Vallicella on the Liberal Mind-set: A Bit of an Overstatement?

It seems to me that no matter how long I wander away from reading blogs, I find upon returning to blogdom that some things remain the same that perhaps shouldn’t. A case in point: after a long period of being too caught up in other things, I find myself once more reading some of the blogs I am most likely to turn to, one among them being the Maverick Philosopher of which Bill Vallicella is the maverick philosopher adverted to. And there I read, in his post of March 31, “Zuhdi Jasser, Profile in Civil Courage,” that:

To understand liberals you must understand that theirs is a mind-set according to which a conservative is a bigot, one who reflexively and irrationally hates anyone different than he is.

If we “regiment” the proposition that he says we must understand it we are to understand liberals, by inserting explicitly the “quantifiers” that are present implicitly, I think it has to be read as one telling us that:

All liberals believe that all conservatives are bigots who hate all who differ from them.

I find that hard to believe. Now I find quite plausible the proposition that:

At least some liberals believe that at least some conservatives are bigots who hate at least some who differ from them.

or that:

At least some liberals believe that at least some conservatives are bigots who hate all who differ from them.

or that:

At least some liberals believe that all conservatives are bigots who hate at least some who differ from them.

or even that:

At least some liberals believe that all conservatives are bigots who hate aall who differ from them.

But not that:

All liberals believe that all conservatives are bigots who hate all who differ from them.

I know of at least one counter-example.

Until next time.

Richard

Religious Faith and Scientific Faith

In his March 24, 2016, post, “Contra Pinker on religion,” to his blog, Just Thomism, James Chastek tells us that the faith he sees operative in the acceptance of scientific doctrine by the “great majority of persons” who accept scientific doctrine does not differ from the faith operative in the acceptance of religious doctrine by the “great majority of persons” who accept religious doctrine. As he puts it:

Priests and consecrated persons have access to a hidden realm in the same way scientists do. The great majority of persons have no more direct or distinct experience of God than they have a justified insight into scientific claims, and the way in which they could learn the science for themselves if they only had the time and talent is the same way in which they could become preternaturally holy and achieve the unitive way if they only had the time and talent.  Science is just as interior and of the subject as religion is; if I trust your testimony about dark matter or global warming (probably after it’s backed up by anecdotes, a gesture at some data, the social pressure to believe, and my sense that you just sound like a smart guy) then I’m in a cognitive state called faith. The way in which we can come to know the value of science by its fruits in technology is no different than knowing the value of religion though the holiness of the saints. In good logic, Pinker sees the value that many give to holiness as disordered and mistaken,  but there are all sorts of persons who say the same thing about technology.

I have seen many quite similar statements elsewhere. For example, we can read in Edward Feser’s The Last Superstition* (pp. 157-158) that:

Most people who believe that E = mc², and who believe almost any other widely known and generally accepted scientific proposition, do so on the basis of faith in exactly the sense in question here. They believe it, in other words, on the authority of those from whom they learned it. Everyone acknowledges that this is perfectly legitimate; indeed, there is no way we could know much of interest at all if we weren’t able to appeal to various authorities. But if this is legitimate in other aspects of life, there is nothing per se wrong with it in religion.

It may very well be the case both that the majority of people accept scientific doctrine on the authority of those whom they trust and that the majority of people accept religious doctrine on the authority of those whom they trust. But Messieurs Chastek and Feser have to be aware, or at least should be, that the religious faith which so directly compares with the trust in authority upon which the majority of believers in scientific doctrine rely is just not the religious faith as specified by, say, devout Christianity. Let us take, for one telling example, the doctrine of faith as set forth in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.** There, under the rubric of “The Characteristics of Faith,” we read (p. 47):

Faith is a grace                                                                                                153    When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come “from flesh and blood,” but from “my Father who is in heaven.” Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him. [Emphasis is in the original.] Before this faith can be exercised, man must have the grace of God to move and assist him; he must have the interior help of the Holy Spirit, who moves the heart and converts it to God, who opens the eyes of the mind and “makes it easy for all to accept and believe the truth.”

To identify the faith that the catechism describes with the faith that can be declared equivalent to that of the layman in science is then, it seems to me, to fall into equivocation.

Until next time.

Richard

* Edward Feser, The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008)

A September 14, 2017 Update. You may easily purchase a copy of The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism through Amazon.com., by clicking on the following:

**Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Reality. A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, translated by Patrick Cummins, O.S.B. (Ex Fontibus Co., 2006-2012)

**Interdicasterial Commission for the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York and London: Doubleday, 1994)

A Note on Logic and Political Discourse

One of the things that professors of philosophy and logic should teach very early on is the importance of the distinction between a “universal” affirmative proposition, such as “All bloggers are boring,” and a “particular” affirmative  proposition, such as “Some bloggers are boring” or, to put the latter a bit more carefully, “At least some bloggers are boring.” Another thing is the importance of expressing that distinction when failure to do so may be significant.

Bringing this up is a reflection of but one part of a broader concern I have, that the level of political discourse in today’s United States is being negatively affected by a lack of knowledge of, or concern for, the requirements of elementary logic.

A recent case in point appears in the November 23 post by Keith Burgess-Jackson, “Journalism,” to his blog, well, Keith Burgess-Jackson. The post reads:

The dishonesty of the mainstream media continues apace. It’s a fact that American Muslims celebrated the attacks of 9-11, as the Washington Post reported at the time. How many did so remains to be determined. Donald Trump is far more honest than the typical “reporter.”

To state it as Professor Burgess-Jackson does, as “It’s a fact that American Muslims celebrated the attacks of 9-11,” leaves it, however, somewhat ambiguous as to whether the fact being asserted is that all American Muslims celebrated the attacks of 9-11 or merely that at least some American Muslims celebrated the attacks of 9-11. I myself would be surprised if either it turned out that all American Muslims celebrated the attacks or it did not turn out that at least some did.

Similarly, if some denizen of the far left were to state, “It’s a fact that American Republicans celebrated the Oklahoma City bombing,” that too would leave it somewhat ambiguous as to whether the fact being asserted was that all American Republicans celebrated the bombing or merely that at least some American Republicans celebrated the bombing. I myself would have been surprised if all American Republicans had celebrated it and equally surprised if it did not turn out that at least some did.

Now, assuming that it turns out that not all, but at least some, American Muslims celebrated the attacks of 9-11, the question might then be raised of how many did. As Burgess-Jackson rightly, at least on the assumption at hand, observes, “How many did so remains to be determined.” That  observation seems to suggest that Burgess-Jackson himself entertains some doubts about how well-founded the rough number, “thousands” or “thousands and thousands,” advanced by Donald Trump earlier this month is:

Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/us/politics/donald-trump-syrian-muslims-surveillance.html

That makes Burgess-Jackson’s claim that “Donald Trump is far more honest than the typical ‘reporter’” a bit mysterious, for if making a statement that may be false is not in and of itself proof of dishonesty, still neither is it one of honesty.

