A Common Inference
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A night: mysterious, tender, quiet, deep;
Heavy with flowers; full of life asleep;
Thrilling with insect voices; thick with stars;
No cloud between the dewdrops and red Mars;
The small earth whirling softly on her way,
The moonbeams and the waterfalls at play;
A million million worlds that move in peace,
A million mighty laws that never cease;
And one small ant-heap, hidden by small weeds,
Rich with eggs, slaves, and store of millet seeds.
They sleep beneath the sod
And trust in God.
A day: all glorious, royal, blazing bright;
Heavy with flowers; full of life and light;
Great fields of corn and sunshine; courteous trees;
Snow-sainted mountains; earth-embracing seas;
Wide golden deserts; slender silver streams;
Clear rainbows where the tossing fountain gleams;
And everywhere, in happiness and peace,
A million forms of life that never cease;
And one small ant-heap, crushed by passing tread,
Hath scarce enough alive to mourn the dead!
They shriek beneath the sod,
"There is no God!"
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Gilman on the Problem of Evil
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Proving a Negative
I've noted before that much of what passes for principles of critical thinking is actually folklore -- some of it having some real foundation, much of it not. One of my bêtes noires in this regard has been the claim, "You can't prove a negative," which I've repeatedly found in recent times, so I thought I'd consolidate some of my comments on the subject into a single post.
It's difficult to say why this particular claim has such staying power; it has been around for at least two hundred years now, despite the fact that you can quite literally find philosophers and logicians in every generation who point out that it is false. It's also difficult to determine exactly where it came from; one possibility is that it first arose in the context of the British court system. Court systems, of course, typically have conventions defining various kinds of proof requirements for the purposes of protecting the innocent and bringing the guilty to justice, and relative to particular proof requirements it is indeed true that you might not be able to prove a negative. But this is not merely true of negatives; it's necessarily true of affirmatives, as well. And this, in fact, is quite general: you can only get the claim by creating an artificial asymmetry between negative and affirmative claims.
It's easy enough to think through. Even if we ratchet up the level of proof required to rigorous demonstration, there is a straightforward way to prove a negative: show that what's being negated and something known to be true imply a contradiction. In reality, we usually don't require the standard of proof to be anywhere near so strict, since we usually allow for defeasible proofs. If you want to prove that there is no ordinary cat on the desk in front of you, look and see whether there is a cat on the desk in front of you. It's barely possible that there's an invisible cat on the desk in front of you, either because of something to do with the cat (like the one in H. G. Wells's Invisible Man) or because of something to do with your eyes. If you want to prove that there is no invisible cat in front of you, feel around and check it out. If someone suggests that there is an invisible, intangible cat on the desk in front of you, you should be able to prove that an invisible, intangible cat implies a contradiction, unless the word 'cat' is being used in an odd way. And so forth.
It is curious that we tend to assume this sort of asymmetry between affirmations and negations.It has been pointed out before that affirmations and negations are convertible -- every affirmation can be stated in an negative way and every negation can be stated in an affirmative way. If you can prove an affirmative claim, you can prove infinitely many negative claims. This, of course, is a purely formal issue; one might think that it's just an artefact of the formal system, i.e., that the formal system fails to model real affirmations and negations on this point. There's some plausibility to that, but even setting aside the formal issue there are problems with the claim that you can't prove a negative. In particular, if you treated affirmations in the way negations are treated by the cliché, it seems you couldn't prove an affirmation, either. If you aren't accepting the testimony of your senses as proof that there is no cat on the desk, why would you accept the testimony of your senses as proof that there is a cat on the desk? If you can't prove that rain isn't caused by an unobservable cause, what is the basis for thinking you can prove that rain is caused by an observable one while using the same standard of proof?
I think one reason for the long life of the cliché is that it gets confused with considerations of irrelevance. Most of the cases that people propose as instances showing the difficulty of proving a negative are actually just cases showing the difficulty of proving something irrelevant to the topic at hand. Suppose someone says that rain clouds are guided by invisible leprechauns, and this is clearly something they believe rather than just made up for some reason. Unless the existence of the invisible leprechaun is suggested by specific relevant evidence (either pertaining to the causal processes of rain, or external to but associated with them), there is no way to link it to the phenomenon as relevant one way or another. And if you can't link it to the phenomenon as relevant, you can't (short of showing 'invisible leprechaun' self-contradictory) say what would prove or disprove its involvement in that domain at all. If you can't lay down any conditions of proof for a claim, under any standard of proof short of rigorous demonstration, you can't prove or disprove the claim except by rigorous demonstration. So the problem with proving that invisible leprechauns who guide the rain don't exist is not that the claim is negative; it's that we have no clear idea of how the two are supposed to be related.
It's also likely that the cliché gains some of its plausibility due to the problem of exhaustive division. How do you know that your inductive process covered all of the possibilities? You can't, unless you can show that it divided the field of possibilities completely. Depending on what kind of possibilities you are considering, however, this can sometimes be prohibitively difficult as a practical matter, because you have to show that it is a contradiction for there to be a possibility you did not cover. This is a high standard of proof we can't usually meet. Thus, it's very difficult to prove that there is nothing you've left out -- some hidden factor that you haven't recognized yet. However, even here we can still often show (and sometimes very easily) that a given candidate cannot be this hidden factor; so we can still prove negatives, although there are negatives that are prohibitively difficult to prove at this level of proof. This is also not exclusive to negatives, however; there are affirmative statements that are prohibitively difficult to prove at this level of proof, for exactly the same reason. (The problem of division is closely related to Wilkins's suggestion that it's a problem with lack of caution with regard to universes of discourse.)
