₁, then this argument is invalid. As we have seen before, just because F is not common, it does not mean that F-ing ought to not take place.

If ‘normal’ here means normal₂, then sure enough the argument would be valid, but then it would be begging the question. For to say that F-ing ought to not take place is tantamount to saying that F-ing is wrong.

I call this the “Lazy Aristotle Fallacy” because Aristotle was prone to thinking that what happens “either always or for the most part” was indicative of a thing’s nature, where “nature” here is to be understood as the “what it is to be” of a thing—its essence (as opposed to “that place people go when they go camping.”) Since Aristotle was thinking of natures as essences, they are the kinds of things that ground normative claims. But, as we have seen, it is not at all clear the connection between what is common, what is natural, and what ought to happen, much less how we ought to move from one to the next, even if it is very common for us to do so.

All this to say that I think this fallacy is nothing short of a rampant intellectual disease that has infected most of the human “sciences” (e.g., psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, psychiatry, and the like). I also think that failing to recognize this fallacy is one of the major confusions behind the ever shifting faces of the various forms of relativism.

Watership Down.

2011-05-22T18:13:00.000-07:00

“As meaningful as that sounds to me, I kind of wish it wasn’t true. I want to feel like the bunnies in Watership Down. They don’t feel any regret.”

on critiquing first-order, oh wait, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, …. ad nauseam, vanity.

2011-05-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

Me: “It’s especially vain to be worried about appearing vain.”

Me: “It’s even more vain to feel the need to point that out.”

Me: “I suppose, but that’s not as vain as feeling the need to point it out that it’s vain to feel the need to point it out that to be worried about appearing vain is itself vain.”

Me: “I suppose, but now it seems that it would be equally vain, if not more so, to not post this. For the only reason why I wouldn’t do it is out of fear of appearing vain.”

Me: “Nice. Press “publish post”.”

towards a panentheism.

2011-05-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

I used to think that the sunset was something distinct from God’s glory. I thought it was merely a symbol, or a representation, or some likeness of it, but something distinct from it. Consequently, I thought that the glorious sunset was at best a device that pointed to something beyond it—that it was merely an instrument—and that we were supposed to behold something other than it.

But now I think that the sunset is the glory of God, or at least a manifestation of it.

“What’s the difference between a manifestation and a representation?”

It’s this:

The ring on the beloved’s finger represents the lover’s love. It points to it, but it is not the love itself. But the way in which the lover may kiss his beloved is a manifestation of his love. Unlike the representation, the manifestation cannot be separated from what it is a manifestation of. And this is why the former she can live without, the latter she cannot.

________

“... the whole earth is full of His Glory.” (Isaiah 6:3)

so it wasn't before?

2011-05-14T04:49:00.000-07:00

[walking home after dinner, I look up and see the stars I never see in L.A. Relative to the treetops, it feels as if the moon is following us home.]*

“Hey Dad,” I began, “Do you think that you’ll walk on the moon before you go to heaven?”

“No.”

“Do you think you’ll walk on the moon in heaven?”

“Through Christ all things are possible.”

____________

* “What makes you think it’s not?” Oh, I don’t know, “Science”?

a thought.

2011-05-13T15:17:00.000-07:00

“If you were able to live the lives of everyone who had a life worth living, then would you be satisfied?”

“No. There’d always be another life to live.”

-Blaise Pascal (If he would have said it)

I never claimed to understand what happens after dark.

2011-05-11T23:56:00.000-07:00

“Hey Dad,” I began, “Do you think that the night is intrinsically evil?”

[enter thirty seconds of silence (the real one-mis-sis-sip-pi kind)]

“No.”

....

“Me neither,” I merely thought to myself, “but what the hell was he thinking about for thirty whole seconds?”

St. Augustine with a pocket full of punches.

2011-04-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

3. The Manichees are accustomed to find fault in the following way with the first book of the Old Testament, which is entitled, Genesis. About the words, "In the beginning God made heaven and earth," they ask, "In what beginning?" They say, "If God made heaven and earth in some beginning of time, what was he doing before he made heaven and earth? And why did he suddenly decide to make what he had not previously made through eternal time?" We answer them that God made heaven and earth in the beginning, not in the beginning of time, but in Christ. For he was the Word with the Father, through whom and in whom all things were made. For, when the Jews asked him who he was, our Lord Jesus Christ answered, "The beginning; that is why I am speaking to you."g But even if we believe that God made heaven and earth at the beginning of time, we should certainly realize that there was no time before the beginning of time. For God also made time, and thus there was no time before he made time. Hence, we cannot say that there was a time when God had not yet made anything. For how could there be a time that God had not made since he is the maker of all time? And if time began to be with heaven and earth, there cannot be found a time when God had not yet made heaven and earth.lo When they say, "Why did he suddenly decide?" they speak as if some time passed during which God produced nothing. But a time could not pass that God had not already made, because he cannot be the producer of time unless he is before time. Surely the Manichees themselves read the Apostle Paul and praise and honor him, and they mislead many by interpreting his Letters wrongly. Let them tell us what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, "The knowledge of the truth which is in accord with the goodness of God for the hope of eternal life, which God who cannot lie, promised before eternal time." For what could precede eternal time? Let them be forced to explain this. Then they will understand that they do not understand when they rashly want to find fault with what they ought to study with care.

4. Suppose, however, that they do not say, "Why did God suddenly decide to make heaven and earth?" but remove the word "suddenly" and only say, "Why did God decide to make heaven and earth?" For we do not say that this world has the same duration as God, for this world does not have the same eternity as the eternity that God has. God certainly made the world, and thus time began to be along with the creation that God made, and in this sense time is called eternal. Nonetheless, time is not eternal in the same way that God is eternal, because God who is the maker of time is before time. So too, all the things that God has made are very good, but they are not good in the same way that God is good, because he is their maker, while they are made. Nor did he give birth to them out of himself so that they are what he is; rather he made them out of nothing so that they are equal neither to him by whom they have been made nor to his Son through whom they have been made. For this is juSt. But if they say, "Why did God decide to make heaven and earth?" we should answer them that those who desire to know the will of God should first learn the power of the human will. They seek to know the causes of the will of God though the will of God is itself the cause of all that exists. For if the will of God has a cause, there is something that surpasses the will of God-and this we may not believe. Hence, one who asks, "Why did God make heaven and earth?" should be told, "Because he willed to." For the will of God is the cause of heaven and earth, and the will of God, therefore, is greater than heaven and earth. One who asks, "Why did God will to create heaven and earth?" is looking for something greater than the will of God, though nothing greater can be found. Hence, let human temerity hold itself in check, and let it not seek what is not lest it not find what is. If anyone desires to know the will of God, let him become a friend of God. For, if anyone wanted to know the will of a man of whom he was not a friend, everyone would laugh at his impudence and folly. But one becomes a friend of God only by the highest purity of morals and by that goal of the command, of which the Apostle speaks, "The goal of the command is charity from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned," and if they had this, they would not be heretics.

St. Augustine, De Genesi contra Manichaeos 1.2.3-4.

not paradoxical.

2011-04-08T19:39:00.001-07:00

"There is an exception to every rule." Yes, even to that one.

on inconceivability and impossibility.

2011-04-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

I take it that for any proposition p, p might be inconceivable in at least two senses. The first sense we might call inconceivable simpliciter because p is seen to be necessarily false for either logical or metaphysical reasons. Consider, for instance, that something is both red and not red^a. I take it that the reason why something is both red and not red is inconceivable is because we simply see (with the mind’s eye, so to speak) that it is impossible in itself, and something that is impossible per se is (or can be?) ipso facto inconceivable. Thus, that something is both red and not red is inconceivable simpliciter not because of a lack of cognitive ability on our part. On the contrary: that something is red and not red is inconceivable simpliciter because we have the cognitive ability to see its impossibility.