Until next time.

Richard

In Response to a Defense of the Doctrine of the Trinity

I find it difficult to understand why so many thinkers accept as true the classical Christian doctrine of the trinity, according to which there are the three divine persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three being really identical with the one God but really distinct from each other; that it is quite simply impossible for me to accept the doctrine is the primary, though not the only, reason why I cannot return to the Roman Catholic faith I knew in my childhood and to which, at times, I wish I could return.

I published several posts on the topic a year-and-half or so ago, listed below* in order of importance, from the more to the less important as I see it. In today’s post I find myself returning to the subject, writing in response to “Trinity notes,” James Chastek’s November 2, 2015, brief post to his blog Just Thomism, a blog which I much enjoy reading and along with which I much enjoy thinking. In the post, one can read:

God is a self, the trinity is not a self, so God is not a trinity. This is a paralogism arising from an opposition between self and nature that is only true of creatures. When we say “God is a self” we mean the nature truly subsists just as Aristotle believes the individual truly subsists (though Plato disagrees with him). 

There are two claims being made here that I cannot accept. The one and clearly stated claim is that the argument given in the first sentence is a paralogism, i.e., an apparently valid but actually fallacious or invalid argument. The other, not as clearly stated, is that the elimination of the “opposition between self and nature that is only true of creatures” provides a way of avoiding the conclusion that God is not a trinity.

I. First, then, the claim that the argument given in the first sentence is a paralogism: it is not, if its formulation is suitably revised. Rather, it is valid. So, I will introduce four friendly amendments to the argument the effect of which will be that its validity will become obvious.

The first amendment is that of arranging the argument in the more traditional format of the categorical syllogism, thus:

God is a self.

The trinity is not a self.

So God is not a trinity.

The second amendment is that of re-arranging the order of the premises with the aim of rendering its validity perhaps more obvious:

The trinity is not a self.

God is a self.

So God is not a trinity.

The third of the friendly amendments is that of substituting, for the argument’s major premise,

The trinity is not a self.

the logically equivalent proposition,

No self is the trinity.

The argument thus reads:

No self is the trinity.

God is a self.

So God is not a trinity.

The fourth of the friendly amendments is that of substituting a definite article for the indefinite article of the predicate term of the conclusion so that it, the predicate term of the conclusion, matches the predicate term of the major premise, thus:

No self is the trinity.

God is a self.

So God is not the trinity.

The conclusion of the argument as thus rendered is the direct contradiction of the thesis which, I presume, Chastek sees himself defending, the thesis that God is the trinity, i.e., that the one god is the trinity of three distinct persons. But the argument is clearly valid; moreover, since presumably Chastek would hold the premises to be true, he would have to hold the argument to be sound.

II. Now, then, to the claim, not as outrightly stated, that the elimination of the “opposition between self and nature that is only true of creatures” provides a way of avoiding the conclusion that God is not a trinity. I take it, that is, that Chastek believes that the changes in the argument introduced by the understanding that the proposition:

God is a self.

“means” or is equivalent to the proposition:

The nature truly subsists. 

will provide us with an argument that does not lead to the unwanted conclusion.

The changes thus introduced do not have the desired result. But to see this we have to transpose the proposition, “The nature truly subsists,” into a form suitable for serving as a premise of the argument in the making. The following seems to me appropriate:

The nature (that God is) is a subsistent being.

I assume my expansion of Chastek’s “The nature” to “The nature (that God is)” is warranted by his identification of God as “the nature said of many” in a statement appearing a bit later in his post:

Unlike creatures, both the God (the nature said of many) and the persons (F, HS, S) really exist.

So we have one premise. The other premise then becomes:

The trinity is not a subsistent being.

The argument, then, is:

The nature (that God is) is a subsistent being.

The trinity is not a subsistent being.

So the nature (that God is) is not a trinity.

Revising this argument with revisions parallel to the four made above to Chastek’s original argument, we find ourselves with:

No subsistent being is the trinity.

The nature (that God is) is a subsistent being.

So the nature (that God is) is not the trinity.

The good news, for Chastek, is that there is no paralogism here. The bad news, of course, is that the conclusion remains that:

The nature (that God is) is not the trinity.

or, using the earlier terminology,

God is not the trinity.

Until next time.

Richard

* See:

The Inconsistency of the Doctrine of (the Distinction of Divine Persons and so That of) the Trinity with Monotheism

Garrigou-Lagrange on Trinity and Triple Identity

Dale Tuggy’s Podcasts on the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed

Reading Levi Bryant on Zero, Consciousness, and Contradiction

0. For just about two years now, I have been following Levi Bryant’s blog, Larval Subjects, if not always faithfully; I offered a brief but pertinent statement of my appreciation for his blog in my post of October 23, 2013, “An Addition to the Blogroll: Larval Subjects.” This is despote the profound differences between our philosophical outlooks. That which he has to say in in his October 15, 2015, post, “Zero,” about zero, consciousness, and contradiction provides a case in point.

1. The post begins with Bryant’s recollection of reading two statements from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness.

Passages from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness always reverberate through my mind: “Consciousness is what [it]** is not and is not what it is”.  “Consciousness is a being such that in its being its being is in question insofar as its being always implies a being other than itself”.  I remember the happy days reading this tom(e)(b) when I was young; diagraming these sentences, trying to decipher them like Zen koans.

I’ll take it as evident that the two statements from Sartre are by no means equivalent. In the present post I’ll focus on the first of the two, as it illustrates perfectly the difference between my philosophical outlook and that of Bryant. I’ll begin by stating that I could not even will myself to accept the conjunction that “Consciousness is what it is not and is not what it is” expresses, i.e., the conjunction of the affirmative thesis:

Consciousness is what it is not.

with the negative thesis:

Consciousness is not what it is.

2. The reason why I cannot even will myself to accept it is that I, along with the tradition of what I will call classical philosophical rationalism, recognize the truth of the principle of non-contradiction, that:

No being can both be and not be.

(In what follows, I’ll assume that we do not need to expressly rule out some possible equivocation in the word, “be,” and so do not need to add the precision, “in any one respect and at any one time,” it is customary to append to the proposition expressing the principle.)

From this principle it follows specifically that:

Consciousness cannot both be what it is and not be what it is.