We need some good serious study of critical thinking folklore; it's an area of folklore that is very common, but it's overlooked because when people think of folklore they think of savages with feathers and not of themselves. What are the origins of principles of folk-logic like these? What keeps them in currency? There is so much about this area that we just don't fully understand. And when you don't understand what underlies these principles, it's hard to say how to make them extinct when they need to be made so.
It's difficult to say why this particular claim has such staying power; it has been around for at least two hundred years now, despite the fact that you can quite literally find philosophers and logicians in every generation who point out that it is false. It's also difficult to determine exactly where it came from; one possibility is that it first arose in the context of the British court system. Court systems, of course, typically have conventions defining various kinds of proof requirements for the purposes of protecting the innocent and bringing the guilty to justice, and relative to particular proof requirements it is indeed true that you might not be able to prove a negative. But this is not merely true of negatives; it's necessarily true of affirmatives, as well. And this, in fact, is quite general: you can only get the claim by creating an artificial asymmetry between negative and affirmative claims.
It's easy enough to think through. Even if we ratchet up the level of proof required to rigorous demonstration, there is a straightforward way to prove a negative: show that what's being negated and something known to be true imply a contradiction. In reality, we usually don't require the standard of proof to be anywhere near so strict, since we usually allow for defeasible proofs. If you want to prove that there is no ordinary cat on the desk in front of you, look and see whether there is a cat on the desk in front of you. It's barely possible that there's an invisible cat on the desk in front of you, either because of something to do with the cat (like the one in H. G. Wells's Invisible Man) or because of something to do with your eyes. If you want to prove that there is no invisible cat in front of you, feel around and check it out. If someone suggests that there is an invisible, intangible cat on the desk in front of you, you should be able to prove that an invisible, intangible cat implies a contradiction, unless the word 'cat' is being used in an odd way. And so forth.
It is curious that we tend to assume this sort of asymmetry between affirmations and negations.It has been pointed out before that affirmations and negations are convertible -- every affirmation can be stated in an negative way and every negation can be stated in an affirmative way. If you can prove an affirmative claim, you can prove infinitely many negative claims. This, of course, is a purely formal issue; one might think that it's just an artefact of the formal system, i.e., that the formal system fails to model real affirmations and negations on this point. There's some plausibility to that, but even setting aside the formal issue there are problems with the claim that you can't prove a negative. In particular, if you treated affirmations in the way negations are treated by the cliché, it seems you couldn't prove an affirmation, either. If you aren't accepting the testimony of your senses as proof that there is no cat on the desk, why would you accept the testimony of your senses as proof that there is a cat on the desk? If you can't prove that rain isn't caused by an unobservable cause, what is the basis for thinking you can prove that rain is caused by an observable one while using the same standard of proof?
I think one reason for the long life of the cliché is that it gets confused with considerations of irrelevance. Most of the cases that people propose as instances showing the difficulty of proving a negative are actually just cases showing the difficulty of proving something irrelevant to the topic at hand. Suppose someone says that rain clouds are guided by invisible leprechauns, and this is clearly something they believe rather than just made up for some reason. Unless the existence of the invisible leprechaun is suggested by specific relevant evidence (either pertaining to the causal processes of rain, or external to but associated with them), there is no way to link it to the phenomenon as relevant one way or another. And if you can't link it to the phenomenon as relevant, you can't (short of showing 'invisible leprechaun' self-contradictory) say what would prove or disprove its involvement in that domain at all. If you can't lay down any conditions of proof for a claim, under any standard of proof short of rigorous demonstration, you can't prove or disprove the claim except by rigorous demonstration. So the problem with proving that invisible leprechauns who guide the rain don't exist is not that the claim is negative; it's that we have no clear idea of how the two are supposed to be related.
It's also likely that the cliché gains some of its plausibility due to the problem of exhaustive division. How do you know that your inductive process covered all of the possibilities? You can't, unless you can show that it divided the field of possibilities completely. Depending on what kind of possibilities you are considering, however, this can sometimes be prohibitively difficult as a practical matter, because you have to show that it is a contradiction for there to be a possibility you did not cover. This is a high standard of proof we can't usually meet. Thus, it's very difficult to prove that there is nothing you've left out -- some hidden factor that you haven't recognized yet. However, even here we can still often show (and sometimes very easily) that a given candidate cannot be this hidden factor; so we can still prove negatives, although there are negatives that are prohibitively difficult to prove at this level of proof. This is also not exclusive to negatives, however; there are affirmative statements that are prohibitively difficult to prove at this level of proof, for exactly the same reason. (The problem of division is closely related to Wilkins's suggestion that it's a problem with lack of caution with regard to universes of discourse.)
We need some good serious study of critical thinking folklore; it's an area of folklore that is very common, but it's overlooked because when people think of folklore they think of savages with feathers and not of themselves. What are the origins of principles of folk-logic like these? What keeps them in currency? There is so much about this area that we just don't fully understand. And when you don't understand what underlies these principles, it's hard to say how to make them extinct when they need to be made so.