Similarly, the same can be said for some metaphysical statements. That something can be both red and green all over^b does not assert a contradiction, and hence it is logically possible^c. Nonetheless, that something can be both red and green all over is impossible. Even though it is not contradictory per se, we see (with the mind’s eye, so to speak) that it is impossible per se. Thus, that something can be both red and green all over is impossible (though not logically so) and hence it is (or can be?) ipso facto inconceivable. And further, as before, that something is both red and green all over is inconceivable simpliciter not because of a lack of cognitive ability on our part. On the contrary: that something is both red and green all over is inconceivable simpliciter because we have the cognitive ability to see its impossibility.

In sum, a proposition p may inconceivable in at least one sense: a proposition p might be inconceivable simpliciter for logical or metaphysical reasons; namely, that it asserts a logical or metaphysical impossibility.

But, a proposition p might be inconceivable simply because we lack the cognitive equipment to see its possibility. We might call this sense of inconceivability lack inconceivability. A putative candidate for lack inconceivability might be that there is a color that is not red, blue, or yellow, nor some combination thereof. I say that this proposition is merely lack inconceivable because it does not violate a law of logic nor does it seem metaphysically impossible (for it violates no law of logic nor do I see its metaphysical impossibility), but rather because I simply cannot imagine what it such a color would look like. The only colors I can think of (conceive of) are those colors that are red, yellow, and blue, or some combination thereof. But, it seems to me, to group the proposition that there is a color that is not red, blue, or yellow nor some combination thereof in the same class with something can be both red and not red and something can be red and green all over seems wholly unwarranted: I can see the impossibility of the latter two; the former is indeed inconceivable to me, but I just do not see its impossibility.

In sum, a proposition p is inconceivable simpliciter just in case we see the impossibility of p. On the other hand, a proposition p is merely lack inconceivable if we cannot think of p but yet do not see its utter impossibility.

Now, with which kind of inconceivability should we tag the following proposition?

There is some hotel with an actually infinite number of rooms and guests such that if you were to add one more guest to it then there would be the same number of guests before the guest arrived as there was after the guest arrived.

I take it that this (unwieldy) proposition is inconceivable. But is it inconceivable simpliciter? Not by my lights: it does not violate a law of logic, nor do I see its per se metaphysical impossibility. (It may be metaphysically impossible, though, but I do not see its metaphysical impossibility.)

At best it seems lack inconceivable: I simply cannot comprehend it. But, the mere fact that it is lack inconceivable is not enough for us to think it is inconceivable simpliciter. As such, we are not warranted in saying that it is impossible; it could be impossible, but we do not seem to be in a position to know.

_____________________

^aIf you want to be fussy, add at the same time. ^b If you want to be fussy, add at the same time. ^c For you naysayers: that two contraries are true of same subject is indeed logically impossible, but that red and green are contraries is not a tautology. You could stipulate that red and green are contraries, but good luck proving that they are with the mere use of tautologies and the rules governing logical syntax.

The Peripatetic on unactualized possibilities.

2011-04-02T23:54:00.000-07:00

I once wrote a whole paper on a single, seemingly innocuous, line from Aristotle:

"For example, it is possible for this cloak to be cut up, and yet it will not be cut up but it will wear out first. (De Int. 9)"

Not only is the truth of this proposition deeply perplexing from the point of view of trying to understand Aristotle's modal thought, it's deeply perplexing tout court.

(im)possible colors.

2011-04-02T23:41:00.001-07:00

Suppose that the primary theory of colors is merely contingently true (i.e., that it just so happens that every color we've experienced so far is either red, blue, and yellow or some combination thereof). Could God make a color that cannot be derived by the three primary colors? If your answer is "yes", then it seems to me that you're committed to the thesis that it's actually possible that God make the actually inconceivable.

Or, to put it more poignantly: the inconceivable is possible.

In Swingroverian terms: the actually inconceivable is actually possible.

on the necessity of necessity.

2011-04-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

I take it that all true conditional statements express a necessary connection between the antecedent and the consequent. Put slightly different: all true conditional statements are true because they express a necessary connection between the antecedent and the consequent, and all false conditional statements are false because they fail to express a necessary connection between the antecedent and the consequent.

Consider, for instance, the standard conditional form: if p then q (symbolically: p ⊃ q). Quite ordinarily, we express things in the standard conditional form to express sufficient conditions, whereby in saying p ⊃ q we mean p is sufficient for q. How is it that in saying p is sufficient for q we are expressing a necessary connection between p and q? At least in this sense: to say that p is sufficient for q is to say q is a necessary condition for p. For example, consider the following true conditional: if there is life then there is water. I take it that this conditional, if true, is true because water is a necessary condition for life, and hence, this is why the antecedent’s being true (that there is life) is sufficient for the truth of the consequent (that there is water).

Another way to say the same thing is to say that the standard conditional expresses natural dependencies. Again, to say that p is sufficient for q is to say that q is a necessary condition for p, and it seems to me that this second statement (and thereby the first) is another way of saying that p depends upon q. In the same way that someone might say that water is necessary for life, someone might equally say that the possibility of life depends upon the existence of water.

As such, all conditional statements that fail to express necessary conditions or dependency relations between the antecedent and the consequent are false, even if the antecedent and consequent are true. For instance, the following antecedents and consequents for the following conditionals are all true:

If Louis lives in Idaho then I am an uncle

If Soren is a person then Jon is a budding logician

If Max is Max then Max kissed a girl

If Max kissed a girl then Max kissed Brianna.

But alas, all of these conditionals are false, for the truth of each antecedent is neither sufficient nor dependent on the truth of each consequent, and neither is each consequent necessary for the truth of each antecedent.

According to the truth functional interpretation of the conditional, all these conditionals are true. By modus tollens, etc.

.:addendum:.

Here’s my modal interpretation of the truth functional interpretation of the material conditional:

p q p ⊃ q

T T ◊T
T F ~◊T
F T ◊T
F F ◊T

Since, on my view, p ⊃ q is true if and only if p depends upon the truth of q, the second row is sufficient to show that the corresponding material conditional is necessarily false. However, rows 1, 3, and 4 merely assert necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for the corresponding material conditional to be true. That is:

If p is true and q is true, then p ⊃ q is possibly true.
If p is true and q is true, then it is impossible that p ⊃ q is true.
If p is false and q is true, then p ⊃ q is possibly true.
If both p and q are false, then p ⊃ q is possibly true.

Another way to put it:

If p is true and q is true, then p might depend upon the truth of q to be true. If p is true and q is false, then p does not depend upon the truth of q to be true. If p is false and q is true, then p might depend upon the truth of q to be true. If p is false and q is false, then p might depend upon the truth of q to be true.

"112 tomahawk cruise missiles rain down on Libyan air-defenses."

2011-03-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

Come on Chomsky, go public and tell us we should just stand by and watch Gadhafi kill his own citizens.

"But, why do we do it for Libya, and not pro-American dictators?"

not a relevant question.

towards a moderate neo-Luddism.

2011-03-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when driving around, trying to find a certain restaurant, 80's club, or coffee shop, I find myself longing for an iphone. But then, when I get to the certain restaurant, 80's club, or coffee shop, and see groups of people sitting around tables with iphones in hand, checking facebook or youtube, wholly ignoring one another, my soul bursts with all the glee the Pharisee had in the presence of the Publican.

"Thank you, Lord," I say to myself, "for not making me like them."

"But," you'll protest, "my iphone is necessary for my job."

If that's true then your job isn't necessary.

[enter cartoon of Jesus being transfigured before a few of His disciples as they watch Jesus being transfigured via youtube on their iphones.]

I wish I never showed you me.

