Some Links of Interest

* All the reports are that Newman may be beatified in the near future. On the other hand, this rumor has gone around before (admittedly with less support).

* Hear G. K. Chesterton's voice. The "I am not much of a Crusader" line is priceless in its delivery.

* The Gypsy Scholar recently had a series of good posts on the apparent use of a winged Christ in pictures of St. Francis's stigmatization.

Saint Francis Receiving the Stigmata from a Winged Christ?
Saint Francis Receiving Stigmata from Winged Christ: Images
Saint Francis Receiving Stigmata from Winged Christ: Interpretation

* For Doctor Who fans: Timeline of The Doctor's revolutionariness. (ht)

* 2008 is International Year of the Potato (ht)

* A site with a number of Bible reading plans.

* Danny Garland on the Church Fathers's Marian Interpretation of the Old Testament.

* A number of articles relevant to the interpretation and application of the principles of Kant's cosmopolitanism as found in the essay, Toward Perpetual Peace, and related (broadly) Kantian issues. (ht)

* Art Lindsey suggests a lit of C. S. Lewis's seven key insights. Bulverism, which would make my list, is conspicuously missing, as is Joy or Sweet Desire as C. S. Lewis means it in Surprised by Joy or Pilgrim's Regress. But chronological snobbery, imagination, and myth are all good choices.

* Some Lakota are attempting to secede from the United States (and here). In particular, the Lakota Freedom Delegation, which includes Libertarian and activist Russell Means and a number of others. It's unclear how widely supported among the Lakota this move is; and the Lakota Freedom Delegation is not a branch of any tribal government. It's a sort of PR stunt, I suppose; even if some of the people involved mean it seriously, they aren't in a position to follow up.

* I had meant to mention this before, but failed to do so: Michael Pakaluk considers how Spe Salvi promotes the study of Greek philosophy. I certainly would consider more Catholics reading Plato's Gorgias a good thing; it would increase the chance of modern-day Boethiuses (Boethii?).

* The appeal of the underdog (ht)

* Fr. Gregory Jansen has some excellent thoughts on Christian unity:

While I can't speak for Catholics and Protestants, at least among the Orthodox (myself included I am ashamed to say), there are many who prefer a divided Christendom. It is simply easier not to have to deal with the many questions that seem to be tearing western Christian confessions apart. We happily exist in splendid isolation.

I think this is generally true. It is easier -- so very much easier -- to remain divided. But the rub is that divine love does not rest content with division; so key is this point that we should never forget that our salvation itself rests on it. And the chief question here is whether we will take seriously the Johannine insistence that we should love each other as God loved us or pass it off on the very human -- and very undivine, very ungracious -- excuse that it is easier not to do so, thereby to fall under the Johannine condemnation that whoever is without love does not know God.

* From YouTube: Dolly Parton was always awesome; I really like this Francis Cabrel song; Kokko by Wainotar is excellent (few languages sound so lovely sung as Finnish; it's not surprising that Tolkien modeled Quenya on it); Basic waltz in five and a half minutes. ADDED LATER: Philosophy Street

* Speaking of Finnish and Quenya, a fragment of the Kalevala translated into Quenya.

* Ratzinger's cats.

* A Baptist critique of our usual idea of preaching. (PDF)

ADDED LATER

* Currently reading: Everett and Roman, A Superluminal Subway: The Krasnikov Tube (PDF)
Krasnikov, The Quantum Inequalities Do Not Forbid Spacetime Shortcuts (PDF)
Krasnikov, Toward a Traversable Wormhole (PDF)
Alcubierre, The warp-drive: hyper-fast travel within general relativity (PDF)
Some of the papers at Ribeiro's Warp Drive Theory Page

Individual and Group Rights

Ophelia Benson has an odd post on this document that opens with:

This idea that human rights are for individuals rather than for groups is relevant to the Vatican's reflection on the Rights of the Family in the context of the Universal Declaration, too. (Do you see a pattern here? There is one. Religions, especially coercive, totalizing, domineering religions such as Catholicism and Islam and Protestant fundamentalism, are suspicious of human rights and would like to elbow them aside in favour of group rights, especially [of course] religious-group rights. We need to watch that, so that we can fight back.)