We Know the Way
Easter Tuesday
by Christina Rossetti
“Together with my dead body shall they arise.”
Shall my dead body arise? then amen and yea
On track of a home beyond the uttermost skies
Together with my dead body shall they.
We know the way: thank God Who hath showed us the way!
Jesus Christ our Way to beautiful Paradise,
Jesus Christ the Same for ever, the Same today.
Five Virgins replenish with oil their lamps, being wise,
Five Virgins awaiting the Bridegroom watch and pray:
And if I one day spring from my grave to the prize,
Together with my dead body shall they.
Monday, April 05, 2010
Out in the Rain
Easter Monday
by Christina Rossetti
Out in the rain a world is growing green,
On half the trees quick buds are seen
Where glued-up buds have been.
Out in the rain God's Acre stretches green,
Its harvest quick tho' still unseen:
For there the Life hath been.
If Christ hath died His brethren well may die,
Sing in the gate of death, lay by
This life without a sigh:
For Christ hath died and good it is to die;
To sleep whenso He lays us by,
Then wake without a sigh.
Yea, Christ hath died, yea, Christ is risen again:
Wherefore both life and death grow plain
To us who wax and wane;
For Christ Who rose shall die no more again:
Amen: till He makes all things plain
Let us wax on and wane.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Blackford and Is/Ought
I hope at some point to say a few words about the recent discussions in the blogosphere of Sam Harris's TED talk on morality and science, since unlike most discussions inspired in some way by Sam Harris they were actually interesting. But I have been crazy-busy recently, and I'm not sure if I'll have enough time even in the coming week. But I did notice with a bit of interest that Russell Blackford in a side comment in a post on the is/ought distinction gives a fairly straightforward example of what I at one point called the Statement interpretation of the is/ought divide:
But, as I noted before, the Statement interpretation is not at all tenable. Blackford is right that Hume said that authors of systems of morality shift from propositions with 'is' and 'is not' copulae to propositions with 'ought' and 'ought not' copulae without explaining their shift or even recognizing that it had happened. But it is trivially easy to find propositions with the copula 'is' that logically entail propositions with the copula 'ought' (if we assume for the sake of argument that 'ought' counts as a copula); for instance, "We ought to do good" is a true proposition entails We ought to do good. Disquotation is actually not even necessary, but it shows immediately the problem with putting Hume's point in terms of logical entailment. Hume's reason for his observation was not this but that moral rationalists of his time regarded obligations as necessary relations perceived by reason alone and Hume was arguing throughout the relevant section obligation cannot be a relation and cannot be perceived by reason alone.
Hume pointed out that no number of propositions that use the copula "is" can ever logically entail a proposition with the copula "ought". Yet, he says, we often see philosophers slip into "ought" conclusions without ever explaining how they did it. That's a shrewd observation, and we should not throw it out in the name of being able to study morality more easily. It imposes a discipline on us, that if we start introducing "oughts" we must explain how we did it, and it can't simply be a logical entailment from a string of "is" statements.
But, as I noted before, the Statement interpretation is not at all tenable. Blackford is right that Hume said that authors of systems of morality shift from propositions with 'is' and 'is not' copulae to propositions with 'ought' and 'ought not' copulae without explaining their shift or even recognizing that it had happened. But it is trivially easy to find propositions with the copula 'is' that logically entail propositions with the copula 'ought' (if we assume for the sake of argument that 'ought' counts as a copula); for instance, "We ought to do good" is a true proposition entails We ought to do good. Disquotation is actually not even necessary, but it shows immediately the problem with putting Hume's point in terms of logical entailment. Hume's reason for his observation was not this but that moral rationalists of his time regarded obligations as necessary relations perceived by reason alone and Hume was arguing throughout the relevant section obligation cannot be a relation and cannot be perceived by reason alone.
Thou but Yesterday a Thorn
An Easter Carol
Christina Rossetti
Spring bursts to-day,
For Christ is risen and all the earth’s at play.
Flash forth, thou Sun,
The rain is over and gone, its work is done.
Winter is past,
Sweet Spring is come at last, is come at last.
Bud, Fig and Vine,
Bud, Olive, fat with fruit and oil and wine.
Break forth this morn
In roses, thou but yesterday a Thorn.
Uplift thy head,
O pure white Lily through the Winter dead.
Beside your dams
Leap and rejoice, you merry-making Lambs.
All Herds and Flocks
Rejoice, all Beasts of thickets and of rocks.
Sing, Creatures, sing,
Angels and Men and Birds and everything.
All notes of Doves
Fill all our world: this is the time of loves.
Ability and the Too-Heavy Stone
The paradox of the stone is usually phrased as the question, "Can God create a rock so heavy He cannot lift it?" More expansively we could summarize it as the following dilemma (the particular form of which I borrow from C. Wade Savage):
(1) Either God can create a stone which He cannot lift, or He cannot create a stone which He cannot lift.
(2) If God can create a stone which He cannot lift, He is not omnipotent (because He cannot lift it).
(3) If God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift, He is not omnipotent (because He cannot create it).
(4) Therefore, God is not omnipotent.
