Tag: philosophy

The bitterness of broken ideals

John C. Wright pens a long, far-ranging, and insightful essay, beginning, of all things, with a quasi-Noir SF novel written by Keith Laumer. This is the section I found to be of particular interest, defining as it does the four schools of modern applied philosophy.

Usually the books that have the profoundest effect on us are those
encountered in the green youth of early adulthood, in the late teens or
early twenties, which provide some schema or structural explanation of
the complexities of life young adults so dearly need to orient
themselves. In my case, however, there is at least one book I
encountered later in life which provided a framework of pellucid clarity
for understanding the relation of schools of thought one to another.
There is many a student who regards the description in Plato’s REPUBLIC
of the degrees of the degeneration of the state as just such an
epiphany. This was to me what the REPUBLIC was to them. It comes from a
tract called NIHILISM by a man who delights in the name Archmonk Brother Seraphim Rose, albeit he was born Eugene Rose.

Rose’s scheme groups the schools of thought of Western man as he falls away from Christianity into four general categories.

The first school of thought is the classical liberal position of the
pragmatic man, which says that religious opinion is a private matter
that ought not to disturb the public weal by insisting on any special or
central position in life. Instead of God as the source and center and
summit of civilized life, or precise theologically defined dogmas
addressed to the last nuance, we should have instead a rogue and vague
dogma saying only that each man should mind his own business.

In this school, each man is free to seek his own pleasures in his own
way, climb to the summit of his ambitions without necessarily stepping
on those below him (but not necessarily giving him a hand either). We
all must agree only on general rules of civility and good sportsmanship
needed for public order; we need encourage and obey the civic virtues of
teamwork and self sacrifice where needed to keep the family, the city,
and the market free from fraud, trespass, or invasion, and perhaps to
curb such gross immorality or bad taste as pollutes the public weal.
Each man must show respect for the religious opinions of others without
showing uncomely zeal for his own.

In this school, ideals are impractical, because the world is
imperfect and cannot be made perfect; but civic virtue and the prudent
exercise of liberty and civilized tolerance of the dissent of others,
which is their prudent exercise of their liberty, is crucial. A healthy
respect for what are called ‘Judeo-Christian Values’ is crucial to the
civil order. God is not crucial.

Ironically, this is the liberal position as classically understood,
characterized by Locke and other Enlightenment writers, what would now
be called conservative. To avoid confusion, let us call this pragmatic and man-centric school
of thought ‘Worldliness.’ They want to leave heaven alone and tend to
business here on earth. They are hard-headed and hard-hearted men,
idealistic only for ideals that work, impatient with theory, concerned
with results.

The second school of thought is the sharp rebellion against this.
Where the Worldly position seeks worldly wealth, civic peace, and the
comfort of conformity in opinion, the radical rebellion seeks Heaven on
Earth, Utopian visions made solid, and all pragmatism is rejected as
treason against the Great Dream of the great cause. Religion and
Worldliness are rejected with scorn in favor of Ideology. Ideals are
impractical, so this school holds, only because men are weak vessels too
selfish to practice them: all the world could be made perfect if only
sufficient force was used on weak men by a sufficiently enlightened and
despotic Glorious Leader.

The only Ideology to afflict the modern era is Socialism and its
various mild epigones, Fabianism, Leftism, Feminism, Environmentalism,
Political Correctness,  and other Marxist offshoots. Nowadays they are
accustomed to deny their Marxist roots, but gaily and liberally use
simplistic Marxist myths about oppressors and oppressed to analyze human
relations between man and workingman, man and women, man and nature,
man and ideas. The relation is one of a ruthless Darwinian struggle for
survival between man and fill-in-the-blank, and even saying “he” rather
than “he and she” is defined as an act of oppression.

In this school, freedom is dismissed as selfishness and sacrificed to
the common good or the Great Dream of the Utopian vision. Man lives for
his neighbor, or, to be precise, for the Utopian vision. The only rules
demanded are those of loyalty to the Great Dream; disobedience of civil
authority either peaceful or violent or manically bloodthirsty is
allowed or required. All institutions of the state and church and civil
society are to be smashed, or, in the less violent version of the
Ideology, subverted, suborned, and subordinated to the Utopian vision.
Only the Great Dream merits love, loyalty, respect, honesty, courtesy;
only the Great Dream has rights; anyone disloyal to the Great Dream is
an enemy. Life is crusade.

Hatred of God and Man, hatred of Judeo-Christian and indeed all
civilized values of any sort, is required in the long run, albeit a
pretense of respecting ideals such as compassion for the poor or the
equality of man is needed during the initial subversive period, to gain
the aid of useful idiots.

Because this school of thought changes its name and its public
rationale as frequently as the fashion industry changes the height of
skirt hems, and because this school is fundamentally subversive, that
is, fundamentally based on an inner circle deceiving the useful idiots
of an outer circle who believe the opposite of the movement’s true
purpose, no unambiguous name can be assigned these ideologues.

They are Socialists in economic issues, feminists on family
questions, Greens on questions of industrial policy, Race-baiters and
Hatemongers on questions of face, absurdist in art and vulgarians in
culture, totalitarians in politics but libertarians when it comes to
questions of vice and victimless crimes. They are materialists on
philosophical issues, secularists on religious issues, pacifists on
military issues (unless the question is civil war and the overthrow of
their own institutions, whereupon they are bloodthirsty warhawks and
apologists, nay, groupie and shrieking bobbysoxers of the world’s
filthiest dictators).

In sum, they are idolaters who substitute the worship of Caesar for
the worship of Christ; they are Gnostics in the posture of eternal
rebellion both against God in Heaven and civil society on Earth. They
are chameleons who adopt any ideals or values or party lines needed for
so long as needed to destroy them, including Pragmatism, including
Worldliness. They are Politically Correct and factually incorrect.

They seek to destroy civilized institutions here on Earth and drag
Utopia down from heaven to replace them, indifferent, or even glorying,
in the bloodshed required.