It's not "the Vatican's reflection" but a document released a few years ago by the Pontifical Council for the Family, one of a little less than forty institutions in the Roman Curia (what we refer to more colloquially as 'the Vatican') that are, generally, independent of each other except for answering to the Pope. The purpose of a Pontifical Council is primarily just to be a think tank, generating ideas on some topic considered particularly important -- in this case related to the pastoral care and dignity of the family. They contrast, sometimes rather sharply, with the Congregations, which have more authoritative functions. Using them to indicate part of a pattern about "religions" is like using Presidential Commissions or advisory councils as a basis for a generalization about the nature of government. (One imagines someone making the argument, 'Leon Kass says such-and-such, therefore governments in general are impediments to stem cell research'; the only reasonable response would be that the President's Council on Bioethics is not even relevant to establishing a pattern about the relation of governments generally to stem cell research, being just one, purely advisory, body in an extremely complicated system, and only one of many systems, at that.) Benson recognizes the distinction between Vatican and Council in a previous post; but it rather wreaks havoc with the line of reasoning in this one.

Moreover, I don't think Benson has read the document correctly. She reads it as saying

That the family should be treated as a person, indivisible and with rights, and that in aid of that the members of the family should not be treated as indivisible persons with rights, they should be treated as parts of an indivisible whole. The family is a subject, with all that that implies, and the people who make up the family are merely parts of that subject.

Whereas it seems to me to say that the family as a subject, i.e., of a group right, is not merely an aggregate of subjects of individual rights. Not once does the document say that the family is a person; nor does it say that members of the family should not be treated as indivisible persons with rights (and, indeed, a number of things said in the document require the opposite); nor does it say that the people who make up the family are merely parts of the family. Perhaps there is some subtle twist of argument here; but it seems to me that if Benson is simply going to make things up it might be a good idea to flag that rather than to present it as an interpretation of the actual evidence that supports a more general argument being made.

But that aside, the question of group rights vs. individual rights is an interesting one. I once had a long discussion while in Canada about this very issue, in which I took Benson's line that human rights can only be applied to individuals, while my Canadian interlocutor argued that Canadian affirmation of human rights that were collective rather than individual was not only legitimate, but that the U.S.'s restriction of human rights to individuals was one of the reasons why the U.S. has so much more trouble with social justice issues than Canada. I'm still skeptical of the notion, even for such important groups as families. Even if we hold, to quote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that the "family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State" it is more natural to understand this as a form of rights pertaining to the human person. One can legitimately talk about the rights of the group, by figure of speech; these rights are really complicated and interlocking webs of individual rights. This, incidentally, seems to me to make the most sense of the rights of the family discussed by the Charter of the Rights of the Family to which the document is alluding whenever it talks about family rights.

But what say you, readers?

Thoughts on Liberal Arts Learning

While away I had some intelligent comments on my recent sarcastic post on the Harvard Report of the Task Force on General Education (PDF), in particular with regard to this passage quoted from it:

On the contrary, the aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to re-orient themselves. A liberal education aims to accomplish these things by questioning assumptions, by inducing self-reflection, by teaching students to think critically and analytically, by exposing them to the sense of alienation produced by encounters with radically different historical moments and cultural formations and with phenomena that exceed their, and even our own, capacity fully to understand.

One commenter asked the question whether, despite the (not entirely unexpected) committee-writing-a-mission-statement flaws of the report, I could really object what is claimed here. I think that's a fair enough question; particularly since I don't think it's healthy to leave sarcasm as the last word on any subject. As I noted in the comments there, I do, in fact, really think the statement itself, and not just its presentation, is somewhat absurd. It's worthwhile, though, to go a bit more into the question and elaborate why I think it absurd.