It doesn't need to be a stone, of course. The paradox is more of a trivial curiosity than anything very profound; it relies on a notion of omnipotence as 'being able to do anything' and this is not the notion of omnipotence that was in view when traditional doctrines of omnipotence were developed, but simply one rather late offshoot, so (4) has to be suitably restricted.. And it is also often noted that the apparent force lies in the problematic assumption that among the things you must be able to do if you are able to do anything are logical impossibilities, which are not usually included in the scope of 'anything'.
What is not often recognized, though, is that even on its own terms the paradox of the stone is not actually a paradox, because there are no logical problems with answering 'Yes'. The problem is that (2), while it looks like it is similar to (3), can't be. The dilemma proposes a contrast between God's being able to cause Himself to be unable to do something, in which case we have an inability 'nested in' an ability, and God's being unable to cause Himself to be unable to do something, in which we have an 'unnested' inability. But in sophisticated positions (as opposed to mere crude simplifications) that do take omnipotence to be the ability to do anything (e.g., broadly Cartesian accounts of omnipotence), these will not function in the same way. For if we think of the ability to be able or unable (as one chooses), it always means that if you are unable to do something it is because of a logically prior ability. But these positions on omnipotence in these contexts are then essentially claims that there is an infinite series of such abilities: for any or ability inability you might name, God has the ability not to have that ability or inability, directly or indirectly, and that ability to have or lack the ability is logically prior. (And, indeed, broadly Cartesian accounts of omnipotence are sometimes explicit in one way or another about such an infinite series.) The modal operators for these abilities cannot collapse, so any claim of inability is relativized by its place in the infinite series; and thus saying that "God can create a stone He cannot lift" does not problematize the omnipotence in question because the inability is derivative: affirming means merely that God both can and cannot lift the stone, in different senses. He cannot lift it in the sense that He is exercising His ability not to be able to lift it; He could lift it simply by no longer exercising His ability not to be able to lift it.
We can find analogues in finite cases, of course. If I inject my legs with a chemical that produces indefinite paralysis, and I also have handy the antidote, can I or can't I walk to the store? 'Can' and 'Can't' depend on which abilities you have in view: the immediate ability of my legs to move or my ability with the antidote to make my legs movable. My overall abilities are branched, with a paralysis branch (in which I can't move my legs) and an antidote branch (in which I can). What the omnipotence case does is guarantee that for any 'paralysis' in the series there is an 'antidote' branch in the ability and that there can be no extrinsic impediment intervening; any 'paralysis' about the stone implies a previously available 'antidote' to the 'paralysis'. Thus the antecedent of (2) does not guarantee the consequent.
Such accounts of omnipotence are not at all the best accounts of omnipotence; but the paradox of the stone is not a particularly good reason for rejecting them. At least, it lacks the analytical sophistication to do much; you would needed a more logically advanced argument than stone paradoxes usually are to pin any actual logical problems on even the crude notion of omnipotence.
(1) Either God can create a stone which He cannot lift, or He cannot create a stone which He cannot lift.
(2) If God can create a stone which He cannot lift, He is not omnipotent (because He cannot lift it).
(3) If God cannot create a stone which He cannot lift, He is not omnipotent (because He cannot create it).
(4) Therefore, God is not omnipotent.
It doesn't need to be a stone, of course. The paradox is more of a trivial curiosity than anything very profound; it relies on a notion of omnipotence as 'being able to do anything' and this is not the notion of omnipotence that was in view when traditional doctrines of omnipotence were developed, but simply one rather late offshoot, so (4) has to be suitably restricted.. And it is also often noted that the apparent force lies in the problematic assumption that among the things you must be able to do if you are able to do anything are logical impossibilities, which are not usually included in the scope of 'anything'.
What is not often recognized, though, is that even on its own terms the paradox of the stone is not actually a paradox, because there are no logical problems with answering 'Yes'. The problem is that (2), while it looks like it is similar to (3), can't be. The dilemma proposes a contrast between God's being able to cause Himself to be unable to do something, in which case we have an inability 'nested in' an ability, and God's being unable to cause Himself to be unable to do something, in which we have an 'unnested' inability. But in sophisticated positions (as opposed to mere crude simplifications) that do take omnipotence to be the ability to do anything (e.g., broadly Cartesian accounts of omnipotence), these will not function in the same way. For if we think of the ability to be able or unable (as one chooses), it always means that if you are unable to do something it is because of a logically prior ability. But these positions on omnipotence in these contexts are then essentially claims that there is an infinite series of such abilities: for any or ability inability you might name, God has the ability not to have that ability or inability, directly or indirectly, and that ability to have or lack the ability is logically prior. (And, indeed, broadly Cartesian accounts of omnipotence are sometimes explicit in one way or another about such an infinite series.) The modal operators for these abilities cannot collapse, so any claim of inability is relativized by its place in the infinite series; and thus saying that "God can create a stone He cannot lift" does not problematize the omnipotence in question because the inability is derivative: affirming means merely that God both can and cannot lift the stone, in different senses. He cannot lift it in the sense that He is exercising His ability not to be able to lift it; He could lift it simply by no longer exercising His ability not to be able to lift it.