To avoid confusion, let us call them Ideologues. They are utterly
unworldly, rejecting the pragmatism of the Worldly Man as cold and
loveless and unspiritual. The Ideologues are as nearly a pure evil as mankind has ever produced
or can imagine, but please note that their motives are the highest and
noblest imaginable: they seek things of the spirit, peace on earth, food
for the poor, dignity given to all men, and all such things which are
the only things, the holy things, that can electrify dull mankind and
stir him to take up the banner and trumpet and shining lance of high and
holy crusade.

The pure putrefaction of their evil springs from their materialist
philosophy, which says that man can create Eden on Earth, and overthrow
the Curse on Adam that he must labor for his bread, overthrow the Curse
of Eve, that says she will be subject to her husband, and over throw the
curse on the snake, that says he will be bruised. Merely reaching out
one’s hand, breaking all the laws of reason and morality, will allow
one’s eyes to be opened, and to be God.

The materialist philosophy says that in a godless world all we need
do to overthrow the laws of economics and the limits of human nature is
shed enough blood and make enough sacrifices of other innocent people,
and the mouths of endless cornucopias will be opened. You cannot make an
omelet without a genocide of innocent eggs, and without Walter Duranty
to get a Pulitzer for lying his ass off about it.

The Ideologue is a revulsion of the Worldly Man and his civilized
pragmatism. The Worldly Man accepts necessary evils. The Worldly Man is
willing to go to war for peace, and willing to tolerate his neighbor for
peace. The Ideologue tolerates no one and nothing, not even an unspoken
thought, if it is against the Party, against the Program, against the
Great Leader, or against the Great Dream. The Ideologue is a
heresy-hunter. But he is also a coward, since he is not willing to go to
war; it revolts him that reality makes war necessary. He thinks peace
comes from placating enemies with gifts, or enlightening them through
education to the wonders of the Great Dream.

A third school of thought is in sharp rebellion against the first
two. These are Otherworldly types, Theosophists and Spiritualists and
New Age gurus and believers in various Americanized forms of Buddhism or
Witchcraft or Astrology who utterly reject both the materialistic
worldliness of the Worldly Man, and the fanaticism and bloodlust of the
Ideologue.

The Otherworldly Men seek peace through renunciation, and escape from
the turmoil of life through the pursuit of inner tranquility, perhaps
aided by mystic visions, meditations, or voices from the outer worlds,
or hallucinogenic drugs. Not for them the looming smokestack of the scientifically planned
socialist utopia of the Ideologues, nor the loud billboards and hungry
strip malls of the Worldly. They want to live in Hobbiton, or Arcadia,
of with the tribes that only exist in the imagination of Rousseau, noble
savages in harmony with nature, or perhaps the movie DANCES WITH WOLVES
or AVATAR (not the real one).

This movement has never been numerous enough to merit its own name,
and although it often combined with the Ideologues their enemies against
their mutual enemies the Worldly Men, the Otherworldly Men have no
name. Call them Spiritualists.

The Spiritualists are utterly unpragmatic and irrational about their
religious sentiments. They are the type of men who believe in angels but
not in God. They have no use for theology or reasoning about spiritual
or moral issues, much less metaphysics. They are the dilettante and
aesthetes of the spirit world, seeking sensation rather than
understanding, novelty rather than certainty, seeking a spiritual truth
that will serve them and flatter them and provide for them, not a God
whom they must serve.

They feel toward the things of the spirit what the Worldly Man feels
towards worldly goods in the marketplace. The only thing the
Spiritualist does not want is a final answer, an organized religion, a
Church. They want to hear gossip from the Ghost of Cleopatra but not
words of power from the Prophet Jeremiah. The only thing the spiritual
seeker does not want is for the Holy Spirit to come to find him, and to
find him out.

The Spiritualists are as nearly worthless in peace or war as it is
possible for any warm bodies occupying space and breathing in otherwise
useful oxygen can be, but their motive is noble and high and pure. They
suffer the same revulsion about worldliness and the same yearning for
something better than war as does a hermit standing on a pillar in the
desert.

Their drive is indeed purely spiritual, but it does not drive them
toward the only reality worth seeking in the spirit world, namely, the
Holy Spirit. Hence the effort is self-centered, reaches nowhere,
inspires no social revolutions, builds no observatories, erects no
universities, opens no charity hospitals, captures no Holy Lands, kills
no Saracens, galvanizes no missionaries to spread the Good News of
Fashionable Theosophist Blither to the enlightened savages. Charity, the
burning love of the Christian, is impossible in the Spiritualist
framework because charity requires an objective standard of values, a
living truth as terrible as unquenchable fire, and not merely a selfish
seeking for truth.

Although much less violent and much, much, much less
dishonest than the Ideologues, the Spiritualists are also, ironically,
farther from God and farther from the truth. The Ideologue is at least
willing to join a crusade, man a barricade, march in a protest, send
money and mash notes to gangsters in Russia and sadists in Cuba, and
falsify news reports about the murders and enormities of their fellow
travelers.

The Ideologue has a perverted ideal of charity toward the poor and
downtrodden in the same way that the homosexual has a perverted ideal of
romantic love; and it is just as sterile and vile. But in the same way
that the sodomite at least is a step above masturbation, in that his
love at least turns outward toward another man, the Ideologue is at
least concerned with destroying allegedly unjust social institutions
such as church and state and marriage and sanity, whereas the
Spiritualist wishes, like the shy cenobite, to withdraw from the shock
and jar of the world and seek the ineffable in private. Spiritualism is
the otherworldly version of the Sin of Onan.

The final school of thought is not a school of thought at all, but an
exhausted rejection of thought. This is Nihilism, and it is the
dominant philosophy of our age, and the unspoken assumption underlying
nearly every major social policy debated or enacted today.

Nihilism is the metaphysical posture that no truth is actually true.
If no truth is true, life is what you yourself have the strength of will
to decree it to be, like God separating Light from Darkness at the dawn
of time, by fiat. If no truth is true, no flag is truly worth dying for
or fighting for or even arguing about, and no marriage is final and no
contract is binding and your word of honor means nothing, and you owe
your friends no loyalty.