The passage I've quoted above is interesting in that it gives two lists, one of ends and one of means, for liberal education. The ends of liberal education, the things we aim at in teaching the liberal arts, are supposed to be:

to unsettle presumptions
to defamiliarize the familiar
to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances
to disorient young people
to help them to find ways to re-orient themselves

The means of liberal education, the things we aim to accomplish the ends by, are said to be:

questioning assumptions
inducing self-reflection
teaching students to think critically and analytically
exposing them to the sense of alienation produced by encounters with radically different historical moments and cultural formations and with phenomena that exceed their, and even our own, capacity fully to understand

I take it that the list of means is supposed to be representative, not comprehensive. I don't actually have much of a beef with the list of means, although I think the first (questioning assumptions) is dangerously ambiguous between "asking questions about assumptions" and "trying to call assumptions into question" -- the first of which is encouraging someone to develop their thoughts about assumptions, and the second is trying to change them from a state of assumption to a state of doubt about assumptions -- and I am mystified about the importance of "exposing them to the sense of alienation" developed from encounters with the radically different rather than, say, just exposing them to the radically different, whether a sense of alienation is involved or not. The only rationale I can think of for deliberating exposing anyone to a sense of alienation is to give them material for sympathy with the alienated; and that seems to me to be a dangerous thing to do without the express cooperation of the person involved. But presumably they meant something by it, even if I don't see it, and I think the list of means can be interpreted charitably.

Where I really have problems is with the list of ends, the stated aims of liberal arts education, since it seems to me to exhibit a very faulty view of what might be called the phenomenology of learning. That is, it paints a picture from the inside of what learning (in liberal arts education, at least) is; a picture that I think can describe very little real liberal arts learning. Raising these to the status of aims is to confuse the incidental with the essential.

On the picture painted by the list, liberal arts learning is a process of becoming unsettled, defamiliarized, and disoriented; in it one learns to see behind and beyond appearances and has an opportunity to reorient oneself anew. Some of this I could see as legitimate if it were listed not as an 'aim' but as a means. Defamiliarization is an excellent example of this. I would agree that a good portion of good liberal arts education involves teaching students what (in some sense) they already know, but in such a way that (one hopes) they see it again for the first time (as the saying goes). Perhaps we could even consider it a partial and secondary aim of liberal arts education itself. So, too, perhaps, with revealing what goes on behind and beneath appearances -- that can be taken in ways that I think have nothing to do with liberal education, but it can also be taken in ways that are reasonably considered as important parts of it, and it seems reasonable to interpret the phrase in the more charitable light.

But I don't think that unsettling presumptions and disorienting students are particularly well-chosen for a list of aims of liberal arts education, because neither disorientation nor unsettled presumptions are particularly natural results of liberal arts education. It is entirely possible to have a long and wonderful strand of learning experiences in the liberal arts that never involves disorientation or unsettled presumptions at all; and this is a good thing.

A good deal of learning, and arguably the vast majority of it, is ambient. One of the things that was so peculiar about the Hegel passage I recently quoted is the denigration of women on the basis of the claim that they are "educated — who knows how? — as it were by breathing in ideas, by living rather than by acquiring knowledge." But this form of education, where we learn in such a way that doesn't so much involve articulation of ideas as a "vague unity of feeling," is perhaps the lion's share of any serious education. To put it in broadly Aristotelian terms, it is the sort of experience suitable for rational animals -- the sort of experience that provides the materials and environment for serious intellectual thought. As Henri Gouhier rightly says (in a slightly different, but related context):

But underneath these clear ideas, there are those that participate in that other system that is the living person; these are rather the tendencies to concepts; they have not yet been collected into a definition, and they extend into each other, a landscape without lines like the colors of heaven; they live in those regions of the soul where heredity, education, social influences and other fay folk sow the seeds that will later develop into passions, into beliefs, into worries, without it being possible for us to follow the mysterious labor of their development. Interior temple where all the gods have their altar, it is from there that both cries of revolt and words of love escape; it is there that systems plunge their roots, for it is there where questions are perhaps posed and where certainly solutions are formulated.