We can find analogues in finite cases, of course. If I inject my legs with a chemical that produces indefinite paralysis, and I also have handy the antidote, can I or can't I walk to the store? 'Can' and 'Can't' depend on which abilities you have in view: the immediate ability of my legs to move or my ability with the antidote to make my legs movable. My overall abilities are branched, with a paralysis branch (in which I can't move my legs) and an antidote branch (in which I can). What the omnipotence case does is guarantee that for any 'paralysis' in the series there is an 'antidote' branch in the ability and that there can be no extrinsic impediment intervening; any 'paralysis' about the stone implies a previously available 'antidote' to the 'paralysis'. Thus the antecedent of (2) does not guarantee the consequent.
Such accounts of omnipotence are not at all the best accounts of omnipotence; but the paradox of the stone is not a particularly good reason for rejecting them. At least, it lacks the analytical sophistication to do much; you would needed a more logically advanced argument than stone paradoxes usually are to pin any actual logical problems on even the crude notion of omnipotence.
Surrexit Christus
Christus resurrexit a mortuis,
Morte mortem calcavit,
Et entibus in sepulchris
Vitam donavit.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Refined with Bright Supernal Fires
Easter Eve
by John Keble
As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth
thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water. Zechariah ix.
11.
At length the worst is o'er, and Thou art laid
Deep in Thy darksome bed;
All still and cold beneath yon dreary stone
Thy sacred form is gone;
Around those lips where power and mercy hung,
The dews of deaths have clung;
The dull earth o'er Thee, and Thy foes around,
Thou sleep'st a silent corse, in funeral fetters wound.
Sleep'st Thou indeed? or is Thy spirit fled,
At large among the dead?
Whether in Eden bowers Thy welcome voice
Wake Abraham to rejoice,
Or in some drearier scene Thine eye controls
The thronging band of souls;
That, as Thy blood won earth, Thine agony
Might set the shadowy realm from sin and sorrow free.
Where'er Thou roam'st, one happy soul, we know,
Seen at Thy side in woe,
Waits on Thy triumphs--even as all the blest
With him and Thee shall rest.
Each on his cross; by Thee we hang a while,
Watching Thy patient smile,
Till we have learned to say, "'Tis justly done,
Only in glory, LORD, Thy sinful servant own."
Soon wilt Thou take us to Thy tranquil bower
To rest one little hour,
Till Thine elect are numbered, and the grave
Call Thee to come and save:
Then on Thy bosom borne shall we descend
Again with earth to blend,
Earth all refined with bright supernal fires,
Tinctured with holy blood, and winged with pure desires.
Meanwhile with every son and saint of Thine
Along the glorious line,
Sitting by turns beneath Thy sacred feet
We'll hold communion sweet,
Know them by look and voice, and thank them all
For helping us in thrall,
For words of hope, and bright examples given
To show through moonless skies that there is light in Heaven.
O come that day, when in this restless heart
Earth shall resign her part,
When in the grave with Thee my limbs shall rest,
My soul with Thee be blest!
But stay, presumptuous--CHRIST with Thee abides
In the rock's dreary sides:
He from this stone will wring Celestial dew
If but this prisoner's heart he faithful found and true.
When tears are spent, and then art left alone
With ghosts of blessings gone,
Think thou art taken from the cross, and laid
In JESUS' burial shade;
Take Moses' rod, the rod of prayer, and call
Out of the rocky wall
The fount of holy blood; and lift on high
Thy grovelling soul that feels so desolate and dry.
Prisoner of Hope thou art--look up and sing
In hope of promised spring.
As in the pit his father's darling lay
Beside the desert way,
And knew not how, but knew his GOD would save
E'en from that living grave,
So, buried with our LORD, we'll chose our eyes
To the decaying world, till Angels bid us rise.
Holy Saturday
As Christ's death wrought our salvation, so likewise did His burial. Hence Jerome says (Super Marc. xiv): "By Christ's burial we rise again"; and on Isaiah 53:9: "He shall give the ungodly for His burial," a gloss says: "He shall give to God and the Father the Gentiles who were without godliness, because He purchased them by His death and burial."Thomas Aquinas, ST III.51.1ad2
RNC Expenses
Lindsay Beyerstein is in good form discussing the expenses of Republic National Committee staffers:
Ouch.
It's one thing to soft-pedal your booze runs as office supplies. Provided you're using that booze for party functions, then you're just slapping a sanitized label on a legitimate expense. Even the infamous trip to the strip club was legitimate from a campaign finance point of view, despite being a PR nightmare. The staffers were apparently courting donors: These hard-driving captains of industry are not putting down cash on some vague promise of overturning Roe. Apparently, rich Republicans won't cough up the big bucks until they actually see women in bondage.
But repeated instances of writing off hundreds of dollars worth of "meals" from places that don't even sell food makes me wonder if some of these incidents are attempts to conceal something more sinister, like appropriating party money for personal use.
Ouch.
He Can Break a Seal
Easter Eve
by Christina Rossetti
There is nothing more that they can do
For all their rage and boast :
Caiaphas with his blaspheming crew,
Herod with his host;
Pontius Pilate in his judgment hall
Judging their Judge and his,
Or he who led them all and past them all,
Arch-Judas with his kiss.
The sepulchre made sure with ponderous stone,
Seal that same stone, O priest :
It may be thou shalt block the Holy One
From rising in the east.
Set a watch about the sepulchre
To watch on pain of death :
They must hold fast the stone if One should stir
And shake it from beneath.