2011-03-16T20:59:00.000-07:00

As the world keeps on turnin'
My heart remains burnin'
And I must wonder
Is there any escape from being alone

Is there any shelter
Is there any home ('cause I'm exactly 400 miles from home)
Is there any escape from being alone

Please lord won't you give me some meaning
A definition to what I've been feeling
Words can't rationalize, years that I've cried
Words don't help me understand much anyway
Please lord won't you shed me some light
'cause I'm just looking to feel all right sometimes
I lose my mind, I lose my life, I lose you
And you are my everything

on intrinsic value.

2010-04-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

“I was jealous of everyone. I compared myself to every single girl that walked by me. Within the first week of high school any scrap of self-esteem I had left fell by the wayside. I turned my focus on trying to look good. If I wasn’t popular, cool, funny, smart, or vivacious like other girls my age, I yearned desperately to be pretty. As if it would make up for the lack of everything else. That’s when I definitely changed my food intake.”

“It’s almost like each person has something distinctive about themself [sic], like this person is an artist, this person is so smart. I’ve always felt like my eating disorder is what I can do, this is mine.”

Amy P. on her struggle with bulimia
(from A&E’s Intervention 03/20/10, part 1)

Obviously persons are nothing but a bundle of “their”* qualities.

*Possessive pronoun misuse.

defending the helpless.

2010-04-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

I suppose the following might be a moot point now, but the point is worth making anyhow. Often in discussions (arguments) about government health care, the “anti” position gets put on the defensive with the following line of reasoning:

The Health Care Moral Guilt Argument (HCG)

Pro: Don’t you think you have an obligation to help those in need?
Contra: Yes.
Pro: But if you don’t support the health care bill, aren’t you implicitly refusing to help those in need?
Contra: How so?
Pro: Well, you acknowledge that if the bill were to pass, the people who cannot otherwise afford the health care they need will thereby be able to get it.
Contra: I suppose.
Pro: But then it seems by consciously opposing the bill, aren’t you consciously refusing to help those in need?
Contra: Uh… I guess.

Usually at this point I start mumbling Lockean arguments about the role of government. So instead of changing the subject, I’m going to try to respond to this “argument”.

Suppose that congress decided to enact a bill that was dedicated to ending world hunger, and this bill will increase our income tax to 50%. Suppose you didn’t support the bill, and in response, one of its true believers puts you on the spot with the following:

The World Hunger Moral Guilt Argument (WHG)

Pro: Don’t you think you have an obligation to help those in need?
Contra: Yes.
Pro: But if you don’t support the End World Hunger bill, aren’t you implicitly refusing to help those in need?
Contra: How so?
Pro: Well, you acknowledge that if the bill were to pass, the people who are starving to death will get the food they need.
Contra: I suppose.
Pro: But then it seems by consciously opposing the bill, aren’t you consciously refusing to help those in need?
Contra: Uh… I guess.

It’s my conviction that the inference in WHG that backs the Contra position into a corner is the following:

(1) If you are obliged to help those in need, you must always support a government bill that promises to help those in need.
(3) I am obliged to help those in need and X is a gov't program that will help those in need.
(4) I must support X.

But, I think in the case of WHG, (1) is false, and therefore (1) is sometimes false. For why think that just because one ought to help those in need, one ought to support a plan like the End World Hunger bill, which will increase the income tax rate to 50%? The upshot is that just because one thinks that she is obliged to help those in need, it doesn’t necessarily follow that one must support a government program that will help those in need. And if (1) is false for WHG, what is it about the HCG case that makes it true in that case? Until someone can show me that HCG and WHG are substantively disanalogous, I submit that either (1) is false for HCG as well, or (perhaps more modestly) just because one acknowledges that she has an obligation to help those in need, one is not ipso facto obliged to support government programs that will help those in need.

wise words.

2010-03-16T16:35:00.000-07:00

Tread with care over and by words which like earth
cover the mystery of ghost and beast.

-Damon's oracle.

.,:':.?/!;"*"_-('_"."~!?

2010-02-15T02:47:00.000-08:00

"I agree," said he, "that neither jot nor tittle will by no means pass away."
"Then why," asked she, "do you not accept p?"
"Because," said he, "p is neither a jot nor a tittle."

The wide and broad road is paved with the de jure/de facto distinction.

It doesn't follow, however, that the straight and narrow lacks it entirely.

My right ear scraped a buckle.

2010-02-15T02:35:00.000-08:00

"Fathers fear that their children's
natural love may be erased. What,
then, is this nature that can be
erased?" -Pascal (S159)

"The children love to sing, but
then their voices slowly fade away."

"...how do we get clean again?"

God doesn't care about oxen.

2010-02-11T00:52:00.000-08:00

In an ironic twist of fate, St. Augustine takes 1 Corinthians 9:9 as an alleged proof text for Divine Indifference (viz.- Divine Indeterminism):

"...It is too little to say, thee; the sparrow,
the locust, the worm, none of these did He
not make, and He cares for them all. His care
refers not to His commandment, for this com-
mandment He gave to man alone. . . . As re-
gards then the tenor of the commandment,
"God does not take care of oxen:" as regards
His providential care of the universe,
whereby He created all things, and rules the
world, "You, Lord, shall save both man and
beast." Here perhaps someone may say to me,
"God cares not for Oxen," comes from the New
Testament; "You, Lord, shall save both man
and beast," is from the Old Testament.
There are some who find fault and say, that
these two Testaments agree not with one
another. . . Let us hear the Lord Himself,
the Chief and Master of the Apostles: "Con-
sider," says He, "the fowls ofthe air; they
sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather in
barns, and your Heavenly Father feeds them."
Therefore even besides men, these animals
are objects of care to God, to be fed, not to
receive a law. As far then as regards giving
a law, "God cares not for oxen:" as regards
creating, feeding, and governing, ruling, all
things have to do with God..."

St. Augustine, Enarr. in Psalmos 145:6

Augustine thinks that the statement "God cares not for oxen" is literally false, despite the fact that Paul's rhetorical question seems to force our affirmation. In a wholly genius interpretive move, Augustine quotes Christ, "the Chief and Master of the Apostles", against Paul (The Apostle), forcing us (rightfully so) to tinker with the jots and tittles of the latter instead of the former. I think we should follow in Augustine's hermeneutical footsteps; doing so will enable us to reject his proto-Calvinism.

Happy B*day Jon!

2010-01-31T04:59:00.000-08:00

I got 99 problems but fatalism's not one.

2010-01-23T01:04:00.000-08:00

The following might create 101 problems, but it solves 202. The net gain is worth it.

[O]f two things whose existence follows from
each other, it would be reasonable to say that
the one which is any way the cause of the other
is prior by nature to it. That there are such things
is clear from the following. A man’s existence
and the truth of the statement that he exists
follow from each other; for if a man exists, the
statement ‘a man exists’ is true, and conversely,
if that statement is true, a man exists, whereas
the fact appears to be in some way the cause
of the true statement; for it is by virtue of
the existence or nonexistence of that
fact that the statement is true or false,
respectively.

The Philosopher, Categories 14b9-19

Aristotle seems to be saying this:

(1) Necessarily, if a man exists, then the statement ‘a man exists’ is true.

And,

(2) Necessarily, if the statement ‘a man exists’ is true, then a man exists.

But,

(3) Necessarily, for every true proposition p, p’s truth is caused by x, where ‘x’ is the state of affairs expressed by p.

And,

(4) Necessarily, for every true proposition p, the being of x, where ‘x’ is the state of affairs expressed by p, is not caused by the truth of p.

Suck it.

On the Port-au-Prince Disaster.