To denigrate this in favor of the 'clear idea', the articulate ideal, is a peculiar thing to do; it is to fail to recognize that all concepts begin here, in the tendencies to concepts that are gathered together in a landscape that is not yet delineated.

Making disorientation and unsettling aims of liberal arts education seems to me to go along this path even farther into peculiar territory. It represents learning as the result of a set of sudden and occasional external interventions, where someone has broken in on the natural development of the student's mind, disorienting it and unsettling its presumptions. But learning is not an external intervention into the natural development of a mind; it is the natural development of the mind. The aim shouldn't be to disrupt student minds but to assist in their cultivation. Learning is the respiration and alimentation of the mind; to aid it you describe and exhibits ways that the air might be improved, or that nourishing food might more easily be found. In the liberal arts you have not necessarily failed in the aim of educating if the student is never disoriented or if her presumptions become more settled. If she has a healthy orientation to begin with, and if her presumptions are reasonable in the first place, this is exactly what you should hope. (And, indeed, in such a case you should perhaps be more worried about disorienting healthy minds and unsettling intelligent presumptions than anything else.)

So, in short, I think disorientation is a legitimate aim only if you are trying to brainwash someone or drive them crazy. Trying to make it the aim of liberal arts education is like trying to make brain surgery the aim of the practice of medicine. A more reasonable aim is to help the mind do what it does naturally and freely. That is, in fact, what the liberal arts are: the activities of free and rational minds, the sorts of reason-rich things such minds can naturally enjoy in their own right, when they are unconstrained by the need to devote themselves wholly to serving others or to scraping out what is required to survive.

Reasonable and Unreasonable Reasons

When a man values the life of his horse more than the life of his coachman, he has his reasons for doing so; but they are particular reasons that every reasonable man abhors. They are reasons that at bottom are unreasonable, because they do not confrom with Sovereign Reason, or the Universal Reason, that all men consult.

Malebranche, Search (Tenth Elucidation), LO 613.

The Aim of a Liberal Education

I have been enlightened by the Harvard Report of the Task Force on General Education (PDF). Some of it is ordinary enough, but then, shortly into it, you get this lovely sentence:

On the contrary, the aim of a liberal education is to unsettle presumptions, to defamiliarize the familiar, to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances, to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to re-orient themselves. A liberal education aims to accomplish these things by questioning assumptions, by inducing self-reflection, by teaching students to think critically and analytically, by exposing them to the sense of alienation produced by encounters with radically different historical moments and cultural formations and with phenomena that exceed their, and even our own, capacity fully to understand.

As near as I can figure, what this means is this: the aim of liberal education is to induce insanity. One should produce students without settled presumptions who are unfamiliar with anything, who can thereby undergo that standard insanity-inducing technique in which you disorient a person and make them feel alienated and unable to understand the world until they start re-orienting themselves by making up their own world. It's a good, solid plan, and I fully look forward to seeing the results. And they get practical, too; for instance, we should teach students how to distinguish between the 'literal' and the 'symbolic', and give them science classes that don't cover in depth any scientific sub-discipline, and they firmly insist on the conservative idea of the importance of faculty-student interaction in teaching, rejecting the view that they should never interact at all. Also, if you read it, you will learn that Harvard students lead lives that affect the lives of others; and because of this liberal education has value in comparison to professional education because it teaches people to think unprofessionally.

Yes, I am being facetious; the report doesn't tell us that we should teach students the difference between being facetious and serious, but it's a natural sort of thing to do when you are painstakingly showing them how to recognize that something is a symbol. Amid all the triteness there are some good things in the report. But for those who prefer unsettle the presumptions of academics and disorienting Task Forces, you might start with R. R. Reno's criticism of it.