God Almighty, He can break a seal,
And roll away a stone :
Can grind the proud in dust who would not kneel,
And crush the mighty one.
There is nothing more that they can do
For all their passionate care,
Those who sit in dust, the blessed few,
And weep and rend their hair.
Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalen,
The Virgin unreproved,
Joseph and Nicodemus foremost men,
And John the well-beloved.
Bring your finest linen and your spice,
Swathe the sacred Dead,
Bind with careful hands and piteous eyes
The napkin round His head :
Lay Him in the garden-rock to rest :
Rest you the Sabbath length :
The Sun that went down crimson in the west
Shall rise renewed in strength.
God Almighty shall give joy for pain,
Shall comfort him who grieves :
Lo He with joy shall doubtless come again
And with Him bring His sheaves.
A Jotting on Moral Particularism
Chance asked my opinion on moral particularism. I haven't thought at great length about it, but judging from what little I've ready by Dancy about it, I would say that it's right in its positive proposal and wrong in its criticisms of generalists. Much of morality is particularist; there is such a thing as moral taste, and more broadly yet there is such a thing as prudence. A morality that doesn't take this into account is incomplete and inadequate. But particularism as such is the view that there are no defensible exceptionless moral principles, which is absurd; obviously there are, e.g., 'Try to do what is good and avoid what is bad'. And particularist criticisms of moral principles almost universally make the error of assuming that the only options are to have only moral principles or no moral principles; these, however, are contraries rather than contradictories.
We live in a curious period of philosophy; namely, we live in the Era of a Hundred Myriad Schools. This sharply affects our moral discourse, because moral philosophy, like much else in philosophy, is massively fragmented. (I think the same is true of moral theology.) This almost guarantees that typical positions in moral philosophy, like particularist and standard 'generalist' positions, will be incomplete. The only real way forward is through a major synthesis; such things have happened before, but not, as far as I am aware, under such fragmented conditions. In the meantime we need to be skeptical of any position that does not recognize the diversity and richness of moral life and moral reasoning.
We live in a curious period of philosophy; namely, we live in the Era of a Hundred Myriad Schools. This sharply affects our moral discourse, because moral philosophy, like much else in philosophy, is massively fragmented. (I think the same is true of moral theology.) This almost guarantees that typical positions in moral philosophy, like particularist and standard 'generalist' positions, will be incomplete. The only real way forward is through a major synthesis; such things have happened before, but not, as far as I am aware, under such fragmented conditions. In the meantime we need to be skeptical of any position that does not recognize the diversity and richness of moral life and moral reasoning.
Friday, April 02, 2010
The Bitter Herbs of Earth are Set
Good Friday
by John Keble
He is despised and rejected of men. Isaiah liii. 3.
Is it not strange, the darkest hour
That ever dawned on sinful earth
Should touch the heart with softer power
For comfort than an angel's mirth?
That to the Cross the mourner's eye should turn
Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn?
Sooner than where the Easter sun
Shines glorious on yon open grave,
And to and fro the tidings run,
"Who died to heal, is risen to save?"
Sooner than where upon the Saviour's friends
The very Comforter in light and love descends?
Yet so it is: for duly there
The bitter herbs of earth are set,
Till tempered by the Saviour's prayer,
And with the Saviour's life-blood wet,
They turn to sweetness, and drop holy balm,
Soft as imprisoned martyr's deathbed calm.
All turn to sweet--but most of all
That bitterest to the lip of pride,
When hopes presumptuous fade and fall,
Or Friendship scorns us, duly tried,
Or Love, the flower that closes up for fear
When rude and selfish spirits breathe too near.
Then like a long-forgotten strain
Comes sweeping o'er the heart forlorn
What sunshine hours had taught in vain
Of JESUS suffering shame and scorn,
As in all lowly hearts he suffers still,
While we triumphant ride and have the world at will.
His pierced hands in vain would hide
His face from rude reproachful gaze,
His ears are open to abide
The wildest storm the tongue can raise,
He who with one rough word, some early day,
Their idol world and them shall sweep for aye away.
But we by Fancy may assuage
The festering sore by Fancy made,
Down in some lonely hermitage
Like wounded pilgrims safely laid,
Where gentlest breezes whisper souls distressed,
That Love yet lives, and Patience shall find rest.
O! shame beyond the bitterest thought
That evil spirit ever framed,
That sinners know what Jesus wrought,
Yet feel their haughty hearts untamed -
That souls in refuge, holding by the Cross,
Should wince and fret at this world's little loss.
Lord of my heart, by Thy last cry,
Let not Thy blood on earth be spent -
Lo, at Thy feet I fainting lie,
Mine eyes upon Thy wounds are bent,
Upon Thy streaming wounds my weary eyes
Wait like the parched earth on April skies.
Wash me, and dry these bitter tears,
O let my heart no further roam,
'Tis Thine by vows, and hopes, and fears.
Long since--O call Thy wanderer home;
To that dear home, safe in Thy wounded side,
Where only broken hearts their sin and shame may hide.
3/5
Jeremy has a good post addressing misconceptions about the 3/5 clause in the original Constitution:
The wording actually assumes they are full persons. It distinguishes between the contribution to the census from free persons and the contribution from other persons. It's 3/5 of the number of other persons that gets added to the number of free persons. It's not that slaves are 3/5 of a person.