3. But the Sartrean conjunction which Bryant has put before us, and evidently accepts, stands in contradiction to that application of the principle of non-contradiction. To see that this is so, we could devote our attention to either of the Sartrean conjuncts given above; I’ll content myself with a focusing on the second, negative, conjunct, “Consciousness is not what it is.” We can first observe that its predicate, “what it (i.e., consciousness) is,” entails a recognition that there is something, some “what,” which consciousness is and thus a recognition of the truth of the statement, without the use of the pronoun, “it,” that:

Consciousness is what consciousness is.

or, equivalently, with the use of the pronoun:

Consciousness is what it is.

Then, combining that which is affirmed in this proposition with the second, negative, conjunct as given, that:

Consciousness is not what it is.

we find ourselves contemplating the proposition that:

Consciousness both is what it is and is not what it is.

Since anything which is also can be, this proposition implies the one that:

Consciousness can both be what it is and not be what it is.

Engaging in the elementary inferential act of “existential generalization,” we find that Bryant and his Sartre are, then, in keeping with the tradition of thought standing in opposition to classical philosophical rationalism, committed to a thesis that is the direct contradictory of that of non-contradiction:

At least one being (consciousness) can both be what it is and not be what it is.

4. From Sartre, one of the central figures in the “continental” tradition in philosophy, Bryant turns immediately to Frege, whom I take to be the most central figure in philosophy’s “analytical” tradition:

I remember later reading Frege’s Foundations of Arithmetic.  “Zero is the number non-identical to itself”.  How many zeroes are there?  Many!  But that can’t be right.  By Leibniz’s principle of indiscernibles, two things must always be distinguished by something.  Yet zero is nothing. There can only be one zero.  All zeroes must be the same.  But if there were one zero, then zero would be something.  A paradox.  No wonder zero was received as a heresy in the theological community; like potatoes.  No, it can only be that which is paradoxically non-identical to itself.  It must be the object that is a non-object.  An object that is the shift or out of phaseness of a being with itself.

Many and diverse propositions pop up in the course of the passage; perhaps the most diverse is the one suggested by the “like potatoes,” whatever that proposition might be. I’ll focus on just the first, that:

Zero is the number non-identical to itself.

I’ll assume that it is not necessary to take the pains needed to spell out the contradiction at hand, at hand at least if one accepts the truth of the proposition that the number zero is something, as Bryant seems to do, i.e.,  that:

The number zero is a being.

and the proposition that:

All beings are identical to themselves.

and therefore the proposition that:

The number zero is identical to itself.

So I’ll just observe that Bryant and Bryant’s Frege both are evidently committed to the thesis that:

The number zero both is identical to itself and is not identical to itself.

This in turn entails that:

The number zero both is what it is and is not what it is.

and so that:

The number zero can both be what it is and not be what it is.

Generalizing again, over the number zero, we have Bryant and his Frege holding that:

At least one being can both be what it is and not be what it is.

This is, again, the direct contradiction of the principle of non-contradiction.

5. You have now the view of Bryant and Bryant’s Sartre on consciousness and the view of Bryant and Bryant’s Frege on zero. What then, is the relationship between the consciousness of Bryant and Bryant’s Sartre and the zero of Bryant and Bryant’s Frege? He goes on to tell us:

And that’s how it is with consciousness.  Consciousness is zero.  It is that which is non-identical to itself and that is condemned to be non-identical to itself.  I wonder if this is how it is for my dog and my cats and for octopi?  Is it like this for elephants?  Do they experience themselves as a non-identity with themselves?

Consciousness is zero. The consciousness of Bryant and Bryant’s Sartre and the zero of Bryant and Bryant’s Frege are then identical with each other, though both, as we know, are non-identical with themselves. The reader will not be surprised to learn that I believe I have grounds to doubt that dogs, cats, octopi, and elephants “experience themselves as a non-identity with themselves,” certainly if the principle of non-contradiction is true.

But let me stick close to the main point. We have in the third sentence of the passage the thesis that:

Consciousness is that which is non-identical to itself.

We have in its second sentence the thesis that:

Consciousness is zero.

which is, since it is a simple statement of identity, equivalent to:

Zero is consciousness.

Lo! A syllogism:

Consciousness is that which is non-identical to itself.

Zero is consciousness.

Therefore, zero is that which is non-identical to itself.

Well, that is pretty much what he took rather immediately from Frege. But we then find at the end of the continuation of that passage:

Consciousness is a razors [sic] edge, a perpetual shift.  Consciousness is not a substantiality, the ego, or an identity.  It is the non-identity that is in excess of any mirror image, ego, or identity.  It is the perpetual failure of these things.  J.A. Miller. Suture. Matrix. This is the burden of the past.  The past weighs on us because of what we have done, who we have been.  It’s etched.  But there would be a comfort in being able to be our past like the grape that has grown from its soil. No, perhaps the worst thing about the past is that we are zero or the number that is non-identical to itself.

that we are “we are zero or the number that is non-identical to itself.” Thus another syllogism:

Zero is that which is non-identical to itself.

We are zero.

Therefore, we are that which is non-identical to itself.

And so, as he continues, there is that

Difference.  We always fail to be our past.  I will never be as great as I was in my past, nor as terrible. I will never be that person that wrote those things, said those things, thought those things, did those things.  That was another self.  I will always be fallen from that past, and each time yet again.  Will I ever write as well again?  I am this strange zero that both is this past, but is not it. We can eat our madeleine cakes, yet we will not regain the past. We are that past, yet are not it.  It weighs on us, instituting a gravitational pull.  We are caught in our signifiers, in what we have said.  Yet we somehow can’t be them.  We are a shift, a perpetual disadequation, a being non-identical to ourselves.

6. You may have begun to think that I have written all of the above in a dismissive mood. I have not. I do think that the principle of non-contradiction is true, absolutely so, and that therefore the proposition contradicting it is false, absolutely so. But I also look at his position on the principle of non-contradiction and therefore also his positions on consciousness and on zero in the light of the following dialectical thesis to which I adhere:

For every (great) truth, there is an equal(ly great) and contradictorily opposite falsehood.

Until next time.

Richard

* https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2015/10/15/zero/.

** Just to be absolutely clear, it is I who inserted the “[it].”

Ben Carson’s Argument against Muslim Presidential Eligibility

On the September 20, 2015, Sunday morning television news program, Meet the Press,* moderator Chuck Todd asked Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, “Should a president’s faith matter? Should your faith matter to voters?” Carson replied: “Well, I guess it depends on what that faith is. If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and [is] consistent with the American constitution, I have no problem.”

Todd then asked, “So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the constitution?” Carson replied, “No, I don’t. I do not. I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that.”