Perfectius, Sublimius, Utilius, et Iucundius

The Thomist at "Just Thomism" has a post that includes a translation of one of my favorite passages from Thomas Aquinas (although there are so many to choose from!), which is found in the Summa Contra Gentiles (ch. 2):

Of all human pursuits, the pursuit of wisdom is the more perfect, the more sublime, the more useful, and the more sweet. The more perfect, because in so far as a man gives himself up to the pursuit of wisdom, to that extent he enjoys already some portion of true happiness. Blessed is the man that shall dwell in wisdom (Ecclus xiv, 22). The more sublime, because thereby man comes closest to the likeness of God, who hath made all things in wisdom (Ps. ciii, 24). The more useful, because by this same wisdom we arrive at the realm of immortality. The desire of wisdom shall lead to an everlasting kingdom (Wisd. vi, 21). The more sweet, because her conversation hath no bitterness, nor her company any weariness, but gladness and joy (Wisd. viii, 16).

I'll be out of town the next few days, so posting might be light.

TNR on Ron Paul

As you may know there have been rumors about racism associated with Ron Paul's political activities; TNR has the substance behind them here -- the "outrageous statements," as it calls them. Or, rather, I should say, it tries to present the substance, because it is a very poorly thought-out article; it manages to raise some things that need to be taken very seriously in the midst of a considerable amount of bungling. I take the racism charge, and some of the evidence for it in the article, very seriously indeed, and think everyone should; but I am not at all impressed by the article itself. The corresponding article admits that while the association is clear, the actual connection to Ron Paul's own views is in some cases ambiguous. Some of the statements are serious cause for concern, but some of them are grasping at straws. These three, for instance, are proposed as outrageous statements with regard to race:

This newsletter describes Martin Luther King Jr. as "a world-class adulterer" who "seduced underage girls and boys" and "replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."

The January 1991 edition of the Political Report refers to King as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours" and a "flagrant plagiarist with a phony doctorate."

A February 1991 newsletter attacks "The X-Rated Martin Luther King."

But none of these are obviously outrageous, whatever one's view about their accuracy or restraint; nor are they obviously signs of racism. And there's quite a bit of this stretching. I count some (very) worrisome instances on the issue of racism (although fewer than Kirchick tries to claim) and a few tasteless comments on homosexuality. On the other side, there is more than one case where it's implied that the passage in question endorses a position it only describes, taking a different position in the larger context. Contrary to what Kirchick several times tries to imply, there is nothing particularly wrong or horrible about sympathy for secession in general; nor about criticism of Martin Luther (The sort of narrow and poorly informed stereotypes Kirchick is trying to appeal to with the first and the third are particularly problematic.) And what is Kirchick's evidence that Paul is anti-Semitic? That he criticizes the government of Israel!

What bothers me most about the article is that it trivializes the real issues by relegating them to supplementary evidence in a long chain of allegations, most of which are clearly trumped up or based on vague associations Kirchick has formed in his head rather than on anything clear-cut. This is absurdly stupid and counterproductive for everyone. The noble work of purging racism, for instance, deserves much better treatment than it has in Kirchick's hands here; his clumsy handling is worrisome in itself, for different reasons.

(I don't think Paul's campaign has addressed the racism issue in a way that is at all adequate. Here is the campaign's official statement on racism, though, for those who are interested; it's drawn from Paul's prior statements here and here. For a serious criticism of Paul on this issue, and one that I tend to find persuasive, see here.)

UPDATE: Ron Paul responds to the TNR article.

Also, Kenny has a thoughtful post up.

Plants and Animals (Hopefully Not Herbivores)

A curious passage from Hegel:

Women are capable of education, but they are not made for activities which demand a universal faculty such as the more advanced sciences, philosophy, and certain forms of artistic production. Women may have happy ideas, taste, and elegance, but they cannot attain to the ideal. [Ideale. By this word Hegel means 'the Beautiful and whatever tends thither' (Science of Logic, i. 163, footnote). It is to be distinguished, therefore, from Ideelle] The difference between men and women is like that between animals and plants. Men correspond to animals, while women correspond to plants because their development is more placid and the principle that underlies it is the rather vague unity of feeling. When women hold the helm of government, the state is at once in jeopardy, because women regulate their actions not by the demands of universality but by arbitrary inclinations and opinions. Women are educated — who knows how? — as it were by breathing in ideas, by living rather than by acquiring knowledge. The status of manhood, on the other hand, is attained only by the stress of thought and much technical exertion.