2010-01-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

Or, A reductio of someone else's god.
(Elijah, help me send these false prophets to Mt. Carmel)

Unhappy mortals! Dark and mourning earth!
Affrighted gathering of human kind!
Eternal lingering of useless pain!
Come, ye philosophers, who cry, “All’s well,”
And contemplate this ruin of a world.
Behold these shreds and cinders of your race,
This child and mother heaped in common wreck,
These scattered limbs beneath the marble shafts—
A hundred thousand whom the earth devours,
Who, torn and bloody, palpitating yet,
Entombed beneath their hospitable roofs,
In racking torment end their stricken lives.
To those expiring murmurs of distress,
To that appalling spectacle of woe,
Will ye reply: “You do but illustrate
The iron laws that chain the will of God”?
Say ye, o’er that yet quivering mass of flesh:
“God is avenged: the wage of sin is death”?
What crime, what sin, had those young hearts conceived
That lie, bleeding and torn, on mother’s breast?
Did fallen Lisbon deeper drink of vice
Than London, Paris, or sunlit Madrid?
In these men dance; at Lisbon yawns the abyss.
Tranquil spectators of your brothers’ wreck,
Unmoved by this repellent dance of death,
Who calmly seek the reason of such storms,
Let them but lash your own security;
Your tears will mingle freely with the flood.
When earth its horrid jaws half open shows,
My plaint is innocent, my cries are just.
Surrounded by such cruelties of fate,
By rage of evil and by snares of death,
Fronting the fierceness of the elements,
Sharing our ills, indulge me my lament.
“’T is pride,” ye say—“the pride of rebel heart,
To think we might fare better than we do.”
Go, tell it to the Tagus’ stricken banks;
Search in the ruins of that bloody shock;
Ask of the dying in that house of grief,
Whether ’t is pride that calls on heaven for help
And pity for the sufferings of men.
“All’s well,” ye say, “and all is necessary.”
Think ye this universe had been the worse
Without this hellish gulf in Portugal?
Are ye so sure the great eternal cause,
That knows all things, and for itself creates,
Could not have placed us in this dreary clime
Without volcanoes seething ’neath our feet?
Set you this limit to the power supreme?
Would you forbid it use its clemency?
Are not the means of the great artisan
Unlimited for shaping his designs?
The master I would not offend, yet wish
This gulf of fire and sulphur had outpoured
Its baleful flood amid the desert wastes.
God I respect, yet love the universe.
Not pride, alas, it is, but love of man,
To mourn so terrible a stroke as this.

Would it console the sad inhabitants
Of these aflame and desolated shores
To say to them: “Lay down your lives in peace;
For the world’s good your homes are sacrificed;
Your ruined palaces shall others build,
For other peoples shall your walls arise;
The North grows rich on your unhappy loss;
Your ills are but a link in general law;
To God you are as those low creeping worms
That wait for you in your predestined tombs”?
What speech to hold to victims of such ruth!
Add not such cruel outrage to their pain.

Nay, press not on my agitated heart
These iron and irrevocable laws,
This rigid chain of bodies, minds, and worlds.
Dreams of the bloodless thinker are such thoughts.
God holds the chain: is not himself enchained;
By his indulgent choice is all arranged;
Implacable he’s not, but free and just.
Why suffer we, then, under one so just?1
There is the knot your thinkers should undo.
Think ye to cure our ills denying them?
All peoples, trembling at the hand of God,
Have sought the source of evil in the world.
When the eternal law that all things moves
Doth hurl the rock by impact of the winds,
With lightning rends and fires the sturdy oak,
They have no feeling of the crashing blows;
But I, I live and feel, my wounded heart
Appeals for aid to him who fashioned it.

Children of that Almighty Power, we stretch
Our hands in grief towards our common sire.
The vessel, truly, is not heard to say:
“Why should I be so vile, so coarse, so frail?”
Nor speech nor thought is given unto it.
The urn that, from the potter’s forming hand,
Slips and is shattered has no living heart
That yearns for bliss and shrinks from misery.
“This misery,” ye say, “is others’ good.”
Yes; from my mouldering body shall be born
A thousand worms, when death has closed my pain.
Fine consolation this in my distress!
Grim speculators on the woes of men,
Ye double, not assuage, my misery.
In you I mark the nerveless boast of pride
That hides its ill with pretext of content.

I am a puny part of the great whole.
Yes; but all animals condemned to live,
All sentient things, born by the same stern law,
Suffer like me, and like me also die.

The vulture fastens on his timid prey,
And stabs with bloody beak the quivering limbs:
All ’s well, it seems, for it. But in a while
An eagle tears the vulture into shreds;
The eagle is transfixed by shaft of man;
The man, prone in the dust of battlefield,
Mingling his blood with dying fellow-men,
Becomes in turn the food of ravenous birds.
Thus the whole world in every member groans:
All born for torment and for mutual death.
And o’er this ghastly chaos you would say
The ills of each make up the good of all!
What blessedness! And as, with quaking voice,
Mortal and pitiful, ye cry, “All ’s well,”
The universe belies you, and your heart
Refutes a hundred times your mind’s conceit.

All dead and living things are locked in strife.
Confess it freely—evil stalks the land,
Its secret principle unknown to us.
Can it be from the author of all good?
Are we condemned to weep by tyrant law
Of black Typhon or barbarous Ahriman?1
These odious monsters, whom a trembling world
Made gods, my spirit utterly rejects.

But how conceive a God supremely good,
Who heaps his favours on the sons he loves,
Yet scatters evil with as large a hand?
What eye can pierce the depth of his designs?
From that all-perfect Being came not ill:
And came it from no other, for he ’s lord:
Yet it exists. O stern and numbing truth!
O wondrous mingling of diversities!
A God came down to lift our stricken race:
He visited the earth, and changed it not!
One sophist says he had not power to change;
“He had,” another cries, “but willed it not:
In time he will, no doubt.” And, while they prate,
The hidden thunders, belched from underground,
Fling wide the ruins of a hundred towns
Across the smiling face of Portugal.
God either smites the inborn guilt of man,
Or, arbitrary lord of space and time,
Devoid alike of pity and of wrath,
Pursues the cold designs he has conceived.
Or else this formless stuff, recalcitrant,
Bears in itself inalienable faults;
Or else God tries us, and this mortal life
Is but the passage to eternal spheres.
’T is transitory pain we suffer here,
And death its merciful deliverance.
Yet, when this dreadful passage has been made,
Who will contend he has deserved the crown?
Whatever side we take we needs must groan;
We nothing know, and everything must fear.
Nature is dumb, in vain appeal to it;
The human race demands a word of God.
’T is his alone to illustrate his work,
Console the weary, and illume the wise.
Without him man, to doubt and error doomed,
Finds not a reed that he may lean upon.
From Leibnitz learn we not by what unseen
Bonds, in this best of all imagined worlds,
Endless disorder, chaos of distress,
Must mix our little pleasures thus with pain;
Nor why the guiltless suffer all this woe
In common with the most abhorrent guilt.
’T is mockery to tell me all is well.
Like learned doctors, nothing do I know.
Plato has said that men did once have wings
And bodies proof against all mortal ill;
That pain and death were strangers to their world.
How have we fallen from that high estate!
Man crawls and dies: all is but born to die:
The world ’s the empire of destructiveness.
This frail construction of quick nerves and bones
Cannot sustain the shock of elements;
This temporary blend of blood and dust
Was put together only to dissolve;
This prompt and vivid sentiment of nerve
Was made for pain, the minister of death:
Thus in my ear does nature’s message run.
Plato and Epicurus I reject,
And turn more hopefully to learned Bayle.
With even poised scale Bayle bids me doubt.
He, wise and great enough to need no creed,
Has slain all systems—combats even himself:
Like that blind conqueror of Philistines,
He sinks beneath the ruin he has wrought.1
What is the verdict of the vastest mind?
Silence: the book of fate is closed to us.
Man is a stranger to his own research;
He knows not whence he comes, nor whither goes.
Tormented atoms in a bed of mud,
Devoured by death, a mockery of fate.
But thinking atoms, whose far-seeing eyes,
Guided by thought, have measured the faint stars,
Our being mingles with the infinite;
Ourselves we never see, or come to know.
This world, this theatre of pride and wrong,
Swarms with sick fools who talk of happiness.
With plaints and groans they follow up the quest,
To die reluctant, or be born again.
At fitful moments in our pain-racked life
The hand of pleasure wipes away our tears;
But pleasure passes like a fleeting shade,
And leaves a legacy of pain and loss.
The past for us is but a fond regret,
The present grim, unless the future ’s clear.
If thought must end in darkness of the tomb,
All will be well one day—so runs our hope.
All now is well, is but an idle dream.
The wise deceive me: God alone is right.
With lowly sighing, subject in my pain,
I do not fling myself ’gainst Providence.
Once did I sing, in less lugubrious tone,
The sunny ways of pleasure’s genial rule;
The times have changed, and, taught by growing age,
And sharing of the frailty of mankind,
Seeking a light amid the deepening gloom,
I can but suffer, and will not repine.