One can discern here, and I will go on to articulate it more explicitly, an argument on behalf of the conclusion that, as I’ll express it:

No Muslims are eligible for the office of President of the United States.

After articulating the argument more explicitly I will go on to offer something of a critique of it.

1. Carson’s argument is composed of two sub-arguments. The first one leads to the conclusion:

No Muslims are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

The argument on behalf of that conclusion has two premises. One is evident in Carson’s belief that Islam is not consistent with the constitution. This, of course, is a thesis widely accepted and often expressed by those thinkers who share at least much of Carson’s hesitancy. One of the many such expressions is that of William Kilpatrick, as offered to us in his September 22, 2015, Crisis Magazine article defending Carson’s point of view, “A Muslim President?”**

… Dr. Carson seems to have the better of the argument when he maintains that there is something in Islam that doesn’t like the Constitution. Islam is not just a faith, but also an all-encompassing political, legal, and moral system. The embodiment of the system is sharia law, which, because it is believed to be of divine origin, is not optional for Muslims. As Carson suggested, a side-by-side comparison of sharia with the U.S. Constitution reveals that the two are almost totally at odds. The sharia proscription against apostasy is in direct contradiction of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Sharia laws against blasphemy clash with the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Sharia-prescribed punishments, such as amputation for theft, conflict with the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.” And so on: the list of irreconcilable differences between sharia and the Constitution is a long one.

Let us take it as given both that some Islamic laws are inconsistent with the Constitution and that, accordingly:

No upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

Let us further adopt that proposition as a premise of the first of Carson’s sub-arguments.

2. The next premise is left quite implicit by Carson. But others make it quite explicit, as Kilpatrick does in his assumption that Islamic or sharia law, and therefore also the laws listed in the paragraph quoted above, “because it is [and they are] believed to be of divine origin, is [and are] not optional for Muslims.” I’ll express that assumption as follows:

All Muslims are upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution.

With the two premises in hand, we have the following sub-argument;

No upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution are upholders of the constitution in its entirety.

All Muslims are upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution.

Therefore, no Muslims are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

3. Turning now to the second sub-argument, I assume that Carson would uphold the thesis that:

Only upholders of the constitution in its entirety of Islamic laws are persons eligible to become President of the United States.

This is logically equivalent to:

All persons eligible to become President of the United States are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

With that proposition serving as one of its premises and the conclusion of the first sub-argument as the other, the second sub-argument is as follows:

All persons eligible to become President of the United States are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

No Muslims are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

Therefore, no Muslims are persons eligible to become President of the United States.

4. Now for the critique. First, however, it must be understood that the two sub-arguments are both valid arguments, in the sense of “valid” as that word is used by logicians. That is, they are both such that, if their premises are true, their conclusions must also be true; otherwise put, it is impossible for their premises to be true and their conclusions false; otherwise put again, their conclusions necessarily follow from their premises.

But the question remains: are the two sub-arguments sound, in the sense of “sound” as that word too is used by logicians. That is, are they not only valid, with their conclusions necessarily following from their premises, but also sound, with their premises true and so also their conclusions?

Let us stipulate, given the oath of office that the Constitution requires that presidents take, viz.,

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

that the premise of the second sub-argument, i.e.,

All persons eligible to become President of the United States are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

is true.

Let us next stipulate that the first premise of the first sub-argument, i.e.,

No upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution are upholders of the constitution in its entirety.

is true.

5. There remains but the second premise of the first sub-argument, i.e.,

All Muslims are upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution.

As it happens, I know and know well many people who are Muslims and who uphold the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion, the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment”; they in particular have real reason to favor the guarantee of freedom of religion, do they not?

Now, I willing grant, I have not heard any of them offer their views on every Islamic law which is inconsistent with the Constitution. But at least many are naturalized citizens and have taken the Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America and so have said:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.***

I think then that I have some good reason to believe that the proposition that:

At least some Muslims are not upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution.

is true and that therefore the proposition that

All Muslims are upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution.

is false.

If that is the case, then Carson’s first sub-argument and therefore also his second, though valid, are not sound and we are not bound to accept the conclusion that:

No Muslims are eligible for the office of President of the United States.

And if we are not, then neither is he.

6. Interestingly enough, Carson himself came close to admitting the possibility that the proposition, “All Muslims are upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution,” is false. In their final exchange on the issue, Todd asked him, “And you, would you ever consider voting for a Muslim for Congress?” Carson answered, “Congress is a different story. But it depends on who that Muslim is and what their policies are, just as it depends on what anybody else is. You know, if there’s somebody of any faith, but they say things and their life is consistent with things that will elevate this nation and make it possible for everybody to succeed and bring peace and harmony, then I’m with them.”

Carson then is open to seeing a Muslim becoming a member of Congress, at least a Muslim who expresses, and behaves in accordance with views which will “elevate this nation…,” etc. I am left wondering whether Carson has just said, if only by implication and in spirit, that:

All Muslims who are not upholders of Islamic laws inconsistent with the Constitution are [at least in that respect] eligible for the office of President of the United States.

7. Carson, as is well known, is a Christian. Perhaps he might want to consider that, say, an ardent secularist could offer an argument against the eligibility of Christians for the office of President of the United States. All he or she would need to do is to substitute the words “Christians” and “Christian” for “Muslims” and “Islamic” in the two sub-arguments just reviewed. They would read, then:

The First Sub-Argument:

No upholders of Christian laws inconsistent with the Constitution are upholders of the constitution in its entirety.

All Christians are upholders of Christian laws inconsistent with the Constitution.

No Christians are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

The Second Sub-Argument:

All persons eligible to become President of the United States are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

No Christians are upholders of the Constitution in its entirety.

No Christians are persons eligible to become President of the United States.

8. It will not do to claim that there are no Christian laws inconsistent with the Constitution. Savor the following passage from Deuteronomy:

10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby. 16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy^[a]them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.#

Nor will it do to simply dismiss that passage as but a part of the Old Testament, for there are Christians, as well as Muslims and secularists, who will point to the following passage in which Christ says:

D17 Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.##

9. Perhaps the Muslim or secularist (or Jewish or Buddhist, etc.) counterparts of Carson might be willing to offer Christians a way out similar to the one proposed above for Muslims, thus:

All Christians who are not upholders of Christian laws inconsistent with the Constitution are [at least in that respect] eligible for the office of the President of the United States.

Until next time.

Richard

* http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/ben-carson-the-full-meet-the-press-interview-528797251922. Accessed October 3, 2015.

** http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/a-muslim-president. Accessed October 3, 2015.

.*** http://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship/naturalization-test/naturalization-oath-allegiance-united-states-america

# Deuteronomy 20:10-17; New International Version (NIV). https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+20%3A10-17&version=NIV. Accessed October 3, 2015.