[Here at 166, Addition; hat-tip] I find the sharp and unyielding opposition between "breathing in ideas" and "acquiring knowledge" very strange. In any case, what seems to lie behind this is Hegel's slightly odd interpretation of the Antigone -- slightly odd, I say, because Hegel keeps forgetting that the struggle between Antigone and Creon wasn't a struggle against Woman and Man, if for no other reasons than that (1) we also have Haemon, a man, and Tiresias, a man who has been a woman, who don't fall into Hegel's simplistic opposition; and (2) the play suggests strongly that the City itself is tending against Creon, although the Chorus tends to favor him; and (3) Creon changes his mind (too late, of course).

But the plant and animal analogy is strikingly curious. (Although, unfortunately, the man-active/woman-passive and the women-ruled-by-arbitrary-inclinations tropes are still surprisingly common.)

Correction on De Morgan Equivalences with Categorical Syllogisms

Well, it serves me right for writing a logic post so quickly before going to bed; somehow I managed to write the exact opposite of what I intended, and kept writing it, and didn't catch it until I realized, of a sudden in re-reading, that if we kept translating as I was translating we'd get a very weird propositional logic. So some corrections to my previous post:

(1) It's contradiction, not contrariety, that gives the simpler and more elegant proof in each case.

(2) The real First Equivalence proof is:

(1) ~ (p v q)
(2) It is not the case that ~pE~q
(3) ~pI~q
(4) (~p & ~q)

(3) The real Second Equivalence proof is:

(1) ~ (p & q)
(2) It is not the case that pIq
(3) pEq
(4) (~p v ~q)

(4) The contrariety-based proofs are to be changed on the same principles.

So that's how it really works. Assuming I haven't made a similar mistake!

For some reason when I was writing the post, I kept mistranslating the conjunctions as implications. It took me embarrassingly long to figure out what I was doing wrong, too. It was like one of those math problems where you know exactly how to solve it, but keep getting a wacky answer because you keep making a simple addition mistake in the beginning.

In any case, the problem wasn't that we didn't get a result in propositional logic, but that we got a result from the wrong propositional logic. I was aiming to prove a result for a standard propositional logic and proved a result for a nonstandard one. It's an interesting nonstandard logic, though; in it all implications are equivalent to conjunctions, so from (p → q) you can directly conclude p. An interesting question: what additional assumptions do you have to make to treat this nonstandard logic as truth-functionally legitimate? The Welton diagram for implication in the standard case is:

|   | X |   |   |

while for conjunction it is the much, much stronger:

|   | X | X | X |

To move from the weaker to the stronger, the universe would have to be explicitly set up so that a false consequent is never admissible: we can never make something a consequent unless we have supposed it to be true. (Which makes simple sense: a logic in which implications are equivalent to conjunctions is a logic in which every implication acts like a modus ponens.) Or, to put it in terms of truth tables, to treat implications like conjunctions you need a context where you can ignore the truth-functional differences between the two -- and the differences occur when q is false.

Pop Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to the questions I previously put up.


1. Which early modern philosopher said of the Bible that "it is an ev­erlasting guide to true wisdom, one that not only agrees with the speculations of a perfected reason but sheds new light on the whole field surveyed by that reason, illuminating what still remains opaque to it"?

[Immanuel Kant: 1789 letter to Jung-Stilling]


2. What four books did David Hume recommend that Michael Ramsay read in order that he might more easily understand "the more metaphysical parts" of Hume's reasoning in Book 1 of the Treatise?

[Malebranche's Search, Berkeley's Principles, Bayle's Encyclopedia (some of the more metaphysical articles), and Descartes's Meditations (if Ramsay could find it): 1737 letter to Ramsay]


3. Which early modern philosopher relates this story in a letter?

I myself saw and conversed with a woman at Genoa, a reputed Saint, whose head I met three years after, encircled with rays, to be sold among other pictures in the great square of Leghorn. This same Saint appeared to me very manifestly a vile lying hypocrite, though much extolled and admired.