If no truth is true, the only impermissible sin is to believe and preach and practice the truth.

Nihilism shares with Worldliness its patience for dissent. Since no
truth is true, there is no point in disagreeing with another man, nor
even having a deep conversation with him on any topic, not even to
discover whether he disagrees or not.

Nihilism shares with Ideologues its contempt for worldly and material
things, for ambition and self-made men. None of these things are worth
seeking in and of themselves, but only if you, in your godlike
self-sovereignty, deem or decree them to be worth seeking.

Nihilism shares with Spiritualism its distaste for theology or reason or organized religion.

The Nihilist lives in a formless void, and believes only in himself,
his willpower, his self image and his self esteem. His motto is that
life is what you make it.

He sees the long and tragic history of man, with all its kings and
slaves and wars and empires and monarchs and democracies and despots and
with all its philosophers and saints and sages, and sees that none of
these things have brought peace.

And so he condemns all systems, all sagacity and all saintliness to
oblivion, and promises that as soon as men realize that there is nothing
in the universe, then nothing will be worth fighting for, and man will
have peace.

The Nihilist does not mention that man will no longer be man in any
recognizable sense of the word, merely a dull lump of meat seeking to
beguile the hours with diversions both refined and profane until kindly
death relieves him of the intolerable burden of an conscious existence
he did not seek and does not use. Nihilism is the cult of death.

Unlike the Worldly Man, or the Ideologue, or the Spiritualist, the
Nihilist seeks nothing but to bolster his self esteem and entertain
himself to death. Nihilism is an end-state. There is no room for a
rebellion away from Nihilism because there is nothing away from which to
rebel.

The reason why I say the scheme of Seraphim Rose maps out the mental
landscape from now until the end of the world is that Nihilism is a dead
end. There is no further point of degeneration beneath which to fall.
Once your philosophy tells you all philosophy is vain, you cannot erect a
new philosophical variation on that foundation. There will never be
such a thing as Neo-Nihilism or Post-Nihilism.

The reason why I say the scheme is complete is that there are no
other major variations possible, once Christianity is abandoned, for a
worldview.

The whole essay is well worth the investment of time required.  Read it. His observation concerning Nihilism is particularly significant with regards to literature, especially SF/F literature. It is evident that we are in the process of seeing SF/F transform from the Ideologues like John Scalzi, Steven Gould, and their female acolytes who are far too trivial to bother naming, to the Nihilists such as George Martin and Joe Abercrombie, just as it previously transformed from the Worldly perspective of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov to the Ideologues.

Against these things stand the Traditionalists of the Empty Tomb. With MacDonald and Chesterton and Lewis and Tolkien we will stand, as unmoved and unimpressed by the Nihilists as we were by the Ideologues and the Spiritualists before them.  And while we can co-exist in mutual self-respect with the Worldly, we must recognize that our perspectives and philosophies are, in the end, fundamentally different, though not necessarily opposed.

The Moral Landscape revisited

A number of you have sent me this public challenge by Sam Harris:

It has been nearly three years since The Moral Landscape was
first published in English, and in that time it has been attacked by
readers and nonreaders alike. Many seem to have judged from the
resulting cacophony that the book’s central thesis was easily refuted.
However, I have yet to encounter a substantial criticism that I feel was
not adequately answered in the book itself (and in subsequent talks).

So I would like to issue a public challenge. Anyone who believes that
my case for a scientific understanding of morality is mistaken is
invited to prove it in 1,000 words or less. (You must address the
central argument of the book—not peripheral issues.) The best response
will be published on this website, and its author will receive $2,000.
If any essay actually persuades me, however, its author will receive
$20,000,* and I will publicly recant my view.

Submissions will be accepted here the week of February 2-9, 2014.

Needless to say, I will be submitting an entry. I’ve read the book and I’m very familiar with his approach. Sam Harris makes a regular habit of claiming he has answered his critics by way of anticipating them; he did the same in The End of Faith.  Let’s just say I don’t anticipate any trouble convincing anyone else that his thesis has been refuted, although convincing Mr. Harris himself may be considerably more difficult, especially considering the way he tried to weasel out of his perfectly straightforward statement on his belief in the ethical nature of killing people who subscribe to propositions considered to be sufficiently dangerous.

For those who are interested, here were my initial impressions after reading The Moral Landscape; my subsequent review of it, published on WorldNetDaily in November 2010, was as follows:

The Moral Landscape
Vox Day reviews Sam Harris’ case for using science to define morality

Sam Harris’ first two books were commercial successes and
intellectual failures. Riddled with basic factual and logical errors,
“The End of Faith” and “Letter to a Christian Nation” served as little
more than godless red meat snapped up by unthinking atheists around the
English-speaking world. His third book, “The Moral Landscape,” is also a
challenge to established wisdom, but it is a much more sober, serious
and interesting book than its predecessors.

The basis for the book is Harris’ own neuroscience experiments, in
which he tested his hypothesis that when hooked up to an fMRI scanner,
the human brain would produce an observable difference in its activity
when contemplating non-religious beliefs than when considering religious
beliefs. As it happens, the hypothesis was found to be incorrect, as
the same responses were elicited from both the believing group and the
non-believing group for religious and nonreligious stimuli alike. (Full
disclosure: I was one of the Christians asked by Mr. Harris to review
the religious stimuli to ensure their theological verisimilitude. In my
opinion, the questions utilized were both reasonable and fair.)

In “The Moral Landscape,” Sam Harris courageously attempts to address
the Problem of Morality that has plagued atheist philosophers since
Jean Meslier failed to realize the obvious consequences of his
declaration that every rational man could imagine better moral precepts
than Christianity possessed. As Harris notes, in the absence of a
morality derived from a religion, scientists and other secularists have
concluded that all morals are relative and there is therefore no
objective basis for preferring the moral precepts asserted by one
individual to those put forth by another, regardless of how monstrous
they might appear to a third party. This is why, aside from few
irrelevant rhetorical flourishes and one inexplicable personal jihad,
Harris’ arguments in the book are predominantly directed against his
fellow non-believers rather than theistic targets.