And for the record, it was those who opposed slavery who didn't want them counted and those who favored it who did, because counting them as full persons would mean more representation in Congress for their states (and yet the voting for those states wouldn't involve the slaves voting, of course, so it's even more influence for the slave-holders if they counted fully).
I, Only I
Good Friday
by Christina Rossetti
Am I a stone, and not a sheep,
That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross,
To number drop by drop Thy blood's slow loss,
And yet not weep?
Not so those women loved
Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;
Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;
Not so the thief was moved;
Not so the Sun and Moon
Which hid their faces in a starless sky,
A horror of great darkness at broad noon--
I, only I.
Yet give not o'er,
But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock;
Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Thursday Before Easter
by John Keble
As the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to shew thee; for thou art greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision. Daniel ix. 23.
"O Holy mountain of my God,
How do thy towers in ruin lie,
How art thou riven and strewn abroad,
Under the rude and wasteful sky!"
'Twas thus upon his fasting-day
The "Man of Loves" was fain to pray,
His lattice open toward his darling west,
Mourning the ruined home he still must love the best.
Oh! for a love like Daniel's now,
To wing to Heaven but one strong prayer
For GOD'S new Israel, sunk as low,
Yet flourishing to sight as fair,
As Sion in her height of pride,
With queens for handmaids at her side,
With kings her nursing-fathers, throned high,
And compassed with the world's too tempting blazonry.
'Tis true, nor winter stays thy growth,
Nor torrid summer's sickly smile;
The flashing billows of the south
Break not upon so lone an isle,
But thou, rich vine, art grafted there,
The fruit of death or life to bear,
Yielding a surer witness every day,
To thine Almighty Author and His steadfast sway.
Oh! grief to think, that grapes of gall
Should cluster round thine healthiest shoot!
God's herald prove a heartless thrall,
Who, if he dared, would fain be mute!
E'en such is this bad world we see,
Which self-condemned in owning Thee,
Yet dares not open farewell of Thee take,
For very pride, and her high-boasted Reason's sake.
What do we then? if far and wide
Men kneel to CHRIST, the pure and meek,
Yet rage with passion, swell with pride,
Have we not still our faith to seek?
Nay—but in steadfast humbleness
Kneel on to Him, who loves to bless
The prayer that waits for him; and trembling strive
To keep the lingering flame in thine own breast alive.
Dark frowned the future e'en on him,
The loving and beloved Seer,
What time he saw, through shadows dim,
The boundary of th' eternal year;
He only of the sons of men
Named to be heir of glory then.
Else had it bruised too sore his tender heart
To see GOD'S ransomed world in wrath and flame depart
Then look no more: or closer watch
Thy course in Earth's bewildering ways,
For every glimpse thine eye can catch
Of what shall be in those dread days:
So when th' Archangel's word is spoken,
And Death's deep trance for ever broken,
In mercy thou mayst feel the heavenly hand,
And in thy lot unharmed before thy Savour stand.
I a King, and Thou a King
Maundy Thursday
by Christina Rossetti
"And the Vine said...Should I leave my wine, which cheereth both God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees?"
The great Vine left its glory to reign as Forest King.
"Nay," quoth the lofty forest trees, "we will not have this thing;
We will not have this supple one enring us with its ring.
Lo, from immemorial time our might towers shadowing:
Not we were born to curve and droop, not we to climb and cling:
We buffet back the buffeting wind, tough to its buffeting:
We screen great beasts, the wild fowl build in our heads and sing,
Every bird of every feather from off our tops takes wing:
I a king, and thou a king, and what king shall be our king?"
Nevertheless the great Vine stooped to be the Forest King,
While the forest swayed and murmured like seas that are tempesting:
Stooped and drooped with thousand tendrils in thirsty languishing;
Bowed to earth and lay on earth for earth's replenishing;
Put off sweetness, tasted bitterness, endured time's fashioning;
Put off life and put on death: and lo! it was all to bring
All its fellows down to a death which hath lost its sting,
All its fellows up to a life in endless triumphing,--
I a king, and thou a king, and this King to be our King.