## Matthew 5:17-18; New International Version (NIV)https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5:17-18. Accessed October 3, 2015.

A Note re Mango Languages

When accessing my local (in Massachusetts, not Maine) library online with the aim of find a copy of the fourth edition of Wheeler M. Thackston’s An Introduction to Persian (about which I’ll have something to say in a post to come), I discovered that the library makes Mango Languages available to its patrons for free, at least for many of the very many languages, including Persian, which Mango Languages offers.

If you are interested in gaining at least an initial working conversational knowledge of some language, I’d suggest that you check with your local library to see whether or not it makes Mango Languages available to its patrons, again, for free; the price would be at least right. If it does not, you may wish to go to the Mango Languages website to check out what they have to offer you. But understand, I’m not in a position to actually recommend their program to you, if it’s not free, because I have not yet really used it and I have no idea what their prices are; they are not obvious from a quick perusal of the Mango Languages website.

The Mango Languages Persian program strikes me at first glance to be a somewhat simplified analogue of the Pimsleur Persian program, which I have used, and seriously, and recommend, if you can afford it. You also want to know that Pimsleur Persian covers only, say, a half of what one would expect to see covered in an year-long college-level introduction to Persian, though it covers that thoroughly; I do not yet know how far the Mango Languages Persian will take one.

At any rate, you can access Mango Languages by, no surprise here, googling “mango languages.” And you can access a number of reviews by googling “mango languages review.”

Any thoughts?

Until next time.

Richard

Some Logical Reflections Related to a Supposed Alawi Doctrine

0. In his August 19, 2015, article, “Iran’s Support for Syria Pragmatic, not Religious (or, Who are the Alawites?),” posted on Juan Cole’s essential blog, Informed Comment, Ari Heistein draws our attention to the challenge outsiders face in understanding the theology of the Alawite sect to which Syrian president Assad and many of the key members of his regime belong.

Insight into actual Alawi belief and doctrine is severely limited because of the practice of taqiyya/kitman, disguising or concealing one’s religious beliefs in order to avoid persecution. Thus, even the most basic tenets of the Alawi religion remain in dispute: it is unclear whether they deify Muhammad’s nephew, Ali ibn Abi Talib, after whom they are named. This question is extremely significant because deification of Ali would mean a stark departure from both Sunni and Shia Islam and the key Muslim principle of God’s unity, tawhid.

http://www.juancole.com/2015/08/secular-alawites-crescent.html

I have nothing whatsoever to offer to anyone wanting “[i]nsight into actual Alawi belief and doctrine.” In the present post I merely wish to take note of and briefly reflect upon two different definitions of “Alawi,” either of which could justify the application of the name. The one, and perhaps less startling, definition sees an Alawi as, not just a devotee of Ali, but an adherent to the doctrine that Ali is the ultimate prophet. The other, and perhaps more startling, definition sees an Alawi as, not just an adherent to the doctrine that Ali is the ultimate prophet but an adherent to the doctrine that Ali is divine.

1. The first definition might well set forth reflections much like the following. When there are two most major religious figures, such as is the case with John the Baptist and Jesus in Christianity and with Muhammad and Ali in Islam, the temporal priority of the one to the other does not imply the ontological or, a bit more precisely, theological priority of the one to the other. So it is that while, in “orthodox” Christianity, the temporally prior John the Baptist but prepared the way for the theologically prior Jesus, logically speaking it need not have been that way: the two could have been accorded theological equality, neither one enjoying theological priority over the other, or their theological roles could, still logically, have been reversed, with John the Baptist having theological priority over Jesus.

In “orthodox” Islam, on the other hand, whether Sunni or Shiite, the priority of Muhammad over Ali is both temporal and theological. It need not have been that way, at least logically speaking, and it may well have not been that way for Alawi theology, whatever that theology may hold today. That is, it is logically possible for devotees of Ali to hold to and may well have been the case that Alawi theology has held to some version of the doctrine that the temporally prior Muhammad but prepared the way for the theologically prior Ali, theologically prior in that he was or is the ultimate prophet.

2. Adherence to the doctrine that Ali was or is the ultimate prophet would certainly be enough to justify being identified as an “Alawi.” Even more so would be adherence to the doctrine basing the second definition, that of incarnation, , analogous to that of Christianity and according to which Ali is divine and thus, in the context of the doctrine of an absolute monotheism, in fact God. That doctrine leads to all the difficulties familiar to us from the Trinitarian controversies marking the history Christianity and which I discussed in my post of April 14, 2014, “The Inconsistency of the Doctrine of (the Distinction of Divine Persons and so That of) the Trinity with Monotheism.”* Orthodox Islam, whether Sunni or Shiite, with its doctrine of “tawhīd” or (divine) unity, has of course rejected the thesis of divine incarnation, whether applied to Muhammad or Ali.

3. There are any number of additional logically possible and so theoretically available doctrines in this conceptual “space.” A theology could, for instance, identify its two primary religious figures, John the Baptist and Jesus in Christianity or Muhammad and Ali in Islam. A theology could add a third personage, such as Elijah in a Christian context, which personage could be seen as apt for identification with one or both of the others; in an Islamic context, some personage appearing later in time than Muhammad or Ali might be brought up for consideration as identical with one, the other, or both, with at least some plausibility for at least some seekers.

A hint that the number of additional logically possible and so theoretically available doctrines in this conceptual “space” is vast can be seen in the following statement by Sam Dagher, in his June 25, 2015, Wall Street Journal article, “Syria’s Alawites: The People Behind Assad.”

Mainstream Sunni Muslims have long regarded Alawites as adherents of an obscure, even heretical cult. Alawites believe that Imam Ali—a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and a figure also revered by Shiites—was an incarnation of God, who revealed himself in six other people before Ali’s seventh-century caliphate.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/syrias-alawites-the-people-behind-assad-1435166941

Until next time.

Richard

*http://afteraristotle.net/2014/04/04/the-inconsistency-of-the-doctrine-of-the-distinction-of-divine-persons-and-so-that-of-the-trinity-with-monotheism/

 

 

 

Feser’s The Last Superstition on the Manner of Existence of the Final Cause

0. In “Aristotelian Realism in the Theory of Universals of Feser’s The Last Superstition,” my post of February 17, 2015, I continued my discussion of the problem of universals. In that post I took as my point of departure Edward Feser’s review, in The Last Superstition,* of Aristotelian realism in the theory of universals and I offered as an alternative to that view a neo-Aristotelian anti-realism in the theory of universals. This theory conjoins an anti-realism, rejecting all universal forms, natures, or essences with a neo-Aristotelianism, affirming the existence of individual forms, natures, or essences.

