Edgar Foster returns (with Kripke)!

Edgar Foster returns, after a long absence, to raise a new question. The question, it turns out, comes from his recent reading and researches in the philosophy of former Princeton Professor, Saul Kripke (pictured left):

Foster:

I hesitate to ask this question for fear of starting a new email thread. But what do you think about the proposition "If x is possibly distinct from y, then x is necessarily distinct from y"?

Blosser:

I would say: nonsense and bullwinckle. X could be possibly distinct from y without being necessarily so, could it not? Even if you want to eliminate altogether the element of seeming (to be) in possibility, this would seem to be so, in my humble opinion. For if x is possibly distinct from y, this has to mean that it is also possibly not distinct from y, which means that it can't possibly be necessarily distinct from y.

Foster:

My question is based on Kripke's discussion in the last portion of Naming and Necessity [Amazon link]. What you say above makes sense. However, there are two points I did not mention in my original missive. First, Kripke has identities in mind. Second, he posits the view above with rigid designators in mind as well. For example, "Hesperus (x) is Phosphorus (y)." This proposition asserts that x is y. In this case, we know that x is not possibly distinct from y since x is y. But what if someone says, "Mental states are brain states"? The proposition is again one pertaining to identity. Kripke would also say that "mental states" and "brain states" (in the example above) rigidly designate their respective referents such that these designations obtain in all possible worlds.

He would then undoubtedly ask whether mental states (x) are possibly distinct from brain states (y). Kripke would go on to reason that if mental states are possibly distinct from brain states, then they are necessarily distinct from brain states in the same way that Hesperus, if possibly distinct from Phospherus, would have to be necessarily distinct from Phospherus since an entity that is possibly distinct from another entity cannot be (evidently) identical with that entity. So it seems that possibly not being distinct does not enter into the picture when we're talking about the subject of identity and rigid designators.

On the other hand, [Notre Dame philosopher, Peter] Van Inwagen (pictured right) takes Descartes to task for making a similar argument with respect to the RES COGITANS and the RES EXTENSA. Essentially, the French philosopher is arguing that his soul is possibly distinct from his body. Ergo, the soul is necessarily distinct from the body since it is possible for the soul to exist without the body, also possible for one to be certain that he has a spiritual substance while being equally doubtful that he possesses a RES EXTENSA.

Ok, fire away!

Blosser:

I guess I have some questions about what Kripke means here (& perforce you) by the distinction between "possibly distinct" and "necessarily distinct,"as well as by "rigid designations." First, I wonder to what extent a person's epistemic ignorance might play into the category of "possibly distinct." That is, does the distinction depend, at least in some cases, on a person's not knowing that x is necessarily distinct from y and therefore hypothesizing that it may be "possibly distinct"? Secondly, I wonder what "rigid designations" means in this respect too. Could something be "rigidly designated" yet fail to be rigidly self-identical or to exactly fit the rigid designation ontologically? This would seem to make a difference also.

Kripke says "Hesperus (x) is Phosphorus (y)." Okay, for the sake of an argument let me accept that this identity is ontologically determined and absolute. It would then make no sense suggest that x could be "possibly distinct" from y, would it; or, perforce, "necessarily distinct." Granted.

But when Kripke states "Mental states are brain states," he says something less clear. For we aren't entirely certain how mental states and brain states are related, though we have some non-empirical (pistical, for your benefit) commitments to the relative independence of mental states from brain states, as even epiphenomenalists have.

At this point one could meaningfully ask, it seems to me, whether mental states are "possibly distinct" from brain states, based on our ignorance as to how the two are related. A strict materialist would collapse the former into the latter, but even then might grant the former an epiphenomenal independence or seeming independence from the latter. But then it would seem that one could meaningfully ask whether, in this case, x is not possibly distinct from y without being sure whether x is necessarily distinct from y.

All of which would boil down to the question: what can Kripke possibly mean by his language of "rigid designation" here? Of course, if it is true in all possible worlds that x is necessarily distinct from y, then the identity of x and y is absolute regardless of whether we successfully recognize this identity and choose to "rigidly designate" it for what it in fact is.