Balmer's Overture
I confess I was caught somewhat offguard by the malice in Randall Balmer's 'overture':
Schadenfreude is not exactly becoming in a priest; but it seems to be interfering with Balmer's skills as a historian of religion, as well. All of the things that Balmer mentions had been old news by the time the Apostolic Constitution came out; Robinson, for instance, was elected bishop in 2003, Barbara Harris was elected the first woman bishop in 1989, the July 2009 compromise was simply the latest in a long series of controversies on same-sex marriage, and so forth. Now, to be sure, things move slowly in the Vatican -- as the joke goes, the reason the mills of God grind slowly is that that's the only way the Vatican can keep up. But there is simply no evidence that the Pope "thought he could harvest disaffected Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church"; Rome has been working for years on trying to find a better way to integrate Anglicans who had already converted. Under John Paul II they had been taken care of by ad hoc measures; this led to a patchwork system that needed overhaul. And with all due respect to Balmer, if Rome were to wait until the Anglicans got over their troubles on homosexuality and the like, it would have to wait forever -- Anglicans are always having some such controversy, and this is structurally inevitable. The powerhouses on the side opposite to Balmer is the Church of Nigeria, which is the largest member of the Anglican communion. (On paper the Church of England is larger, but it is widely known that on paper is the only way the CofE can muster such numbers.) The Church of Nigeria is not going to change its position on homosexuality. But the CofN is also die-hard Anglican, more Anglican than the Church of England, as the saying goes; there is nothing that will push them out of the Communion, and because they have the numbers they have the means to fight, and they know it. When they talk about how liberal stances on homosexuality are going to split the Anglican communion, they are not threatening to pack up their bags; they are threatening to push you out. It is not a wholly idle threat. The Anglican controversies will not end in any foreseeable future; it would take either the Church of Nigeria collapsing or the Episcopalians leaving the Communion to budge things. 'Opportunistic' suggests deliberate and carefully planned timing to take advantage of some suddenly open opportunity; not only does Rome lack the ability to time things so carefully, you don't time plans to take advantage of things that are perpetually ongoing. As Balmer says, to be opportunistic you have to 'sense an opening'; but nobody means by this an opening that has been open for decades and will be open for decades more. In the meantime, the Catholic Church still had the problem of what to do with Catholics already using the Book of Divine Worship and those Anglicans who had already put out feelers of interest. There appears to be no evidence that there were any motives other than that; and when neither documentary evidence, nor the timeline, nor the structure of the situation seem to support a historical hypothesis about motives, it is not a very good hypothesis.
Nonetheless, Episcopalians do have a reasonably good preventative system with regard to priestly pedophilia, and have since the 1990s; so far it seems to be doing well. I actually wish our public schools had something similar; and in hindsight just about every church should have put something in place like it to deal with sexual offenses generally three-quarters of a century ago at least.
My reference here, of course, is to the declaration last fall by the very same Benedict seeking to lure conservative Anglicans and Episcopalians to the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican sensed an opening, especially with those Episcopalians (and former Episcopalians) who were still fuming over the consecration of V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire, the refusal of the Episcopal Church to foreswear same-sex marriages, and the ordination of gays and lesbians and even (still!) the ordination of women.
On October 20, 2009, the Vatican announced a special “Apostolic Constitution” that would welcome these restive Episcopalians and Anglicans into the Catholic Church, allowing them to bring with them some of the glorious liturgies and music of the Anglican tradition.
While I’ve seen no evidence of Anglicans and Episcopalians “swimming the Tiber” en masse (pardon the pun) to Rome, the Vatican’s overture struck me at the time as opportunistic, even cynical. Ignoring decades of ecumenical conversations—not to mention catching the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, off guard—Benedict thought he could harvest disaffected Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church by offering concessions on liturgy and music together with ironclad proscriptions against such “evils” as homosexuality and women priests.
Schadenfreude is not exactly becoming in a priest; but it seems to be interfering with Balmer's skills as a historian of religion, as well. All of the things that Balmer mentions had been old news by the time the Apostolic Constitution came out; Robinson, for instance, was elected bishop in 2003, Barbara Harris was elected the first woman bishop in 1989, the July 2009 compromise was simply the latest in a long series of controversies on same-sex marriage, and so forth. Now, to be sure, things move slowly in the Vatican -- as the joke goes, the reason the mills of God grind slowly is that that's the only way the Vatican can keep up. But there is simply no evidence that the Pope "thought he could harvest disaffected Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church"; Rome has been working for years on trying to find a better way to integrate Anglicans who had already converted. Under John Paul II they had been taken care of by ad hoc measures; this led to a patchwork system that needed overhaul. And with all due respect to Balmer, if Rome were to wait until the Anglicans got over their troubles on homosexuality and the like, it would have to wait forever -- Anglicans are always having some such controversy, and this is structurally inevitable. The powerhouses on the side opposite to Balmer is the Church of Nigeria, which is the largest member of the Anglican communion. (On paper the Church of England is larger, but it is widely known that on paper is the only way the CofE can muster such numbers.) The Church of Nigeria is not going to change its position on homosexuality. But the CofN is also die-hard Anglican, more Anglican than the Church of England, as the saying goes; there is nothing that will push them out of the Communion, and because they have the numbers they have the means to fight, and they know it. When they talk about how liberal stances on homosexuality are going to split the Anglican communion, they are not threatening to pack up their bags; they are threatening to push you out. It is not a wholly idle threat. The Anglican controversies will not end in any foreseeable future; it would take either the Church of Nigeria collapsing or the Episcopalians leaving the Communion to budge things. 'Opportunistic' suggests deliberate and carefully planned timing to take advantage of some suddenly open opportunity; not only does Rome lack the ability to time things so carefully, you don't time plans to take advantage of things that are perpetually ongoing. As Balmer says, to be opportunistic you have to 'sense an opening'; but nobody means by this an opening that has been open for decades and will be open for decades more. In the meantime, the Catholic Church still had the problem of what to do with Catholics already using the Book of Divine Worship and those Anglicans who had already put out feelers of interest. There appears to be no evidence that there were any motives other than that; and when neither documentary evidence, nor the timeline, nor the structure of the situation seem to support a historical hypothesis about motives, it is not a very good hypothesis.
Nonetheless, Episcopalians do have a reasonably good preventative system with regard to priestly pedophilia, and have since the 1990s; so far it seems to be doing well. I actually wish our public schools had something similar; and in hindsight just about every church should have put something in place like it to deal with sexual offenses generally three-quarters of a century ago at least.
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