Unworthy of Man

I must, however, be of opinion, that the sentiments of those, who are inclined to think favourably of mankind, are more advantageous to virtue, than the contrary principles, which give us a mean opinion of our nature. When a man is prepossessed with a high notion of his rank and character in the creation, he will naturally endeavour to act up to it, and will scorn to do a base or vicious action, which might sink him below that figure which he makes in his own imagination. Accordingly we find, that all our polite and fashionable moralists insist upon this topic, and endeavour to represent vice as unworthy of man, as well as odious in itself.

David Hume, Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature.

Music on My Mind

Larry Sparks, "Bitterweeds". Unfortunately only an excerpt. But you can hear the original version of the whole song sung by Barbara Wilkinson at SongSpace. I think Wilkinson's song is likely to become a classic: a clear, easy to sing, and memorable story.

Rosmini on Causes and Happenings

'Every happening has a cause that produces it.' This proposition means exactly the same as the following: 'It is impossible for our intelligence to think a happening without thinking a cause that produced it.' To show that 'a happening without a cause cannot be thought', we must show that 'the concept of a happening without a cause involves contradiction.' Once this is demonstrated, we will have deduced the principle of cause from the principle of contradiction.

The demonstration is as follows: to say 'What does not exist, acts' is a contradiction. But a happening without a cause means 'What does not exist, acts.' Therefore a happening without a cause is a contradiction. The proofs follow.
As regards the major: to conceive mentally an action (a change) without an ens, is to conceive without conceiving, which is a contradiction. Indeed, the principle of knowledge states: 'The object of thought is ens'; therefore without an ens, we cannot mentally conceive. To conceive an action without conceiving an ens that performs the action, is to conceive without conceiving. Therefore to apply the action to something that does not exist is a contradiction in terms, which was to be proved.

As regards the minor: a happening is an action (a change). If this action has no cause, it is conceived by itself, without belonging to an ens; there is then an action without ens or, which is the same, what does not exist, acts. Thus the minor is proved (cf. 350-352).

Antonio Rosmini, New Essay Concerning the Origin of Ideas, Volume 2, Part III, Chapter 2. To put the argument in another format:

Major: 'Something that does not exist, acts' is a contradiction.
(1) What is conceived is conceived as a being.
(2) An action conceived without being conceived as a being acting, is not conceived as a being.
(3) Therefore, an action conceived without being conceived as a being acting is a contradiction.

Minor: A happening without a cause entails that something that does not exist, acts.
(1) A happening is an action.
(2) An action conceived without a cause is not conceived as a being that acts.
(3) Therefore, a happening conceived without a cause is not conceived as a being that acts.

The section references to 350-352 is from Rosmini's criticism of Kant in Volume 1. There Rosmini argues that 'what happens' conceptually includes the notion of 'cause', and thus the judgment is analytic and not, as Kant would have it, synthetic. As he puts it:

The following, therefore, is the sequence of our conceptions:

1. We conceive coming into existence, a concept which includes that of change.
2. The concept of change contains that of new operation.
3. The concept of new operation contains that of prior existence.
4. The concept of prior existence contains that of cause.

Conclusion: A happening without a cause is a contradiction.

SZ sz ZS

Siesta of a Hungarian Snake
by Edwin Morgan

s sz sz SZ sz SZ sz ZS zs ZS zs zs z

I am currently in the last week of term, so I am envying the Hungarian snake's dormition.

Metaphysics of Pregnancy

At Philosophers' Zone there's a summary of a discussion with Elselijn Kingma on the metaphysics of pregnancy. It's an interesting subject in itself, with important ramifications for many philosophical problems (as Kingma notes). And it is particularly interesting this time of year, since Monday was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas is in two weeks. Kingma summarizes her view of pregnancy in the following way:

‘My view is that the way to think of the foetus is to think of it as part of the pregnant organism. So that means we have one organism throughout the pregnancy and only at birth does this organism split and becomes two organisms.’