I'm still not at all clear how "possibly distinct" is supposed to entail "necessarily distinct," in Kripke's usage. I can conceive of how darkness (x) could be "possibly distinct" from an overcast sky (y), as would be the case, for example, on a clear night. But I don't see how that would make x "necessarily distinct" from y (in this case), since one could easily conceive of an overcast day also being dark.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 7)

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

Yeah, there are thousands of people out there who tolerate everything except intolerance, who want their kids to be anything but republicans--and they are all now licking our wounds and asking each other, how, since we're obviously right about everything, could we have lost an election? NPR is such dark comedy these days--Neil Conan and others inviting in these upper-echelon evangelicals, asking them their opinions, challenging others to respond to the challenge--it's hilarious. Funny times. It's enough to get one interested in politics.

Blosser:

Well, the blind spot in many of these people who, as you say, "tolerate everything except intolerance," is that they are themselves extremely intolerant of those they disagree with, sometimes to a point bordering on fanaticism. Intolerance of some things may be a function of anyone's thinking he's right about anything; but what heightens the irony with the people you describe is that they're often found among the ranks of those touting the celebration of every kind of "diversity," as long as it doesn't have anything to do with the cold, wet blanket of Christianity.

Colleague:

You always forget that I'm not a philosopher--I just play one on TV. I don't use terms with a huge degree of accuracy sometimes, though I always try to, and so I don't know what I meant by "faith" in my last. But Augustine says in On Christian Doctrine that "the life of the speaker has greater force to make him persuasive than the grandeur of his eloquence, however great that may be" (IV.59). What I find that that I am moved and persuaded when people are willing to be open and truthful, not about their truths, which we all have and behind which we all hide, but about their emotions. I don't think most of us even have direct access to our emotions--I know I don't most of the time. And when I meet someone who does, I am often persuaded--not on the basis of shared assumptions, which I thought was meant by cogency.

Blosser:

Oh, I don't think for a moment that you merely a TV philosopher. You can't pull that one over on me. I know you're actually a philosopher traveling in the disguise of an English professor. But anyway, you do make a nice point from St. Augustine's On Christian Doctrine. And I do agree with the old saw that one ought to "practice what he preaches." As. St. Francis of Assisi once declared: "Preach at all times. Use words if necessary!" All children are sensitive from their tenderest years, of course, to any discrepancies between what their parents say and do. Which doesn't make me think for a moment that what one says is unimportant: it had just better be backed up by a consistent integrity of life.

The issue of emotions, in my opinion, is a mixed bag. Therapists and women often point out that men aren't good at talking about their emotions, and I think this is especially true of "nordic"-type men from Scandanavian or Teutonic backgrounds, like the groom in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" [Amazon.com DVD link]. I think it's probably less true of the Mediterranian and Latino types of men who wear their emotions on their shirt-sleeves. I think we nordic types of men often don't even know what emotions we're feeling. We have to sensitize ourselves to feel what we're feeling, oddly enough. On the other hand, I don't think of emotions as an alternative to truth. I don't think you were saying that they are, but only that an emotional connection between people is indispensable. Who wants to be "talked AT"? That shows no respect. Where I think some people may be led astray, though, is in thinking that emotions are somehow a substitute for truth. For example, if I find myself emotionally infatuated with a woman other than my wife, I might tell myself: "I've got to be honest with myself and with my feelings. I'm in love! I can't help myself!" But here I would be ignoring the fact that I had made (however tacitly) a decision to allow myself to indulge in feelings for someone in direct infidelity to my wife. Unless a human being is an animal unable to make and keep promises, this would be dishonest behavior. Furthermore, I would likely also have feelings of affection for my wife. So which feelings are the "true me"? That's something I have to decide on the basis of what kind of person I want to be: do I want to be a person who keeps his promises and makes love work, or a person at the mercy of whatever emotions and inclinations may come his way?