[Berkeley: 1741 letter to Sir John James]


4. Whom did John Norris call "the great Galileo of the Intellectual World" in his 1701 work An Essay Towards the Theory of an Ideal or Intelligible World?

[Nicolas Malebranche]


5. Which early modern philosopher says that "a right care had of Education, is the only humane means of making People truly Vertuous"?

[Lady Damaris Masham: Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian Life (1705).]


6. The following sentence is found in which work of which author?

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.

[David Hume's Natural History of Religion]


7. What is the reason John Locke gives in A Letter Concerning Toleration for treating atheists as an exception to the general principle that error should be tolerated?

[That denial of God's existence makes sacred oaths, promises, and covenants impossible, thus deteriorating the bonds of society; and atheism, not being a religion, cannot claim the privilege of religious toleration.]


8. Famously, Kant says in the Prolegomena that David Hume aroused him from his dogmatic slumber. In a 1798 letter to Garve, what does Kant say aroused him from his dogmatic slumber?

[Discovery of the antinomy of reason]


9. In Siris, George Berkeley suggests that the world has a "Vegetative Soul or Vital Spirit". What does he identify as this world soul?

['Aethereal fire', i.e., light]


10. Leibniz distinguishes between things in relation to which God's power and wisdom are shown and things in relation to which God's goodness is shown. In relation to what is God's goodness shown?

[The city of God, consisting of intelligences in the image of God: cf. Monadology 86; Theodicy 146ff; and Abridgement of the Theodicy, Objection 2]

Two Poem Drafts

Salme's Song

I will not love the night-lord,
nor marry the harried moon,
whose work is always pressing,
whose rising is too soon.

I will not love the sun-king;
his fire I cherish not;
he blights the land with drought
when his passions wax too hot.

But the star I take as lover
for he shines with gentle light;
his eyes are kind and loving
and steady through the night.

Starry youth and Salme
shall have nuptials sublime
and waltz on Harria's shores
until the end of time.

Tapio

The blue flower blooms in the realm of Tapio,
where the tree-roots deeper than any mountain's grow
and the forest-tops are marching like the sea,
an endless and everlasting sea,
and the mead-paws dance in fields untouched by snow
where flowers bloom whose names nobody knows
on a hill whose name nobody knows.

De Morgan Equivalences with Categorical Syllogisms

The De Morgan Equivalences state that

(1) ~ (p v q) is equivalent to (~p & ~q);
(2) ~ (p & q) is equivalent to (~p v ~q).

As I've noticed before, you can do propositional logic with categorical syllogisms if you assume a singleton universe; that is, as Tom nicely puts it, you can treat standard propositional logic as a "term logic with a single individual". It's verbally convenient to take this individual as 'the world' (in whatever way one chooses at any given time to understand that). Since we can do this, we should be able to prove the De Morgan Equivalences by categorical means. It is, in fact, fairly easy to do so, and so I post the arguments for fun.

The First Equivalence. We start with p or q, which we will be negating:

(p v q)

This has the following Welton diagram:

|   |   |   | X |

This says that No nonp-world is a nonq-world, which is the categorical translation of the disjunction.

The contradictory of this is:

Some nonp-world is a nonq-world.

Now, given that our universe is singleton (there is only one world), we can conclude the universal from the particular (A from I and E from O); I will call this 'propositional concession'. Propositional concession gives us:

Every nonp-world is a nonq-world.

This is diagrammed as:

| X | X | X |   |

This diagram pictures the following things: Every nonp-world is a nonq-world; Some nonp-world is a nonq-world; ~(p v q); and (~p & ~q). And, in fact, (~p & ~q) is the propositional translation of the categorical Every nonp-world is a nonq-world.

Thus our proof:

(1) ~ (p v q)
(2) It is not the case that ~pE~q.
(3) ~pI~q
(4) ~pA~q
(5) (~p & ~q)

(2) is a translation of (1). (3) takes "It is not the case that" as a marker for contradiction. (4) is from (3) by propositional concession. (5) is the translation of (4).