To his credit, Harris explicitly recognizes that he is making a
philosophical case, not a scientific one. This is a significant
improvement upon the first wave of New Atheist books, including Harris’
own pair, in which the various authors presented their intrinsically
philosophical cases in pseudo-scientific guise. However, there are three
argumentative flaws that pervade the book. Unfortunately, Harris
appears to have adopted Richard Dawkins’ favorite device of presenting a
bait-and-switch definition in lieu of a logically substantive argument.
He repeatedly utilizes the following technique:

1) Admittedly, X is not Y.

2) But can’t we say that X could be considered Z?

3) And Z is Y.

4) Therefore, X can be Y.

For example, in an attempt to get around Hume’s is/ought dichotomy,
Harris readily admits that “good” in the sense of “morally correct” is
not objectively definable and that what one individual perceives as good
can differ substantially from that which another person declares to be
“good.” So, he suggests the substitution of “well-being” for “good”
because there are numerous measures of “well-being,” such as life
expectancy, GDP per capita and daily caloric intake, that can be reduced
to numbers and are therefore measurable. After all, everyone
understands what it means to be in good health despite the fact that
“health” is not perfectly defined in an objective and scientific manner.
Right?

However, even if we set aside the obvious fact that the proposed
measures of well-being are of dubious utility – life expectancy does not
account for quality of life, GDP does not account for debt and more
calories are not always desirable – the problem is that Harris simply
ignores the way in which his case falls completely apart when it is
answered in the negative. No, we cannot simply accept that “moral” can
reasonably be considered “well-being” because it is not true to say that
which is “of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules
of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong” is more
than remotely synonymous with “that which fosters well-being in one or
more human beings.”

Harris’ second habitual flaw is one that was seen in his previous
books. That is to act as if admitting that a problem with his reasoning
exists is somehow tantamount to resolving the problem in his favor. He
appears to grasp that his philosophical consequentialism suffers from
the same democratic problem that caused philosophers to abandon
Benthamite utilitarianism as a prospective substitute for morality –
nine out of 10 individuals agree that gang rape enhances their
well-being – but he simply chooses to ignore the problem. In the notes,
he justifies this gaping hole in his argument by declaring that the
conceptual developments that have taken place since John Stuart Mill
died in 1873 “are generally of interest only to academic philosophers.”
That’s likely true, but it doesn’t excuse such a blatant evasion of a
known criticism nor does it help the self-confessed consequentialist
deal with the potentially nightmarish consequences of utilitarian
totalitarianism.

The third pervasive flaw is what after three books has become
recognizable as Harris’ customary intellectual carelessness. Time and
time again, he makes statements of fact that are easily disproved by the
first page of a Google search. For example, in an attempt to explain
that all opinions need not be equally respected and that not all
competing responses to moral dilemmas are equally valid, he brings up
the subject of corporal punishment:

“There are, for instance, twenty-one U.S. states that
still allow corporal punishment in their schools. … However, if we are
actually concerned about human well-being, and would treat children in
such a way as to promote it, we wonder whether it is generally wise to
subject little boys and girls to pain, terror, and public humiliation as
a means of encouraging their cognitive and emotional development. Is
there any doubt that this question has an answer? Is there any doubt
that it matters that we get it right? In fact, all the research
indicates that corporal punishment is a disastrous practice, leading to
more violence and social pathology – and, perversely, to greater support
for corporal punishment.”

– Sam Harris, “The Moral Landscape”

But “all the research” shows nothing of the kind. Sweden’s rate of
child abuse increased nearly 500 percent after spanking ban was
instituted in 1979 and is significantly higher than that of the United
States. In Trinidad, a paper titled “Benchmarking Violence and
Delinquency in the Secondary School: Towards a Culture of Peace and
Civility” concluded that a ban on corporal punishment in school had led
to indiscipline and even physical attacks on teachers. Dr. Robert E.
Larzelere of Oklahoma State has even published annotated studies
showing that what little scientific evidence has been produced to
support anti-spanking bans is not sound. One need not have a position on
corporal punishment to recognize that Harris did not, in fact, actually
look into the relevant research he cites so blithely.

This failure to
correctly establish a factual premise and build from it is found
throughout the book; Harris makes a habit of beginning with a conclusion
and belatedly attempting to support it with a statement of fact that is
often dubious and occasionally downright in error.

Still, Sam Harris is to be lauded for taking the moral bull by the
horns and bravely attempting to make the case for the possibility of a
secular and scientific morality. “The Moral Landscape” raises some
interesting questions and provides the reader with more than a little
material for thought. On the downside, Harris’ repeated attacks on Dr.
Francis Collins are unseemly as well as irrelevant to his topic; one
wonders what his editor was thinking to permit such a lengthy tangent
that is more indicative of a Victor Hugo novel than a serious scientific
work. And in the end, the reader is forced to conclude the argument for
a science-based morality presented in “The Moral Landscape” is even
more demonstrably incorrect than was the scientific hypothesis that
served as the original inspiration for the book.

Ensnaring the sophists

There was an interesting synchronicity between one of McRapey’s recent tweets and a text from the Organon that I was reading at the gym yesterday.


15 Aug

It’s interesting how many people clearly think they can argue well, who in fact can’t argue their way out of a paper bag.
I found his characteristically self-inflating implication to be more than a little amusing there, coming as it does from an individual who makes habitual use of the sophistical tactic that Aristotle described in De sophisticis elenchis as “ambiguity”, and, when called on it, once tried to justify its use because “a degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago”.  I imagine the educated reader can identify the logical fallacy there.

Now, it’s probably true that a lot number of people overrate their ability to argue; I may have helped a few of them better understand the effective limits of their ability right here on this blog. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what one thinks of one’s own ability to argue, what matters is what those who have actually observed one’s arguments think of them.