1. The Aristotelian theory of universals, of course, is one in which the distinct members of a set of similar existents, say that of human beings, are what they are similarly by virtue of their each possessing some one and identically the same human form, nature, or essence by which they are all human. But the Aristotelian theory of knowledge includes a further and related thesis which, I hold, must be rejected, the thesis that that concept by which we intellectually grasp, and so know what a human being qua human being is, is identical with the form, nature, or essence which the human being has and by which it is a human being. Thus we find a passage (pp. 121-122) in which Feser, comparing the human soul with the “nutritive soul” and the “sensory soul,” identifies “abstract concepts” with “the forms or essences of things.”

When we come to human beings we have what is called a “rational soul,” which includes both the powers of the nutritive and sensory souls and also the distinctively human powers of intellect and will: that is, the power to grasp abstract concepts – namely, the forms or essences of things – and to reason on the basis of them, and freely to choose between different possible courses of action on the basis of what the intellect knows.

And another passage offers an even more explicit statement of the thesis. That is, a paragraph or two after having told us (p. 198):

Ironically, the Mechanical Philosophy [as found in Descartes, among others] (in this and other ways, as we shall see) made a direct appeal to God more necessary than it had been in the Scholastic view (which does not appeal to God to safeguard the possibility of knowledge, committed as it is to an Aristotelian understanding of causation on which the connection between the mind and the world is not especially problematic).

and in speaking of “[t]he  problem of skepticism,” Feser he asks us (pp. 199-200) to:

Recall that in the Aristotelian conception of the soul, when the intellect knows something outside it, one and the same form exists both in the intellect and the thing known. For example, when you perceive or think about triangles, the very same essence or nature – triangularity – that exists in actual triangles also exist in your mind. A kind of union between the mind and its object occurs by virtue of their sharing a form, nature, or essence that is irreducible to either of them. This is what makes knowledge possible: there is no gap between the form as it exists in the mind and as it exists in the object, because these are the same form.

2. To restate in this paragraph and the next what I said at the end of “Aristotelian Realism in the Theory of Universals of Feser’s The Last Superstition”: the anti-realism which I have been setting forth denies, of course, the identity of the form, nature, or essence which one human being has and by which it is a human being with the form, nature, or essence which another human being has and by which it too is a human being; the form, nature, or essence of the one is not identical with, but distinct from, that of the other. The anti-realism which I have been setting forth must also deny the identity of that intellectually existent concept or intention by which we intellectually grasp a human being as the human being which he or she is with the form, nature, or essence which he or she has and by which he or she is a human being.

The neo-Aristotelian anti-realism under exploration in this blog does not, then, deny that human beings, for example, have forms, natures, or essences by which they are human beings, though it does deny the identity of one form, nature, or essence with another. Nor does it deny that there must be within the intellect that intellectual or conceptual means by of which we can intellectually grasp an extra-mentally existent human being as a human being, though it does deny that that intellectual or conceptual means is identical with, or even similar to, the form nature, or essence by which the extra-mentally existent human being is what is.

3. Now Feser’s The Last Superstition employs two closely related theses, or perhaps two versions of one thesis, in an attempt to address an oddity he himself sees in his Aristotelian teleology or theory of final causality or of goals, aims, ends, or purposes. Thus we find him, after he has just commented (p. 115) that “The Aristotelian idea is precisely that goal-directedness can and does exist in the natural world even apart from conscious awareness,” wondering how this can be (Ibid.):

Still, it is very odd that this should be the case. One of the raps against final causation is that it seems clearly to entail that a thing can produce an effect even before that thing exists. Hence to say that an oak tree is the final cause of an acorn seems to entail that the oak tree – which doesn’t yet exist – in some sense causes the acorn to go through every state it passes through as it grows into the oak, since the oak is the “goal” or natural end of the acorn. But how can this be?

Then, however, he continues by asking us to:

[C]onsider those cases where goal-directedness is associated with consciousness, viz. in us. A builder builds a house; he is a cause that generates a specific kind of effect. But the reason he is able to do this is that the effect, the house, exists as an idea in his intellect before it exists in reality. This is precisely how the not-yet-existent house can serve as a final cause – by means of its form or essence existing in someone’s intellect, if not (yet) in reality. And that seems clearly to be the only way something not yet existent in reality can exist in any other sense at all, and thus have any effects at all: that is, if it exists in an intellect.

4. I have, of course, no problem with the thesis that a builder building a house “is a cause that generates a specific kind of effect.” But I find the basis which Feser sees for the builder’s ability to generate, specifically, a house, that, according to the just given passages’ third sentence, “the effect, the house, exists as an idea in his intellect before it exists in reality,” more than unconvincing. That is, to put it quite simply, no house is an idea and no idea, even of a house, is a house. While, indeed, the idea of the house a builder is building exists in his intellect, the house itself just does not exist there.

The next sentence, the fourth, viz.:

This is precisely how the not-yet-existent house can serve as a final cause – by means of its form or essence existing in someone’s intellect, if not (yet) in reality.

introduces a somewhat different reason, or a variant of the first, for the builder’s ability to generate, specifically, a house. This is that the house’s form or essence, rather than the house itself, exists in the builder’s intellect; the difference is based in the difference between a house and the form or essence of the house.

I have no quarrel with the difference between a house and its form. But the form of a house exists in the house and not elsewhere and, as the house is an extra-mental existent, being, or reality, so then its form too is an extra-mental existent, being, or reality.

I have to conclude that the basis of Feser’s attempt at addressing the oddity he himself sees in his Aristotelian theory of final causality, at least as that basis is presented in The Last Superstition, is not sufficient for the task.

Not that I have a ready alternative.

Until next time.

Richard

*Edward Feser, The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008)

A September 14, 2017 Update. You may easily purchase a copy of The Last Superstition. A Refutation of the New Atheism through Amazon.com., by clicking on the following:

**Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Reality. A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, translated by Patrick Cummins, O.S.B. (Ex Fontibus Co., 2006-2012)

The Latest by the Philosopher/Maverick on Islam

0. As I indicated in “The Maverick and the Philosopher,” my post of January 4, 2015, my respect for the thinking of the philosopher, named Bill Vallicella, who writes for the blog, Maverick Philosopher, has as a counter-balance my despair over that of the maverick, also named Bill Vallicella, who writes there too. Two or three of the Maverick Philosopher’s recent posts related to Islam illustrate the difference between the thinking of the one and the other.