We can actually simplify this proof somewhat by taking propositional negation as contrariety rather than contradiction. (As far as I can tell this seems to be a good idea in general for reasons of convenience; but in a singleton universe there is no significant difference between contrariety and contradiction.) The contrariety-based proof is as follows:

(1) ~ (p v q)
(2) It is not the case that ~pE~q
(3) ~pA~q
(4) (~p & ~q)

(2) is from (1) by translation. (3) is from (2) by taking "It is not the case that" to indicate contrariety. (4) is from (3) by translation.

The Second Equivalence. We start with p and q, which we will be negating:

(p & q)

This has the following Welton diagram:

|   | X | X | X |

This says two things at once:

Every p-world is a q-world.

Every q-world is a p-world.

It doesn't matter which of these we take. I'll take the first. The contradictory of this is:

Some p-world is not a q-world.

With propositional concession we get:

No p-world is a q-world.

We can diagram this as:

| X |   |   |   |

This diagram is equivalent to three things: No p-world is a q-world; Some p-world is not a q-world; ~ (p & q); and (~p v ~q). The last of the four is what we wished to prove. And, in fact, the categorical translation of (~p v ~q) is No p-world is a q-world.

So the proof goes:

(1) ~ (p & q)
(2) It is not the case that pAq
(3) pOq
(4) pEq
(5) (~p v ~q)

(2) is the categorical translation of (1). (3) is what you get by reading "It is not the case that" as contradiction. (4) you get by propositional concession. (5) is the propositional translation of (4).

This assumes, of course, that propositional negation is contradiction. If we assume that it is contrariety, we get the following, simpler, result.

(1) ~ (p & q)
(2) It is not the case that pAq
(3) pEq
(4) (~p v ~q)

Pop Quiz

Try your hand at these lesser-known odds and ends pertaining to early modern philosophy.

1. Which early modern philosopher said of the Bible that "it is an ev­erlasting guide to true wisdom, one that not only agrees with the speculations of a perfected reason but sheds new light on the whole field surveyed by that reason, illuminating what still remains opaque to it"?

2. What four books did David Hume recommend that Michael Ramsay read in order that he might more easily understand "the more metaphysical parts" of Hume's reasoning in Book 1 of the Treatise?

3. Which early modern philosopher relates this story in a letter?

I myself saw and conversed with a woman at Genoa, a reputed Saint, whose head I met three years after, encircled with rays, to be sold among other pictures in the great square of Leghorn. This same Saint appeared to me very manifestly a vile lying hypocrite, though much extolled and admired.

4. Whom did John Norris call "the great Galileo of the Intellectual World" in his 1701 work An Essay Towards the Theory of an Ideal or Intelligible World?

5. Which early modern philosopher says that "a right care had of Education, is the only humane means of making People truly Vertuous"?

6. The following sentence is found in which work of which author?

The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.

7. What is the reason John Locke gives in A Letter Concerning Toleration for treating atheists as an exception to the general principle that error should be tolerated?

8. Famously, Kant says in the Prolegomena that David Hume aroused him from his dogmatic slumber. In a 1798 letter to Garve, what does Kant say aroused him from his dogmatic slumber?

9. In Siris, George Berkeley suggests that the world has a "Vegetative Soul or Vital Spirit". What does he identify as this world soul?

10. Leibniz distinguishes between things in relation to which God's power and wisdom are shown and things in relation to which God's goodness is shown. In relation to what is God's goodness shown?

[The answers are now up here.]

Sunrise

Today is the feast of Holy Theophany, also known as Epiphany, alson known as Denho, which means uprising or going up, a term often associated with the rising of the sun.

The grace of God has appeared,
bringing salvation to all,
training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions,
and in the present age to live lives
that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,
while we wait for the blessed hope
and the manifestation of the glory
of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
He it is who gave himself for us
that he might redeem us from all iniquity
and purify for himself a people of his own
who are zealous for good deeds.

[Titus 2:11-14]