In any event, what I find more interesting than a perfectly normal inability to correctly self-assess is how most people are completely unable to expose false arguments despite the fact that the tools for doing so have been readily available for literally thousands of years. 

Rhetoric may be a little complicated for some to follow, but On Sophistical Refutations is relatively straightforward, it’s short, and it is well worth reading as it specifically identifies a number of basic tactics that are repeatedly utilized by those who are presenting invalid arguments, or as is often the case, presenting a false refutation of another’s argument.

 “Those ways of producing the false appearance of an argument which depend on language are six in number: they are ambiguity, amphiboly, combination, division of words, accent, form of expression. Of this we may assure ourselves both by induction, and by syllogistic proof based on this-and it may be on other assumptions as well-that this is the number of ways in which we might fall to mean the same thing by the same names or expressions.

“Arguments such as the following depend upon ambiguity. ‘Those learn who know: for it is those who know their letters who learn the letters dictated to them’. For to ‘learn’ is ambiguous; it signifies both ‘to understand’ by the use of knowledge, and also ‘to acquire knowledge’. Again, ‘Evils are good: for what needs to be is good, and evils must needs be’. For ‘what needs to be’ has a double meaning: it means what is inevitable, as often is the case with evils, too (for evil of some kind is inevitable), while on the other hand we say of good things as well that they ‘need to be’. Moreover, ‘The same man is both seated and standing and he is both sick and in health: for it is he who stood up who is standing, and he who is recovering who is in health: but it is the seated man who stood up, and the sick man who was recovering’. For ‘The sick man does so and so’, or ‘has so and so done to him’ is not single in meaning: sometimes it means ‘the man who is sick or is seated now’, sometimes ‘the man who was sick formerly’.

“Of course, the man who was recovering was the sick man, who really was sick at the time: but the man who is in health is not sick at the same time: he is ‘the sick man’ in the sense not that he is sick now, but that he was sick formerly.”

Aristotelian ambiguity is a tactic that is often used by sophistical interlocutors by claiming the right to assign to their opponent the only possible meaning of a word that the opponent has used, even when the other meanings of that word are much more readily applicable and the opponent has declared that the assigned meaning was not the meaning utilized.  The fact that this requires both a) mind-reading, and, b) the opponent’s ignorance of his own word-choice seldom slows the sophistical leftist down.

But then, Aristotle understood that for some people, the perception, (50,000 claimed daily blog readers), is much more important than the reality, (4,000 actual daily blog readers).

“Now for some people it is better worth while to seem to be wise, than to be wise without seeming to be (for the art of the sophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality, and the sophist is one who makes money from an apparent but unreal wisdom); for them, then, it is clearly essential also to seem to accomplish the task of a wise man rather than to accomplish it without seeming to do so.”

It’s worth noting that sophists who favor ambiguity-based refutations are extremely vulnerable to having their
tactics used against them.  By
intentionally utilizing a word that has multiple definitions, including some
that are less than helpful to your case, you can be certain that the sophist will
latch onto the definition they perceive to be damaging to your argument and
thereby leap eagerly into the trap. He will do so because his objective in an argument
is usually focused on disqualifying his opponent in the eyes of the crowd rather than in genuinely refuting his opponent’s argument.

An atheist decalogue

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments:

The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:

  1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
  2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
  3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.
  4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your
    husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not
    by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and
    illusory.
  5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
  6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
  7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
  8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement,
    for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a
    deeper agreement than the latter.
  9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
  10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

I don’t necessarily disagree with all of these points, but it is remarkable to observe far they fall short of the original Decalogue, even though the original was produced with considerably less human history upon which to draw.  Let’s compare them, one commandment at a time.

One: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”
Russell: “Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.”

The Decalogue sets down the basis for an objective and universal morality.  Russell, on the other hand, undermines any possibility of morality, but science as well, by establishing uncertainty as his foundation.

Two: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”
Russell: “Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.”

While the problem of graven images is somewhat mysterious, lacking any basis for distinguishing right from wrong, Russell is forced to resort to a demonstrably false justification for what would otherwise be a reasonable claim.

Three: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
Russell: “Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.”

Again, the commandment is clear, though its import is unknown.  But it is still superior to Russell’s, which again relies upon an observably false justification.

Four: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
Russell: “When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your
husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not
by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and
illusory.”

Russell scores a half-point here because he has the sense to limit his commandment to an exhortation, although he again sabotages his position with a false justification.  We aren’t even sure when the sabbath day is, or understand how to keep it holy.

Five: “Honour thy father and thy mother.”
Russell: “Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.”

This commandment is the basis for civilization.  Russell’s is the road towards barbarism.  Not only is the justification again false, but the commandment is intrinsically pernicious.  Legitimate authority merits respect, it is only illegitimate authority that does not.

Six: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Russell: “Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.”

This is Russell’s first truly coherent point, but it can’t compare in significance or rhetorical power to the original.

Seven: “Thou shalt not commit adultery”
Russell: “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”

And here the essential triviality of the atheist exposes itself again.  Once more, the justification is observably false.  The importance of inviolate marriages, on the other hand, is integral to sustainable societies, as is becoming more and more apparent in their increased absence.

Eight: “Thou shalt not steal”
Russell: “Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement,
for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a
deeper agreement than the latter.”

Now Russell is just babbling.  Intelligent dissent does not necessarily imply any agreement at all.  And what percentage of the populace is “valuing intelligence as you should” likely to apply in any meaningful manner anyhow?

Nine: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”
Russell: “Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.”

It is a pity Russell has the need to produce a justification, even a fairly solid one, for an otherwise strong commandment.  But that points back to the flaws in his first commandment and his failure to establish a moral warrant.  Russell’s commandment is literally stronger than the original, although the latter is usually taken to be metaphorical and more broadly applied than its literal meaning.

Ten: “Thou shalt not covet”
Russell: “Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”

 So, envy is fine, so long as one is envying the happiness of those who are genuinely happy.  This is a pernicious doctrine.