A caliph once, when his last hour had come,
This prayer addressed to him he reverenced:
“To thee, sole and all-powerful king, I bear
What thou dost lack in thy immensity—
Evil and ignorance, distress and sin.”
He might have added one thing further—hope.

I never thought I could say this.

2009-12-12T00:10:00.000-08:00

This makes me absolutely proud to be an American. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing special about America per se that makes me proud to be among its members. What I mean is that, by Divine fiat or fortuitous accident, we might fail to ever get Human Nature and Human Rights properly articulated and properly protected, but the very idea of them is something we never let die. What does that get us? Everything... or at least the possibility thereof.

For how could we even begin to move forward if we didn't already know that there's such thing as a forward?

And from Chomsky, no less! Please notice how unabashed he is about using words like "Human Nature" and "Justice". I know he's probably no Natural Law theorist, but if he were, his response to Foucoult wouldn't be jot or tittle different than it is.

Please watch.

off the cuff.

2009-12-11T06:25:00.000-08:00

Suppose:
(1) All propositions are sentences.
(2) All sentences are linguistic (i.e., in language).
(3) All representations must represent non-representations.
Why (3)? Because:
(4) (premise for (3)): There cannot be a representation without that which is represented,
and,
(5) (premise for (3)): whatever is represented is not itself a representation.

Suppose:
(6) All language is representational.
by (6),
(7) (6) represents itself.
by (7) and (3),
(8) (6) is not a representation.
Therefore,
(9) (6) is false.

I wanted this to be a reductio of (1). I am somewhat dubious about (3).

Look closely...

2009-10-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

Poussin's The Choice of Hercules [Between Virtue and Vice].

Here's Virtue herself. She's beautiful.

desiderata for a theory of personal identity. pt. 1

2009-07-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

First-person pronouns.

Any theory of personal identity, it seems, should account for our prephilosophical intuition that the “I” refers to or is about one’s self. More specifically, it should explain how it is possible that when I was twelve years old and said “I am twelve years old”, I referred to or predicated of the self-same subject that I refer to when I now say “I am twenty eight years old.” Why should this be a desideratum for our theory? Because denying that the “I” refers to the same object in both propositions is tantamount to saying that the person who said, “I am twelve years old” is a different self than the person who now says “I am twenty-eight years old”, which is absurd.

Conveniently, this desideratum rules out three formidable accounts: Hume’s, Wittgenstein’s, and Parfit’s. It also rules out other not-so formidable accounts: perhaps Heidegger’s and Sartre’s, and on some accounts, Husserl’s. So, so much for all of these folk.

A tangled web I've weaved.

2009-07-11T23:22:00.000-07:00

Above is a web of my current research interests. The web illustrates both the interrelatedness of many of my interests, as well as how certain foci affect others. I'd say the heart of my research interest is personal identity. But this subject, as you can see, depends upon more general questions about individuation and identity, which are themselves related to general issues in modality. This shows, in part, why my interest in personal identity led me to modality and the nature of propositions.

The arrows are indicative of either (a) subcategory or (b) primary interest only within a category, or (c) the intersection of categories. E.g., (a) modality is a subcategory of metaphysics; (b) the subcategory of propositions qua propositions is too broad to be under modality and possible worlds, but my interest in the nature of propositions tend to be concentrated in modal contexts; and (c) modal epist. and moral responsibility are at the intersections of distinct categories.

Also, this web reveals some of my prejudices. For instance, I think that Axiology is a subdivision of Metaphysics, but Epistemology is not. But, as indicated by Epistemology's "lower than Metaphysics" status, I think the mode of knowing (or the way of knowing) follows from what (quid) is known--viz., I think metaphysics is prior to epistemology in a substantive sense.

Oh, the irony.*

2009-07-10T00:41:00.000-07:00

I'm sure occupying a disabled persons' parking spot was absolutely necessary to get coffee at 7-eleven.

*the photograph in this post depicting a Los Angeles Parking Enforcement vehicle parking in a disabled persons' parking spot cannot be copied, replicated, downloaded, saved to a drive, posted, altered, disseminated, sold, or purchased, without the expressed written consent of Derek von Barandy. All applicable copyrights are reserved by Derek von Barandy.

Some thoughts on the possibility of a just revolution in Iran.

2009-06-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

On Locke’s view, any government that systematically disregards or violates the unalienable rights of the People can be justly overthrown. The Iranian Revolutionary [sic] Republic [sic] can easily be construed as a state that does violate the rights of its People. Firstly, it is fundamentally undemocratic (not something bad per se, but opens the possibility of unrepresented and hence illegitimate laws), women do not have suffrage, there is hardly any freedom of the press and/or political dissent, and there is little room for freedom of conscience (religion).

But things aren’t so simple. Despite the widespread protests as of late, the vast majority of Iranians don’t think any of the rights I just mentioned are, in fact, inalienable rights. Perhaps there is a strong minority who wish to see such rights protected and acknowledged by their government, but I doubt that the majority of people in Iran think women have the right to vote, or that people should be free to express their political views, or to practice whichever religion they wish. Thus, if there were to be a revolution, it would be an undemocratic one. And further, if the minority were to carry out a successful revolution, they would end up enforcing the protection of rights that the majority of Iranians either don’t want or don’t think they should have.

So we have a situation where the majority of the People’s will is not frustrated, but a strong minority who probably think their rights are being violated. Is there room for any sort of compromise?

On a Wittgensteinian theme.

2009-05-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

Word word word word word word word.

I just used the previous sentence to express my thought that ‘the ship is sailing on the sea.’

I just used the previous sentence to tell you that I used the first sentence to express that ‘the ship is sailing on the sea.’

If you were “in my mind,” all of these sentences (including this one) would be redundant, in the sense that they’d be telling you what you already know.

Etc.

My point? I’m not sure yet, but whatever it is, I’m convinced it’s profound and ingenious.

A gem from being in a "Continental" department.

2009-04-26T04:54:00.000-07:00

"For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk."

Jurgen Habermas

Sleight of hand? Judge for yourself.

2009-04-06T01:12:00.000-07:00

Crete, a Cretan, says, “All Cretans are liars.”

Suppose every Cretan besides Crete is a liar—then it’s false that ‘all Cretans are liars’, since Crete (who is a Cretan, remember) is telling the truth. If any Cretan tells the truth, then it’s false that ‘all Cretans are liars’.

Suppose every Cretan, including Crete, is a liar—then it would be true that ‘all Cretans are liars’. But if it’s true that all ‘all Cretans are liars’ then whatever Crete says must be false, in which case it’s false that ‘all Cretans are liars’.

How about a third interpretation? Suppose, at t –2, it’s true that ‘all Cretans are liars’. Suppose further, at t –1, Crete says, “All Cretans are liars.” But at t –1 it’s false that ‘all Cretans are liars’ (since Crete is telling the truth), hence Crete is lying when he says, “All Cretans are liars.” So he doesn’t contradict himself when he says, at t –1, that, “All Cretans are liars.” But if this is right, then there is no paradox. For if Crete is lying when he says, “All Cretans are liars,” then we can say, without paradox, “It’s true that ‘all Cretans are liars, including Crete at t-1.’”