1. The quality of the thinking of the Maverick Philosopher’s philosopher is evident in his February 20, 2015, post, “The God of Christianity and the God of Islam: Same God? (2015).” In it the author reflects on the difficulty of choosing between the two “two competing views”:

V1: Christian and Muslim can worship the same God, even though one of them must have a false belief about God, whether it be the belief that God is unitarian or the belief that God is trinitarian.

V2:  Christian and Muslim must worship different Gods precisely because they have different conceptions of God.  So it is not that one of them has a false belief about the one God they both worship; it is rather that one of them does not worship the true God at all.

The Maverick Philosopher’s philosopher’s concluding paragraph-ette is the entirely reasonable:

So it looks like there is no easy answer to the opening question.  It depends on the resolution of intricate questions in the philosophy of language.

I wholeheartedly recommend the post to you. But let me suggest, if I may, that in the course of reading it you take a few moments to ponder what difference, if any, there would be in the course of the discussion if one were to substitute “Jew” for “Muslim.”

2. But then there is the thinking of the Maverick Philosopher’s maverick, as evidenced in his February 22, 2015, post, “Citizens Lynching Citizens.” Despite the title, the primary focus of the piece is on Islamic terrorism, Islamic terrorism as horrifically exhibited in the beheading by “Muslim jihadis” of “Egyptian Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach.”

The maverick begins by asking us to:

Imagine a history teacher who tells his students that in the American South, as late as the 1960s, certain citizens lynched certain other citizens.  Would you say that the teacher had omitted something of great importance for understanding why these lynchings occurred?  Yes you would.  You would point out that the lynchings were of blacks by whites, and that a good part of the motivation for their unspeakable crimes was sheer racial animus.  In the case of these crimes, the races of the perpetrators and of their victims are facts relevant to understanding the crimes.  Just to describe the lynchings accurately one has to mention race, let alone to explain them. [The emphases here, as in the quoted texts to follow, are his.]

Analogously:

Or consider the case of a history teacher who reports that in Germany, 1933-1945, certain German citizens harassed, tortured, enslaved, and executed other German citizens.  That is true, of course, but it leaves out the fact that the perpetrators were Nazis and (most of) the victims Jews.  Those additional facts must be reported for the situation to be properly described, let alone explained.  Not only that, the Nazis were acting from Nazi ideology and the Jew were killed for being Jews.

Analogously, again, the beheading by “Muslim jihadis” of “Egyptian Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach”:

According to recent reports, some Muslim jihadis beheaded some Egyptian Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach. Now beheading is not lynching.  And religion is not the same as race. But just as race is relevant in the lynching case, religion is relevant in the beheading case.  That the perpetrators of the beheadings were Muslims and the victims Christians enters into both an adequate description and an adequate explanation of the evil deeds of the former.

I have no problem with the analogies. In fact, on my first reading of the paragraphs just quoted, I thought I was reading the philosopher.

3. In reading the next paragraph, however, I began to have my doubts.

This is especially so since the Muslims were acting from Islamic beliefs and the Christians were killed for their Christian beliefs.  It was not as if some merely nominal Muslims killed some merely nominal Christians in a dispute over the ownership of some donkeys.

Now, mind you, it is not that I want to simply deny that the Muslim jihadis were acting from Islamic beliefs or deny that the Christians were killed for their Christian beliefs. Just restricting our attention to the Quran, we can note that Muslim jihadis can, after all, appeal to the so-called “Sword Verse”:

And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakah, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. (http://quran.com/9/5)

And, conjoining to the command to “kill the polytheists” an identification of the Christian belief in a triune God with polytheism, they evidently believe that they can further justify the killing of Christians just for being Christians.

One of the two writers, then, of Maverick Philosopher has given expression to a genuine truth about Islam, that some Islamic terrorists have some basis in the Quran itself for some murderous understandings of how Muslims should conduct themselves.

4. There are, of course, many things that Muslims opposed to Islamic terrorism would want to say in response to the terrorists, things related to the context of the sword verse and to the thoughtful interpretation of scripture, things which then allow them to condemn Islamic terrorism as un-Islamic. Those who are interested can easily find relevant statements and discussions with but the most cursory of googlings; I very quickly came up with Sheikh Jamal Rahman, “Making Peace with the Sword Verse,” Yes Magazine, October 13, 2010. http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/interfaith-amigos/making-peace-with-the-sword-verse

I, however, am concerned with one specific and pertinent part of the whole truth left out by the truth that the maverick has given expression to, a leaving out every bit as much a leaving out of a pertinent part of the whole truth as the leaving out of race in his first two examples. It has even been suggested, by no less than one of the writers of Maverick Philosopher in the February 8, 2015, post, “Michael Walzer, “Islamism and the Left”,” that leaving out a pertinent part of the whole truth can lead to a suspicion of “a lack of intellectual honesty.” That is, he tells us:

[W]hile it is true that most if not all religions in their extreme forms carry the possibility of tyranny, this is also true of non- and anti-religious ideologies such as communism.  If one fails to point this out, as Walzer does fail to point it out, then then one can be suspected of a lack of intellectual honesty.  Communist tyranny alone led to the deaths of upwards of 100 million in the 20th century.

Just so. But just so too is it true that while Islam in its extreme form “carries the possibility of tyranny, this is also true of” Christianity. Note, for instance, that Christianity also has its “sword verses.” The following, from Deuteronomy, is but one:

¹⁰ When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. ¹¹ If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. ¹² If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. ¹³ When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. ¹⁴ As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. ¹⁵ This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

¹⁶ However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. ¹⁷ Completely destroy^[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the LORD your God has commanded you. ¹⁸ Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+20&version=NIV.

Might it not be the case that some Christians, though not all, and some Jews, though not all, take some inspiration for an expansionist vision of today’s Israel from the reference in Deuteronomy 16 to “the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance”? Let me hasten to add, of course, that there are many things that Christians and Jews opposed to an expansionist vision of today’s Israel might want to say in response to the expansionism in question as un-biblical, things related to the context of the Deuteronomic text and to the thoughtful interpretation of scripture, things which then allow them to condemn that expansionism as un-Christian or un-Judaic.

5. Our writer goes on, still in “Michael Walzer, “Islamism and the Left”,” to draw a distinction.

There is also a distinction that needs to be made and I don’t see Walzer making it.  It is the difference between ‘rampaging,’ say, because your religion enjoins such behavior and ‘rampaging’ in defense of your life and livelihood and religion.  Islamic doctrine enjoins violent jihad; there is no Buddhist equivalent. This distinction at the level of doctrine is crucial and must not be ignored.  Doctrine is not mere verbiage; doctrine is at the root of action.