Colleague:

... As to Lacan, I'm certainly hoping the students will do more than cite him. I've never done this course this way before, so I don't know what they'll do. But one can distinguish metonymic from metaphoric thinking anywhere, whether it be in the thought process of a character, the relation between images in a work, the process of reading, or just in life. It's all very practical. Where it becomes complex and interesting is when Lacan associates metonymy with desire and metaphor with symptom. Since Silas had chosen to go to a gay bar and write about it, we talked last night about the limp wrist thing. Is that a symptom of homosexuality, in which case it would have a metaphoric relation, or something arbitrarily associated with it--in which case it is something one can play with? All the authors we have been studying seem to think that the metonymical way of thinking is simply better than the metaphorical--even Jakobson, who says that something is poetical because of the material relations between the signifiers in contiguity and sequence, not because the words mean things, refer to great truths, etc. Which I think is a little simplistic. But there are metonymies and metaphors everywhere, and they're fun to read.

Blosser:

So when our college administration issues a policy statement we might say "Linberger has spoken" and that would be a 'metonymy', and if their policy was particularly ill-though-through we might say "The administration's policy was lame" and that would be a 'metaphor', something like that? Why do the authors you've been studying seem to think the metonymical way of thinking and speaking is somehow better?

Colleague:

I share your skepticism about applications of relativity theory at the macro level, where things are obviously not relative at all. And also the Bloom quote--I think it's true that most students at least say that truth is relative. They say it because they have been taught it in high school, I imagine, and they were taught it to combat various forms of prejudice. But I don't think most of them really believe truth is relative--they are just surprised to find teachers, in college, who don't believe it.

Blosser:

I like your description of the phenomenon. I wonder, though, whether there isn't an inadvertent duplicity at work, not only among the students entering college but even among many professors, who often profess a relativistic outlook disdainful of any absolutes ("Whatever floats your boat," "Different strokes for different folks," etc.) while selectively adhering to absolute principles and values when it's convenient. For example, I can easily imagine a classroom of students professing their disbelief in any objective absolutes, yet inconsistently appealing to the absolute value of justice were I, their professor, to arbirarily flunk all of them. "That's not fair!" they would protest. But what is "fairness" if all values are subjective and personal and relative?

Colleague:

I've not read [Simone de] Beauvoir (pictured right), but I've heard of her argument that someone women are politically obliged to not be stay-at-home moms. Do you think my students' notion that that's what all feminists think comes from their having read Beauvoir or having spoken with people who have? I doubt it. Maybe very indirectly. I bet you that people who say this have never spoken with a feminist who holds that opinion. And I bet that very few people who identify as feminists do hold that opinion. The thing most feminists want, I think, is that there be laws prohibiting men from hitting or raping women and that these laws be enforceable. But I was talking with a young woman who volunteers at the rape crisis center and is somewhat of an activist--I called her a feminist, and she balked, as if that were some sort of insult. Very odd. We like our ghosts better--they walk around in our brains, doing the sort of things we expect them to, doo-doo-doo-toot doo, and everything's fine, and then you have a real experience in the world and the ghosts get mad.

Blosser:

Feminists come in different varieties. In one sense of the word I would call Pope John Paul II or myself a feminist, though you would smile at that. If the good of women is what is wanted, we would certainly want to champion that.

I've heard of such distinctions as these: 'equity feminists', who want equal wages for equal work; and 'gender feminists', like Mary Daly (pictured left), who want to eliminate males from the gene pool or eliminate gender difference altogether. The majority of women in the States, I agree with you, would certainly not want to take away the right of any woman to be a mother and wife and homemaker, if that was her choice. But that's not the view that animates the more radical feminists. Most radical feminists loathe and despise this choice and wouldn't hear of permitting it if they could have their way. They would derisively dismiss the feminism of a Christina Hoff Sommers or even the lesbian Camille Paglia (pictured right), who probably scares the hell out of them. But let them speak in their own fevered words:

• "[A]s long as the family and the myth of the family and the myth of maternity and the maternal instinct are not destroyed, women will still be oppressed.... No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one. It is a way of forcing women in a certain direction." ~ Simone de Beauvoir, "Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma," Saturday Review, June 14, 1975.
  