I hereby dub the third interpretation, “The non-paradoxical recursive interpretation.”

Transcendence and Transfiguration.

2009-03-31T21:08:00.000-07:00

May the perish on which I was born,
And the night in which it was said,
‘A male child is conceived.’
May that day be darkness;
May God above not seek it,
Nor the light shine upon it.
May darkness and the shadow of death claim it;
May a cloud settle on it;
May the blackness of the day terrify it.
As for the night, my darkness seize it;
May it not rejoice among the days of the year,
May it not come into the number of months.
Oh, may that night be barren!
May no joyful shout come into it!
May those curse it who curse the day,
Those who are ready to arouse Leviathan.
May the stars of its morning be dark;
May it look for light, but have none,
And not see the dawning of the day;
Because it did not shut up the doors of my mother’s womb,
Nor hide sorrow from my eyes.

This passage couldn’t be so dark if there wasn’t so much Light shinning through.

I used to have this passage memorized. That was back when God and I talked more.

Kaplan's considerations.

2009-03-31T15:55:00.000-07:00

Whomsoever says, “I am here now” speaks truly. Is it a necessary truth? Nope. It’s not necessary de re that I am here now. De dicto, however, if “I am here now” is true, then necessarily, I am here now.

What of the following: “Necessarily, anyone who says, “I am here now” speaks truly”? I think this is another instance of the de dicto reading. After all, the proposition seems to pick out a relation between a state of affairs (i.e. “being here now”) with a proposition correctly expressing such a state of affairs (i.e. the sentence “I am here now” that expressed the true proposition “I am here now.")

...?

How to (dis)solve the 'Liar's Paradox' redux:

2009-03-21T15:26:00.000-07:00

(1) Proposition (1) is false.
(2) Proposition (1) merely refers- it has no first-order predicate.
(3) The second-order predicates of 'truth' and 'falsity' supervene on first-order predication.
(4) (1), having no first-order predicate, cannot have the second-order predicates of 'truth' or 'falsity' (i.e. (1) is not a proposition)
(5) Since (1) cannot be true or false, it cannot generate a paradox.
(6) Therefore, there is no "Liar's Paradox".

.:addendum:.

As the Philosopher says:
"None of the above is said just by itself in any affirmation, but by the combination of these with one another an affirmation is produced. For every affirmation, it seems, is true or false; but of things said without any combination none is either true or false (e.g. 'man', 'white', 'runs', 'wins', ['proposition (1)']."

Categories IV, 5-10.

.

2009-03-21T15:21:00.001-07:00

God hates divorce.

Yearning for chrysalis.

2009-03-15T17:04:00.000-07:00

I’m incredibly broken. Looking back on my relationship history all I see is a myriad of brokenness. I hesitate to even write because I’m afraid of false confession- of seeking pity, of finding an outlet for my self-loathing, of embarking upon pathetic self-pity. I’m even disgusted at the plausibility that admitting this is just another form of it on a higher level. At some level I’m sure it probably is. At another level I’m also being honest. I have faith the Holy Spirit will help me discern the difference. The Holy Spirit will help me confess. He’ll give me room to mourn without letting it bleed into disingenuous self-pity.

It may be out of cowardice, or it may be out of genuine self-assessment and humility, but I long to be wrapped into a cocoon where I can be shaped into a man who knows how to love and be loved in return. I need the incubation period so I can stop destroying others and abusing myself. My self-development is completely out of my hands- I’ve tried and tried and just don’t have the resources, on my own, to build myself up anew. I know that where I’m going is something that is latent within me as potential, but I’m completely incapable of initiating and guiding the process on my own.

“Become who you are!” Nietzsche implores me. But he gives me no means whereby I can. How can I, as he puts it, pull myself from my own bootstraps and cause myself to be?

And then the Holy Spirit shouts back at me with a delicate voice saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”

I long for Your Kingdom. I long for all things to be made anew. I long for the end of violence of strife, of pity and shame. I long to love You as I think I love myself- I long to love others the way You love me. Raise me up anew. Shape me and form into your Image, the Image of your Only Begotten.

“Lord, I believe! But help me in my unbelief!”

Let me hear Wisdom’s voice. Place me beside the way, where the paths meet. Put me by Your doorstep, fix my eyes so I watch for You at the gates. I wish to find You so I can find Life. I wish I will daily be Your delight, so You can rejoice in Your inhabited world.

The problem of divine foreknowledge sans time isn't one.

2009-02-04T13:18:00.000-08:00

Suppose time is an illusion. If this were true, there would be no problem of “divine foreknowledge”, and here’s why.

The problem of divine foreknowledge is a problem about truthmakers and propositions. To say God knows at t1 that ‘Derek will write this blog at t2’ entails that ‘Derek will write this blog at t2’ is inevitable. For if it’s not inevitable that ‘Derek will write this blog at t2’ then it’s possible for me to cause God to have a false belief, which is impossible.

Attempts have been made to avoid the problem of inevitability by saying that the reason why God believes at t1 'Derek will write this blog at t2' is because I, at t2, write this blog. Had I decided to not write this blog at t2, then God would have believed something different at t1; namely, that ‘at t2 Derek will not write [a] blog’. I think this works, conceptually speaking, but it still seems to reek of inevitability. Suppose it is the case that had I chose not to write this blog at t2 and consequently at t1 God believes I won’t a write a blog at t2. Nevertheless, because God knows at t1 I will not write this blog at t2, it seems that it is inevitable that I don’t.

So let’s try to avoid this queer predicament by introducing a queerer one. Suppose that there is no time, in which case propositions cannot sensibly be time-indexed. So suppose I write this blog, then God knows that I write this blog. Suppose I didn’t write this blog, then God would know I didn’t. Hence there’s no problem of divine foreknowledge, since there’s nothing for God to ‘foreknow’.

Aside from the violence denying the existence of time would do to our common sense notions of causation and-well, time, it might be objected that denying the existence of time might entail determinism (and hence the inevitability of my actions) In the following way.

(1) Assuming there is no such thing as time, then whatever I do already happened. If what I do already happened, then whatever I will do is inevitable.

I think this argument fails because it employs temporal language, which is language that, ex hypothesi, cannot be applied to non-temporal states of affairs. The word “already” is a temporal notion, meaning something like “before time x”. The same goes for the use “I will” in the consequent clause: to say “whatever I will do” is to employ temporal language because the sense of “I will” means something like “whatever I will do later”. But if time doesn’t exist, then it’s misleading (indeed, incoherent) to describe a timeless state of affairs using temporal language. Hence (1) fails to substantiate the thesis that a timeless state of affairs entails determinism.

On considering occasionalism.

2009-01-16T15:18:00.002-08:00

I’m now in the position to grant Hume his critique of causation. To say that A caused B to happen in the metaphysical sense is tantamount to saying that there is something about A the necessitated B to happen. But, as Hume so annoyingly points out, there’s nothing to recommend our thinking there is something about A that necessitated B to happen. And thus there is little sense to saying that, in the metaphysical sense, A caused B to happen. Thus, on Hume’s view, events are constantly conjoined, and that’s all there is to say.

Or is there.

Sure. Because I can’t, for the life of me, begin to comprehend what it is about A that necessitates B to happen (in the strict modal sense of “necessary”), I don’t even know how to argue against Hume on this front. So be it. There is no necessary connection between As and Bs. But it can’t be that the constant conjunction between events that we perceive is just how the world must be. To say so tacitly assumes that saying so is self-evident in just the same way as it is for the non-Humean to say ‘A just is the cause of B’. So, Hume is obliged to explain to us why it is that events are constantly conjoined as they are.