It is fascinating, is it not, to see that a crude and primitive Bronze Age people, working with considerably less information to hand, somehow managed to produce a moral code that is considerably superior in terms of fact, logic, structure, scope, and style than the code produced by one of the most elite and celebrated minds of the 20th century.

By taking God out of his equations, the atheist loses everything, because he destroys the foundation upon which so much of what he values is constructed.

The importance of small-t truth

This quote from the Swiss mathematician Euler sums up my response to those who raise questions about whether it would be better, or if I would be more a effective polemicist, if I took more care to avoid those uncomfortable facts and dangerous truths that might cause someone, somewhere, to feel hurt or otherwise offended.  This is from the beginning of Defense of the Divine Revelation:

The perfection of understanding consists of the knowledge of truth, from which is simultaneously born the knowledge of good. The principal aim of this knowledge is God and His works, since all other truths to which reflection can lead mankind end with the Supreme Being and His works. For God is the truth, and the world is the work of His almightiness and His infinite wisdom. Thus, the more man learns to know God and His works, the further he will advance in the knowledge of the truth, which contributes just as much to the perfection of his understanding.

The greatest perfection of understanding consists, therefore, of a perfect knowledge of God and His works. But since such knowledge is infinite, no understanding of it is possible. Consequently, the sovereign perfection of understanding can only be attributed to a single God. Man, in his state, is only able to grasp this knowledge to a very small degree. However, with respect to this, there can be a very considerable difference that is based on the diversity of abilities to understand, so that one man might grasp much more of this knowledge than another….

The knowledge of truth is the necessary foundation for the knowledge of good. For a known truth is reputed to be good, insofar as it can contribute something to improve our condition; and since God is the source of all truth, it is also rightly so that God is named as the ultimate good. The knowledge of good presupposes the knowledge of truth, and thus, even if a man strives to guide his understanding to a greater degree of perfection, he acquires at the same time a more extensive and distinct knowledge of good. It is clear that the knowledge of evil is also included in this, for he who knows good knows how to distinguish it from evil.

This, I suspect, is why the Bible makes a particular point of declaring woe to those who declare good to be evil and evil to be good.  The more small-t truth a man understands, the greater his knowledge of both good and evil.  Therefore, the more truth a man possesses, the more he possesses the ability to do either good or evil; this is why we can simultaneously discern considerable truth in historical documents such as Mein Kampf and The State and Revolution while decrying the uses to which Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin put their superior understandings.

But neither attempting to ascertain the truth or providing evidence to establish it can ever be considered anything but good, because it is necessary in order for their to be knowledge of good.  To paraphrase what Euler points out, the knowledge of truth is a prerequisite for the knowledge of good.  We cannot know what is right, we cannot determine what action is correct, if we do not first distinguish what is false from what is true.

And we cannot expect to understand even that portion of the Truth of which we are capable of comprehending if we intentionally turn our backs on the truth, not even if we do so in the name of St. Diversity or general good will to men.

Throwing out the bait

John C. Wright explains why Sam Harris’s latest crusade is misplaced; empiricism is useless with regards answering non-empirical questions, thereby rendering the derivation of “ought” from “is’ impossible:

Here is my proof.

  1. Do you agree that the international scientific community has
    reduced all empirical entities to certain basic constants, namely mass,
    length, duration, temperature, current, candlepower, moles of substance,
    such that any empirical subject (such as the acceleration due to
    gravity of a cannonball or color defined as light-frequency) can be
    expressed in terms of these measurable quantities or some calculated
    derivation of these quantities?  (I do note that for subatomic
    particles, some additional fundamentals are needed, but these are also
    quantities, and not qualities, and therefore do not effect the
    argument.)
  2. A quality is a judgment concerning an imponderable entity, such as
    true or untrue, valid or invalid, comely or ugly. A quantity is a
    multitude of magnitudes, or in other words, a quantity can be measured
    against a standard or counted with numbers or both. Do you agree that no
    quality can be reduced to quantity by any means whatsoever?For example,
    do you agree that counting the number of vowels used to express a given
    sentence written in ink in Esperanto will not necessarily tell you
    whether the sentence is true or false, fairminded or slanderous,
    self-evident or self-contradictory, lovely poetry or ungainly prose?
    That also measuring with utmost care the jots over the small I’s and
    small J’s even to the extend of counting every ink molecule will not
    give you sufficient information to make these judgment?
  3. If all empirical statements can be reduced to measured fundamental
    quantities, and no statements about imponderables such as good and bad,
    valid and invalid, fair or foul can be reduced to measurable fundamental
    qualities, then they have no overlap whatsoever in topic or probative
    value, Ergo no imponderable can be proved or disproved by purely
    empirical statement, no matter how numerous or complex.

To head off an obvious objection, the quantities facts about the
molecules and atoms in a man’s brain have some sort of unknown relation
to his ability to make qualitative judgments. Drunkenness or drugs or a
blow to the head can, for example, impede the operations of memory and
judgment and other cognitive powers, or drive him mad, or kill a man
altogether. There is, however, not a single iota of evidence showing a
relation between the imponderable cognitive content and any quantitative
facts about brain molecules.

WRF3, you are now formally invited to do your thing.  But if you don’t mind an observation, this “Rolf Andreassen” at Mr. Wright’s site is presenting arguments that sound remarkably similar to those you have made here in the past.

This should be interesting.  “How much does a thought weigh?” has always struck me as being a question akin to “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” or “why does purple?”  But perhaps we shall be convinced otherwise.

Pour encourager les autres

Roosh suggests that it is best to limit one’s responses “to haters with a bigger audience than you.”  I very much disagree.  I think it is best to take on all comers and crush them no matter who they happen to be.

Who do you find more intimidating?  The fighter who only takes on foes of greater size and stature in the ring or the one who brutally beats down a little girl with the same casual violence he uses to beat the hell out of a professional boxer? I suggest that the latter is almost surely going to be the much more fearsome opponent. 