Once again, there is the truth and there is the whole truth. It is true that “Islamic doctrine enjoins violent jihad,” though the serious student of the religion might see some similarities  between that doctrine, at least as it is spelled out in the Quran if by no means as it is spelled out by some religious “scholars,” and the Christian doctrine (or doctrines) of “just war.” And, if my meager understanding of the subject is at all accurate, it is true that there is no Buddhist equivalent to the Islamic doctrine of “violent jihad,” although that may seem more obvious at first glance than after serious research. I have not done the research, but a quick googling, again, alerts us to the existence of a book on the matter, Buddhist Warfare, edited by Michael K. Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer and published by Oxford University Press in 2010; a review in the Journal of Global Buddhism can be found at http://www.globalbuddhism.org/11/margolies10.pdf. Suffice it to say that up close things may look a bit different.

6. The distinction, moreover, which the philosopher/maverick has drawn “between ‘rampaging,’ say, because your religion enjoins such behavior and ‘rampaging’ in defense of your life and livelihood and religion” is not well drawn, for we should, at least sometimes, recognize the difference between the kind of enjoining represented by formal statements of doctrine promulgated in scripture or by some body widely recognized as authoritative within a religious community and the more informal and ad hoc enjoinings which come forth in particular circumstances; the former are at least often more thoroughly considered and so represent the better thinking of the community, while the same cannot always be said of the latter.

That is, the distinction as spelled out by our maverick leaves out the religiously inspired “rampaging” that is enjoined in the more informal and ad hoc enjoinings of the likes of, say, some of the anti-Catholic Protestant militants, some of them genuine terrorists, in the Northern Ireland of just a few years ago and some of the anti-Protestant Catholic militants, some of them genuine terrorists, in the same Northern Ireland; in neither case were the militants representative of the best thinking of their Protestant and Catholic co-religionists.

I would suggest to the maverick that it may be such informal enjoining, by Buddhist militants as opposed to the best of Buddhist thinkers, that is at work in the violence visited by some of the Buddhists of Myanmar upon members of the Muslim minority there, where clearly that the majority is Buddhist and the minority Muslim is an essential part of the whole truth. And I would suggest to him that it may be such informal enjoining, by Muslim militants as opposed to the better among Muslim thinkers (I might point to King Abdullah of Jordan as an example of the latter), that is at work in the  horrific violence we have see committed Islamic extremists.

7. In all honesty, I have to admit that the writing that I have thus far attributed to the maverick may well have been that of the philosopher, even if not representative of his best thinking. But when, as “Citizens Lynching Citizens” draws towards its end and offers some opinions about Barack Obama and “the Left,” there is no question at all; it is the maverick who is writing.

First, then, re Obama: our maverick asks and answers a question:

What did Barack Obama say about this [the beheading by the jihadis of the Egyptian Christians]?  He said: “No religion is responsible for terrorism — people are responsible for violence and terrorism.”

The maverick’s response:

Now that is a mendacious thing to say. Obama knows that the behavior of people is influenced by their beliefs.  For example, he knows that part of the explanation of the lynchings of blacks by whites is that the white perpetrators held racists beliefs that justified (in their own minds) their horrendous behavior.  And of course he knows, mutatis mutandis, the same about the beheading case.

I translate “that is a mendacious thing to say” as “that is a lie.” But the singular “that” is not quite the right word, for Obama advanced two propositions:

No religion is responsible for terrorism.

and

People are responsible for violence and terrorism.

Taking the latter first, here’s what I bet: I bet that

Obama knows that the behavior of people is influenced by their beliefs.

that:

[Obama knows] that part of the explanation of the lynchings of blacks by whites is that the white perpetrators held racists beliefs that justified (in their own minds) their horrendous behavior.

and that:

[Obama knows,] mutatis mutandis, the same about the beheading case.

Yet, his knowing these things is absolutely consistent with his believing that:

Even as they are influenced by their religious beliefs, people are responsible for violence and terrorism. Indeed [Obama could further believe], people are responsible for their religious beliefs and the related beliefs they hold about violence and terrorism.

that:

Even as they are influenced by their racist beliefs, those white people who lynched black people are responsible for the lynchings. Indeed [Obama could further believe], those people are responsible for their racist beliefs and the related beliefs they hold about the lynchings of blacks by whites.

and so that:

Even as they are influenced by their religious beliefs, those Islamic terrorists who beheaded the Christians are responsible for the beheadings. Indeed [Obama could further believe], those people are responsible for their religious beliefs and the related beliefs they hold about the beheading of Christians.

I don’t think that the maverick would want to deny that the Islamic terrorists who beheaded the Christians are responsible for the beheadings, even influenced as they may be by their aberrant and abhorrent religious beliefs.

I don’t think it evident that we have a lie before us in Obama’s statement, “People are responsible for violence and terrorism.” I don’t think it evident even that we have a falsehood before us.

8. Assuming the plausibility of the understanding of the second of Obama’s proposition just set forth, there is room for understanding that his first proposition, that “[n]o religion is responsible for terrorism,” is but another statement, perhaps not entirely happy, of the thesis proposed in the second. After all, it is the persons having the religion, be it the religion as interpreted by the better of its adherents or the religion as interpreted by their opposites, in their heads and hearts who engage in the concrete actions, good, bad, or indifferent undertaken in the religion’s name; without the activities of its adherents, a religion does nothing.

9. Enough, then, about Obama. Well, almost, for our maverick uses his thesis that Obama is mendacious as an entry into a statement of his opinion of “leftists.”

Why then is Obama so dishonest?  Part of the explanation is that he just does not care about truth.  (That is a mark of the bullshitter as Harry Frankfurt has pointed out.) Truth, after all, is not a leftist value, except insofar as it can be invoked to forward the leftist agenda.  It is the ‘progressive’ agenda that counts, first, and the narrative that justifies the agenda, second.  (Karl Marx, 11th Thesis on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have variously interpreted the word; the point, however, is to change it.”  Truth doesn’t come into it since a narrative is just a story and a story needn’t be true to mobilize people to implement an agenda.

How many things here fall short of the standards that one would expect of a philosopher? At least three. First, how might he know that Obama “just does not care about the truth”? Second, is there but one “leftist agenda,” as the use of the definite article and the singular noun in “the leftist agenda” might suggest? Third, is it true for all leftists that truth is not a value and “doesn’t come into it”?

10. There is one more thing that, well, assures me that at least the latter sections of “Citizens Lynching Citizens” are the work of a maverick and not a philosopher. He writes:

What is to be done?  Well, every decent person must do what he or she can to combat the lying scumbags of the Left.  It is a noble fight, and may also be, shall we say, conducive unto your further existence in the style to which you have become accustomed.

I’ll bet you can spot what it is.

Until next time.

Richard