I’m sure he’d respond by saying the answer to such a question is beyond our kin. I agree. If God exists, then every event depends upon His will, and since God doesn’t act from necessity, a world that is constantly conjoined is the very type of world we would expect the world to be like if God created it.

Hence, I now am motivated to be an occasionalist about efficient causation.

Idle thoughts.

2009-01-12T10:44:00.000-08:00

The digital representation of an analog clock; I can't get over it.

results just in!

2008-12-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

Let me preface this by saying that the last time I had all As in a single semester was way back in Junior High. So I'm not bragging.

Anyway, my anticipated grades this semester:

Classical Metaphysics: A- (primary reason: My professor got his PhD from Yale and is himself a full-blown Platonist and I decided to write my paper on Plato; doing better than an A- is simply impossible.)

Phil of Religion: A-/B+ (primary reason: Even though I think I've more or less mastered the content relative to my peers and I made some novel arguments in my paper, Dr. Speak is a tough grader when it comes to clarity and style, and my paper was extremely foggy and disheveled at times. )

Phil of Science: A (primary reason: Dr. Shanahan was the most all around meticulous grader by far (just take a look at his four part/8,000+ word syllabus!). Knowing this from day one, however, forced me to try really hard.

Actual Results:

Classical Metaphysics: A-

Phil. of Religion: A (biggest surprise!)

Phil. of Science: A

Concerning my success. I'd like to thank the Academy (you know, the academic one), for giving me an opportunity to prove myself despite my unworthy undergraduate GPA. I'd like to thank my parents (especially my Mom) for their constant encouragement. I'd like thank my friends, specifically Louis, James, and Tim, for their encouragement and inspiration. Most importantly, I'd like to thank my Triune God for existence, viz. everything.

the world as religious experience?

2008-12-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

Scratch that- the world as experiencing the Divine. I don't think the word 'religious' refers to anything, and its meaning as use is dubious in 94% of the contexts to which it is used. Anyway, I found this awesome website elucidating spatial dimensions via visual representation. I think it's awesome, and it engendered in me another avenue in my love and wonder for God. It also makes me wish I was better at math. I really think Louis Swingrover would really appreciate it. The videos are relaxing too- they make make me less anxious during sleepless nights. Math therapy anyone? I'd definitely get a MA in that if they offered it! I've actually moved my position from 'contra' to 'agnostic' concerning the fourth dimension because of these videos. I still think that time could never be a spatial dimension, but I now believe that there is a possible world with more than three spatial dimensions.

Here it is: the dimensions

It's okay to shoot the innocent person!

2008-12-06T18:33:00.001-08:00

So (Bernard) Williams’ supposed reductio against consequentialism (or any ethical theory that doesn’t take agency central or seriously enough) goes as follows (or something like what follows):

We’re exploring in some Central/South American (excuse the foregoing equivocation) Country and we come across the following state of affairs. The Dictator of the country we’re in has, as a means to terrorize a rebel faction, rounded up twenty farmers who have nothing to do with the ongoing conflict, and he intends to shoot all of them. When we arrive on the scene the Dictator explains to us that he’s willing to spare 19 if we’re willing to shoot one of the farmers. So what should we do? Do we let twenty people die or do we agree to shoot one?

When I was presented with this “ethical dilemma” in class a few weeks ago my initial response was to articulate a Rambo Clause: we should do neither and instead shoot the Dictator. But, Dr. Speak explained that that option isn’t playing fair and we need to stick to the actual dilemma and not change the rules.

Fine, I thought, and after about 12 seconds of reflection I opted that we shoot one as a means to saving the 19. My intuition, though, didn’t have to do with any consequentialist reason really, but I didn’t realize this at the time. Suffice to say that everyone in the class who spoke up disagreed with me, including Dr. Speak. Dr. Speak explained to me that the reason why I ought not involve myself with shooting one to save twenty is because I shouldn’t ignore negative duties (don’t harm people) for the sake of positive ones (save people). After he pointed this out to me I recanted my position and became a lot less morally suspect to the rest of the class.

But a few nights ago I thought about Williams’ case again and felt that our account had left something significant out. Not knowing exactly what I began to construct what I thought to be a parallel case to see if it might elicit a different response.

So my case goes something like this. Suppose we’re traveling deep in the Siberian tundra of the former Soviet Union (suppose we’re pilots who got shot down while on an U2 spy mission) and we come across the following situation. Off in the distance we see a huge concrete building with hammers and sickles and Cyrillic writing all over it. We hike over and go inside and we find ourselves perched in a second story room that looks over 20 isolated concrete rows, each with a person on the end, and on the other side of each row we see hydraulic walls that are closing in on the to-be victims. We quickly realize that they’re going to be crushed. We look around our perch a bit and see a big red button that has a picture of twenty people on it and one of the twenty people has two Xs for eyes- representing that one of them is dead. Underneath the button it says (we translate it from the Russian, we’re spies!): “Push this button to stop 19 of the 20 hydraulic walls.” What should we do? Push the button, which will kill one, but save 19? Or do nothing and watch 20 die? I think, clearly, we should push the button. And further, not pushing the button is morally suspect.

I sent this (what I thought to be) counterexample to Williams’ case to Dr. Speak via e-mail. His response was that my case doesn’t represent a conflict of duties, since in pressing the red button I’m not actually hurting anyone myself; I’m only saving people. But this means that my case is disparate from Williams’, since his case represents a conflict in duties, and so my case is no counterexample.

Fine, I thought, and so I tweaked my case a bit. Suppose that when we hit the red button all 20 hydraulic walls stop and one of them is replaced by whole new hydraulic wall and this new hydraulic wall proceeds down the row and crushes one of the twenty. This case, then, so it seems anyway, is parallel to Williams’ Dictator case in that in both cases the death of an innocent person is causally initiated by our agency. But despite this fact, however, it still seems that we should press the button (which is equivalent, thereby justifiable, to shooting a person in Williams' case).

But why think this? Why think it’s okay in both these cases to bring about the death of an innocent person? I think our responsibility for the death of an innocent person in both cases is absolved because both cases exhibit causal overdetermination. Whether or not we decide to kill one person it’s still nevertheless true that the person we would have killed if we chose to would have been killed even if we didn’t choose to kill them. Because no matter what we choose the same person will die, the fact of causal overdermination, i.e. that fact that the same person inevitably dies, trumps our responsibility in their death. Thus, the fact of causal overdetermination in both cases renders our choice to be either: (1) one person dies, or (2) 20 die. In which case we ought to choose the former, and further, not choosing (1) is morally suspect.

Does anyone think I’m crazy? Does anyone disagree?

may fortune smile upon you.

2008-12-02T04:53:00.000-08:00

Wikipedia’s December 1st news summary reads something like this:

-conflict
-death
-destruction
-chaos
- Jupiter and Venus are above a crescent waxing moon. This makes it look like a ‘smiley face’
__________________________________

This prompted me to think up an atheological argument:

(1) If God exists he wouldn’t make smiley-faces out of the heavenly bodies when there’s so many miserable things happening on planet earth.
(2) Jupiter and Venus and the moon are smiling at us and the world is full of misery.
(3) Therefore, God doesn’t exist.

Oh atheism. How I long to make you this rational.

Husserl or Aquinas?

2008-11-16T16:30:00.001-08:00

I get to register for classes tomorrow for the upcoming semester and here’s what I plan on taking:

Symbolic Logic w/ Dr. Baehr
Free Will, Deliberation, and Personal Identity w/ Dr. Speak (Directed Study)
And either Husserl or Aquinas- I can’t decide!

Reasons for and against Husserl and Aquinas.

St. Thomas Aquinas:

pro

(1) The Scholastic Genius will sharpen my Theology.
(2) Philosophical Theology, if not my intended area of specialty, is my first love.
(3) The prof. went to Notre Dame, which might help me out in the recommendation department. (I want to go to Notre Dame)
(4) Learning Aquinas from an actual Thomist would be awesome.