I understand why climbers like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers will only debate those with whom the debate is somehow expected to enhance their stature.  But that’s indicative of someone seeking personal PR, not intellectual competition, and in the long run, it is counterproductive because a refusal to engage costs both credibility as well as the ability to engage formidable opposition.

As for me, I’ll take on anyone, friend or foe. And every time I lose a point, or even a debate, it only makes me that much more prepared for the next round.  Speaking of which, I should finish The Last Witchking soon, so I expect to have the next round in the inflation/deflation debate up on Monday.

Interracial relations in a nutshell

This anecdote effectively summarizes the African approach to all things European and explains why both multiculturalism and the White Man’s Burden were always doomed to failure:

The government was hoping to disenfranchise the estimated 30,000 white Zimbabweans by making those with actual or potential foreign citizenship actively choose to be Zimbabwean. But it mainly affected the more than one and a half million black Zimbabweans, many of them poor farmworkers, who had paternal links to the former Central African Federation and elsewhere.

How stupid.  And how quintessentially human. It doesn’t matter what quasi-human sub-species you happen to be.  It doesn’t matter if you are a white Soviet or a black Zimbabwean.  So long as you are more concerned with bringing down others than improving yourself, you will always fail.

Do caterpillars fear the cocoon?

I know all atheists are not in denial concerning their mortality.  But it is informative to see how people tend to become more open-minded towards religious matters as they approach life’s finish line.  I tend to suspect the relative irreligion of the young is more indicative of an erroneous belief in their own immortality than any sort of genuine disbelief.

 My father has lived in a state of blissful denial his entire life. He
used to smoke five packs of cigarettes a day, and until he was seventy
he drank a quart of scotch a day. His diet consists of steak, salami,
potatoes, bread, cheese, mayonnaise, ice cream, and pie.

By this afternoon, my father’s pain was alleviated substantially, and
he began bitching about how he was going to get off the oxycontin after
he recovered. He told me recently that until he was eighty, he honestly
thought he’d live forever. I didn’t say, “Really? You thought you’d
live in your house here in Los Angeles for trillions and trillions and
trillions of years, making your wooden toys, watching Bill O’Reilly, and
eating salami sandwiches with an inch of cheddar cheese, for all
eternity?”

I didn’t say that because my father’s fear of death is irrational. It
would be cruel to subject him to that sort of conversation…. When my father was eighty-three, he had an operation on his hand.
Since he takes blood thinners, any surgery is risky. They had to prepare
to do an emergency transfusion. In discussing his fears with him, I
mentioned that I couldn’t donate blood because I lived in Britain for
two years during the eighties. Due to the risk that I may have ingested
the prion that causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, I’m permanently barred
from donating blood. This made my father terrified that he might get
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease if he got a transfusion.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It has a forty-year incubation period.”

His face fell. “Are you saying I’m not going to be here in forty
years?” He was horrified and his feelings were hurt. I thought he’d
laugh, but I’d scared him. He went to bed chilled to the bone at the
thought that he might not live to be 123.

We are all going to die eventually.  After a long life of joy, happiness, love, and good works, one hopes, but regardless, sooner or later, the final day will come.  This is why it is vital for us to make the most of our lives, to balance the urgent need to make a living and support our families with truly important matters such as serving God, spreading the Good News, and making some sort of positive mark to permit future generations to realize that we were here.

We can spend our days seeking mindless pleasure, but hedonism burns out fast and leaves little more than a burned-out shell behind.  We can live in fear and denial, or we can live in nihilistic stoicism, attempting to manufacture our own meaning and desperately trying to convince others of what we do not truly believe ourselves.  Or we can live by faith, trusting God, accepting that we are merely caterpillars and death is nothing more than a cocoon we must endure before we can take flight.

And what is true of men is true of nations.  America is entering its cocoon.  Who is to say with any certainty that what will eventually result will not be better than what came before.

Mailvox: the metaphysical straddle

This discussion with Asher concerning the utility and legitimacy of utilizing both practical and metaphysical arguments was too long for Blogger’s comment system, so I’m giving it its own post.

I’m not sure what you mean by “that”. Are you saying you never do the metaphysical/practical straddle or that the way you do it isn’t a problem? IF you are offering both metaphysical and practical arguments THEN you are doing the straddle, and the straddle is the problem, in itself.

Earlier you noted that you effortlessly switched back and forth between metaphysical and practical considerations, which looks, to me, like an admission of a straddle. If so, then that is a problem and, if not, could you clarify that statement.

High IQ does not mean one is able to avoid the straddle problem by being smart, as the straddle IS the problem. Either one makes metaphysical arguments or one does not, and if one does than the entire argument is metaphysical.

No.  Your core assumption is wrong.  A metaphysical argument does not magically subsume a practical one.  They are two different arguments that happen to concern the same subject.  You are conflating “straddle” and “switch”; you’ve used the term “straddle” in two different ways.  What I do not do is what you correctly claimed many libertarians (and many others) do, switching back and forth between the practical and the metaphysical in order to avoid having their weakest arguments exposed and defeated.  I do not “switch” between the two for that reason.  I utilize both, following my opponent where he goes.

Where you are correct is that once one RETREATS to the metaphysical, one cannot legitimately return to the defeated practical argument.  But following another’s retreat to the metaphysical in no way invalidates what has already been shown to be a successful practical argument.

The average ability of the ilk is considerably better than that of the average Joe, but most of the ilk do not capable of following you, at least in the way you lead the conversation. It’s not that your reasoning is bad but that it’s too demanding for most of your blog readers, both those that agree and those that disagree.  The ilk are considerably more advanced than the average guy but less advanced than they fancy themselves.

On average?  Of course.  That’s precisely why I repeat myself over and over again.  That’s why I provide illustrative examples.  Those who can, learn, and eventually demonstrate that they can utilize the tactics themselves, often in long debates here in which I don’t involve myself.  Those who can’t follow are at least usually able to appreciate the tactical aspects in both the aesthetic and entertainment senses.  And given that I have repeatedly stepped in and informed people when they were using various tactics improperly, why would you think you are informing me of anything I don’t already know in this regard?