She opposes this view to what she calls the "foetal container model", in which "the pregnancy is literally a container and in the middle of the container there is a hollow in which sits the foetus—and there is no problematic part-whole relationship." (I take it that the key point here is the 'no problematic part-whole relationship', since spatially the fetus is literally contained. That is, the point is that the fetus is not contained in a pregnant organism the way a gift is in a box but is integrated into it in complex ways.) Unfortunately, we don't get Kingma's argument for the one organism view. There are other views than these two on the table. For instance, my own view of the matter, which I've mentioned before, is a two-organism view in which one organism is an integrated and dependent functional part generated in the other. (Of course, there is always some complication with what, precisely we mean by 'organism', since the term notoriously has no strict definition; but in the human case, I would say the same with 'human being': a pregnant mother is a human being who has another human being as a proper part.) The pregnant mother is not a mere container for the fetus; like Kingma's model, it is a part-whole model, since the fetus is literally and physically an interactive part of the mother, qua mother. But nothing about this, as far as I can see, requires that we hold there is only one organism. One potential worry about Kingma's one-then-two view is that birth is not a momentary happening,but a rather extended and complicated process; while the position looks like it would have a fairly simple way to distinguish organisms in the pregnancy case, it cannot actually do so. Is the relevant point the beginning of labor? The exit through the birth canal? The cutting of the umbilical? The first breath (after all, merely severing your hand doesn't make it a different organism, even though vital functions continue for a while)? There's no obvious way to answer this, and this seems to suggest that at least at some point in the process we can perfectly well have one organism that is still in some strict sense part of another, and if that's the case, it isn't clear why we shouldn't have said that all along -- or, at least, it seems that we could have said it much earlier just as well as later.

Kingma also considers ethical implications of her model. Unfortunately, it's not in the audio excerpt, and I find the written summary difficult to follow. She says,

‘When I do harm I have to cross through space to interfere with you. When I allow it to happen I just don’t get involved; it will happen regardless of my involvement. Pregnancy is not wired up like that. A pregnant woman who does anything at all does not cross space to interfere with her foetus.’

I find the idea that 'crossing through space' has much to do with whether one is doing harm difficult to understand. We obviously can harm ourselves. And we can clearly draw a distinction between doing and allowing even with regard to ourselves; most of what happens in our bodies we simply allow, although sometimes our allowance is more active and sometimes less. This is a worrisome fact, given that the position attributed to Kingma is that subject/object (or doer and done-to) break down, so that, in her words, "a doing-and-allowing construction (of harm) cannot be applied to pregnancy"; but if we're talking subject and object of actions, it is unclear how this can be the case. We can clearly be both subject and object of active harm to ourselves. Since the doing-and-allowing construction doesn't break down even in cases where there is obviously only a single organism and no question of pregnancy, it isn't clear at all to me why we would think it would break down here. The more obvious implication of Kingma's model (it is an implication of my own, as well) is that, at first approximation, for a mother to harm her fetus is to harm herself, and to harm a fetus is to harm the mother (although this is not necessarily a straightforward matter since part-whole relations are not always straightforward when it comes to harms); this is not, I suspect, where Kingma wishes to go with the matter. The assumption in the not-very-elaborated comments in the summary seems to be that Kingma holds that we cannot harm ourselves. This is, to say the least, very counterintuitive, and there are very good reasons to reject any such assumption. But it is perhaps an artifact of the summary rather than Kingma's own view.

Kingma is certainly right, though, that pregnancy is worth some thought. For such a common thing, it is remarkably overlooked when people talk about matters to which it would obviously be relevant.

Three Poem Drafts

Dreams

The breezes give as they receive
and rustle through the erewhon leaves;
their false appearance tricks, deceives,
and makes a point most true.

We counterpoise to know the world,
a bright unworld within it curled,
a banner light at night unfurled,
to be of thought a clue.

Shepherd-King

Gently now the angels sing
the Son of God, the shepherd-king,
who by still waters leads the lamb,
who was Himself a tender ram
ensnarled in thorn and made to die,
raised again to throne on high,
from thence to rule with iron rod,
the Savior, King, and Son of God.

Immaculata

Unstained by our darkness, O Mary, please pray
for sheep who have wandered, all we who, astray,
are lost in dark shadow, cut off from the light;
pray that the Shepherd will set us aright
with His rod and His staff, with the call of His voice;
pray for us, Mary, who made the just choice.

Unblemished by malice, unbroken by sin,
O Queen of the angels, pray for all men,
and pray for God's mercy to lighten our way
until the night ends at the dawning of day;
pray in the Spirit that God give us grace
and raise us to meet Him in light face to face.

Uncaptured by failing, O Mary, most kind,
baptized from conception, keep each lamb in mind
with prevenient prayer from God's holy throne,
that never the lost should wander alone;
of many ends mother, of many souls friend,
pray for us, purest, from now to the end.

The Proper Medium Between Extremes

All questions concerning the proper medium between extremes are difficult to be decided; both because it is not easy to find words proper to fix this medium, and because the good and ill, in such cases, run so gradually into each other, as even to render our sentiments doubtful and uncertain.

David Hume, "Of the Independency of Parliament".