Contra

(1) The Scholastics are way too Aristotelian- this isn’t a problem because I don’t like Aristotle (although there’s hardly a consensus on the fundamentals of Aristotle’s thought) it’s just that it’s very difficult not to read the Scholastics anachronistically.
(2) The prof. is an ethics specialist- and that’s not my interest or forte.

Edmund Husserl

Pro

(1) I’m a huge fan of intentionality and studying a major pioneer of the concept will be edifying.
(2) Phenomenology seems like a promising way of avoiding the pitfalls of the Way of Ideas and consequently defeating skepticism.

Contra

(1) I’m completely unfamiliar with Husserl’s actual work and also the immediate context of his thought, which makes for a lot of hard work and possibly being one of those students who asks a lot dumb questions.
(2) The prof. seems to be more continental-oriented which means we might be butting heads on issues of methodology as well as what we take to be “the problems worth solving” or even worse “what problems there are”.

So can anyone assume my point of view and help me make a decision?

Against coerced charity.

2008-11-15T03:30:00.000-08:00

The Master Argument:

Charity cannot be coerced.

Now onto the substantive argument. Consider Len, a man who is a hard worker and has been visited by the following misfortune: he loses his job and will starve to death if he doesn’t get any food.

Consider Bob, a man who works hard but doesn’t lose his job.

Len asks Bob for some food and Bob refuses and then when Bob isn’t paying attention Len takes some of Bob’s food and eats it. Here’s two questions I have, as well as what I think to be their respective (correct) answers:

(1) Was it immoral for Bob not to give Len some food? Yes.

(2) Was it immoral for Len to take Bob’s food against Bob’s will? Yes.

I answered “yes” to (1) because I think Bob has an obligation to Len to help him out and I answered “yes” to (2) because I think Len has an obligation to Bob not to steal Bob’s food. So both Len and Bob are immoral. The juicy question is: is the fact that Len is starving have any bearing on (2)? I think most people might think so and I suppose they think so on the following ground:

(3) It’s morally permissible to steal so long as it’s to save someone’s life.

But (3) is clearly false. Consider Shelly, a woman who works for a nonprofit organization that provides food for starving children in Canada. She comes a knockin’ at Bob’s door and asks him to donate some money to feed the starving in Canada. Bob, being his usual self, says no. But because Shelly is committed to the truth of (3) she hacks into Bob’s bank account and transfers half of Bob’s life savings into her organization’s fund. Should Shelly be thrown in prison? Yes. And therefore (3) is false. Now just as it was with Len I think Bob had an obligation to help the starving in Canada- so I agree that Bob was immoral for not donating money. But the point I would like to make is that because (3) is false, the mere fact that A has an obligation to help B and A is immoral for being unwilling to help B, the fact of A’s being immoral for not helping B doesn’t justify nor lessen the moral offense if B were to steal from A. Stealing is just as immoral as not helping someone. Period.

Therefore,

(4) All Government welfare programs, if not unanimously willed by the people, are unjust.

You may not find this argument convincing, but that’s irrelevant. Unless you can defeat this argument you must accept (4)!

A Culturalist's Manifesto

2008-11-06T00:55:00.000-08:00

1. Culturalism is the doctrine that some cultures are superior to others and therefore there is such a thing as a superior culture.

2. Culturalism must be distinguished from Racism, for a Culturalist says that it is one’s culture that is the proper object of criticism, not one’s skin pigment.

3. The Culturalist maintains the criterion for determining whether or not one culture is superior to another is Love. If culture A is, on the whole, a more loving culture than B, then surely culture A is superior than culture B.

4. The Culturalist recognizes that just because Culture A is, on the whole, superior than culture B, it doesn’t follow that culture A is the most superior culture, for even though culture A might be a more loving culture than B, A could be more loving in regards to issue X than it actually is.

5. A Culturalist recognizes that her own culture is probably not the most superior culture possible, and therefore her own culture ought to be subject to criticism as well.

6. A Culturalist recognizes that he there might be a better criterion for evaluating the superiority of a culture than Love. Though she seriously doubts this, she welcomes any cogent argument to the contrary, because in being open to finding a better criterion for evaluating the superiority of cultures she would then have the opportunity to improve her own culture.

7. The antithesis to Culturalism is Multiculturalism- the thesis that all cultures are equally good and therefore there is no such thing as a superior culture. Culturalists reject Multiculturalism on the grounds that such nonsense amounts to Nihilism. A reductio against Multiculturalism, says the Culturalist, goes like this:
(1) All cultures are equally good.
(2) Nazi Germany is a culture.
(3) Nazi Germany* (a culture identical to Nazi Germany but was manifestly against any form of genocide) is a culture.
(4) By (1), (2) and (3) are morally equivalent.
(5) If Nazi Germany’s culture is morally equivalent to Nazi Germany*’s culture than the words “good” and “moral” do not mean anything.
(6) If moral terms do not mean anything, then moral Nihilism is true.
(7) But (5) is false, and therefore we must reject (1)
And since (1) is equivalent to the thesis of Multiculturalism, we must reject Multiculturalism.

8. The Culturalist maintains that any attempt to correlate one’s race with one’s culture inevitably entails racism- for if to be a member of a certain race has essentially something to do with being a member of certain culture it must be the case that some races are superior than others. Thankfully it’s empirically false that race and culture are so related, because two Caucasian people can be representative of two divergent, incongruous, and discontinuous cultures.

9. The Culturalist’s thesis that there such thing as a superior culture is equivalent to the thesis that Mankind is one.

star slight

that game's stupid

whilst at CVS.

on the Dark Ages.

why do I find it so hard

on being "scientific".

that's just the way it is.

on [the state of] human nature.

maybe.

for the Devil's advocate.

on Kate Durbin on the omnipresence of fashion.

you just *are* your constitution.

Aristotle's cloak.

on whether God can be mocked.

moral responsibility.

some things are better left unsaid.

the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

on being a person.

how bizarre.

fatalism and divine foreknowledge.

sentence of the year.

so why do you do philosophy?

excluded middle vs. bivalence.

in Him all things live and move and have their being.

on a wonderful thing.

some of my students' answers.

self-vitiating.

the necessity of the past redux.

on the necessity of the past.

fatalism.

a reductio of classical moral psychology?

on an inscription at the oracle at Delphi.

and they will become one flesh.

you've got to be kidding me.

on moral capitulation.

L.P.

on how to write a real tragedy.

on one half of virtue.

on reducing the first person to the third.

December 24th, MCMXLI.

the show goes on.

felix culpa.

on stupid phrases.

moral psychology: contra the classical view.

so what are my chances? I mean, *objectively*

two equally foolish theses.

The Kingdom of God

the anti-razor.

Aristotle is a non-vegetable, and someone else is not.

de re et de dicto.

chivas regal 12.

The “Lazy Aristotle” Fallacy

Watership Down.

on critiquing first-order, oh wait, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, …. ad nauseam, vanity.

towards a panentheism.

so it wasn't before?

a thought.

I never claimed to understand what happens after dark.

St. Augustine with a pocket full of punches.

not paradoxical.

on inconceivability and impossibility.

The Peripatetic on unactualized possibilities.

(im)possible colors.

on the necessity of necessity.

"112 tomahawk cruise missiles rain down on Libyan air-defenses."

towards a moderate neo-Luddism.

I wish I never showed you me.

on intrinsic value.

defending the helpless.

wise words.

.,:':.?/!;"*"_-('_"."~!?

My right ear scraped a buckle.

God doesn't care about oxen.

Happy B*day Jon!

I got 99 problems but fatalism's not one.

On the Port-au-Prince Disaster.

I never thought I could say this.

off the cuff.

Look closely...

desiderata for a theory of personal identity. pt. 1

you just are your constitution.

so what are my chances? I mean, objectively