It’s not difficult to see when someone is attempting to utilize a dialectical device in a rhetorical manner or asserting a nonexistent logical fallacy.  Sometimes people have to experiment and try things out before they get the hang of it.  Sometimes, it is eminently clear they will never be able to do more than bluster and posture.  So be it.  I don’t always get things right myself, as readers like you are always, to your credit, pleased to point out.  However, the other day, I said this blog is not The Following, but it could be reasonably considered to be like that show in that I have helped develop a widespread collection of lethal serial killers in the intellectual sense.  When a member of the Dread Ilk eviscerates the arguments of a friend, or family member, or co-worker using the tactics he has learned here, I am with him in spirit.

I can use this metaphor. A trap is like a claymore mine. You are a parent and the ilk are your young children. You leave the mine lying around your house in the event of a home invasion and, instead, one of the ilk sets it off and it ruins his day. From where I’m sitting that is what we’d call an “own goal”.

It’s not an applicable metaphor.  The traps are, in almost all situations, triggered by the interlocutor.  It’s more like planting a minefield on a battlefield and I am the only soldier on the one side, outnumbered though not outgunned.  The civilians are safe.  The other side, well, one of them will probably step on a mine.  And even if a civilian decides to come onto the field and inadvertently sets one off, well, hopefully it will be a learning experience for him and everyone who witnessed it.  The traps are only set to catch those who are determined to be blindly critical at all costs.

The only way that setting traps is always a good thing is when there is no audience or where you know the audience is on your level of intellect. Most of the ilk are likely to misuse most of your traps most of the time.

Totally disagree and would go so far to assert that your perspective is solely tactical and fails to even begin to take the strategic aspects into account.  The traps are set, in part, for the benefit of the audience, who tend to find them more than a little entertaining in operation.  For example, I suspect Allyn was at least mildly amused when she commented: Vox claims “For my next trick I will make the rabbits appear and then dance and hop on one foot”.  On
command the rabbits appear, raging at Vox for being a Nazi, homophobic,
poopy head that is not smarter than them. What they seem to miss is
they are doing this while dancing and hopping on one foot.”

Now I agree that most people, including the many of the Dread Ilk, don’t have the ability to effectively lay traps for critics.  The capacity for constructing them requires a psychological inclination as well as the ability to utilize a dialectical device with rhetorical ramifications.  That’s all right, it is only one of many techniques and is primarily useful for someone like me, who has hundreds, if not thousands, of critics eager to attack him at every sign of weakness or error.  By displaying false signs, I can take out most of them and demonstrate that their criticism is both superficial and baseless with very little effort.  Your average person who is not a critical target has considerably less need of any such device.  As Allyn observes, I can come right out and announce that I am doing this, just as I am doing here, and it won’t even slow down the speed with which the average rabbit will plunge his head into the shining wire.

Some may consider this to be sadistic, but my view is that if you are aware someone harbors a negative attitude towards you and is inclined to attack you at the earliest opportunity, they entirely merit whatever consequences result from their predictable behavior.

If they are harmonious then you only need to use one and the other is redundant. If anyone uses two the odds of them being harmonious is, to put it charitably, very thin. The entire reason that people do the straddle is that they use one set of arguments to cover for weaknesses in the other set and vice versa.

You’re incorrect; you’re again conflating straddle and switch.  I utilize both levels in order to expose that both levels of the critic’s arguments are wrong and thereby render the switch useless.  You’re completely failing to understand how the game is actually played in favor of some imaginary, metaphysical version of it.

Another metaphor I can use. If day after day an army takes the field, gets defeated and then retreats to higher ground then there is something wrong with the field officers. The obvious strategy would be to stick to where one can win and not continue sallying forth onto ground where one keeps being defeated.

Another bad metaphor.  First I defeat them on the lower ground.  They retreat.  Then I defeat them on the higher ground.  At which point they usually abandon the battlefield altogether.  You know perfectly well that is the usual pattern observed here.  With, of course, the exception of the anklebiters of the world, who sally forth to defeat again, and again, and again, much to the amusement of many.  I don’t mind them most of the time.  It take absolutely no effort to keep swatting down their arguments.

That just doesn’t make any sense. If one has already won on the field of battle then one doesn’t *need* to retreat.

You’re missing the point.  I’m not retreating.  I’m following up the successful defense with a counterattack.  Here is how it almost always works.  I post something.  My statements are attacked on factual grounds.  I defeat the factual argument.  The interlocutor retreats and attempts to justify his now-defeated practical argument with a metaphysical one.  I then launch an attack on his metaphysical argument.  That defeated, he runs away.  We’ve seen this process again, and again, and again, have we not?

I’m not switching anything.  I haven’t given up one iota of my practical argument or the ground I am defending.  I’m simply moving onto the other side’s ground and taking that away from him too.

If you find yourself doing the straddle that indicates that you are faced with an intractable foe, and many in the audience are also likely to be intractable foes.

Of course.  This is hardly news.  I’ve been getting death threats, having book contracts paid off, and seeing my job, my music, and my books attacked for 12 years now.  And yet, my audience keeps growing, the Dread Ilk continue to become more capable, and my abilities continue to develop.

There are two ways to take this observation. Either you already convinced a bunch of Bush Republicans to join Team Vox or you just admitted to an own goal. Chasing people away is likely to decrease the chances of their joining your team.

If you’ve been around here for as long as you said, you already know the answer to this question.  The people who are chased away tend to be the apparently intractable ones, and even some of them don’t stay chased away.  Will they ever join the team of truth, reason, and freedom?  I have known a few who have.  But it is not for me to say if my actions have changed anyone’s minds.  And it’s not Team Vox, it is Team Truth.  I don’t dictate anything, I simply follow the truth, and The Truth, as best I understand it and as well as my limitations will permit.