  
• "A parasite sucking out the living strength of another organism...the [housewife's] labor does not even tend toward the creation of anything durable.... [W]oman's work within the home [is] not directly useful to society, produces nothing. [The housewife] is subordinate, secondary, parasitic. It is for their common welfare that the situation must be altered by prohibiting marriage as a 'career' for woman." ~ Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949.
  
  
• "[Housewives] are mindless and thing-hungry...not people. [Housework] is peculiarly suited to the capacities of feeble-minded girls. [It] arrests their development at an infantile level, short of personal identity with an inevitably weak core of self.... [Housewives] are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps. [The] conditions which destroyed the human identity of so many prisoners were not the torture and brutality, but conditions similar to those which destroy the identity of the American housewife." ~ Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, 1963.
  
  
• "[Housewives] are dependent creatures who are still children...parasites." ~ Gloria Steinem, "What It Would Be Like If Women Win," Time, August 31, 1970.
  
  
• "Feminism was profoundly opposed to traditional conceptions of how families should be organized, [since] the very existence of full-time homemakers was incompatible with the women's movement.... [I]f even 10 percent of American women remain full-time homemakers, this will reinforce traditional views of what women ought to do and encourage other women to become full-time homemakers at least while their children are very young.... If women disproportionately take time off from their careers to have children, or if they work less hard than men at their careers while their children are young, this will put them at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis men, particularly men whose wives do all the homemaking and child care.... This means that no matter how any individual feminist might feel about child care and housework, the movement as a whole had reasons to discourage full-time homemaking." ~ Jane J. Mansbridge, Why We Lost the ERA, 1986.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 6)

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

I still am very interested in this question of an argument's being persuasive, as opposed to the quite separate question of its validity. I didn't find you persuasive when you spoke of murder, nor when you spoke of equality, but I do when you speak of faith. I suppose I could analyze that, but another time, perhaps.

Blosser:

This is interesting. Since "faith" is usually divorced from rational content in the contemporary mind, this makes me wonder what "persuasive" means here. Of course I could be wrong in my assumption and, if so, I would wonder what (content) it is that you find persuasive. But in my current experience "faith" is usually associated by individuals with something like "sincerity" or "authenticity," which they seem to admire, but which has little if any identifiable rational content; and if that were the case I would wonder what "persuasive" means here. The only other possibility that comes to mind is that you didn't find my arguments "persuasive" because you disagreed with them, but then that doesn't reflect negatively on the soundness of the arguments but just only their cogency (or ability to persuade). Blaise Pascal (pictured left), of course, faced the same issue with traditional metaphysical arguments for God's existence, which he recognized to be impeccably sound but utterly ineffective, and therefore chose the approach of a "wager" that might appeal to the probability theories of his gambling buddies. Which makes me wonder what a similar strategy might look like in the abortion debate-- maybe an argument about how each of us is already up to our ears in gambling on the outcome of our choices, gambling that God won't be pissed off at the Last Judgment by our voting for a pro- abortion candidate, or whatever. Perhaps I'll have to think about that line of reasoning.

Colleague:

The spectre of the anti-essentialist raises its savage head, finally. That's a term I have heard but am not real familiar with--it sounds like what one would get if one tried to go about reducing Lacan to something simple and practical and catch and generally applicable. The word must go back to the days before I started paying attention (or have come about since I stopped paying attention--that's possible, too.)

Blosser:

The Greek term PHYSIS has a long history, just like OUSIA, and there have been those around, like the sophists, who refused to grant the existence of anything stable resembling 'natures' or 'essences' for a long time. So anti-essentialism is hardly anything new, though in its more recent forms (such as anti-foundationalism) it has a fairly short history from the late sixties in the Anglo-American philosophical academy, I suppose. I did find it interesting in the class you let me sit in on at the Taste Full Bean that you encouraged the class in your closing remarks to consider how Jacques Lacan (pictured left) might be applied or whether his thinking could be implimented in any practical ways. I'm still not quite sure what you may have had in mind by that invitation. I know several writers, like Julia Kristeva, who QUOTE Lacan in their work; but I can't help thinking you might mean something more than that.

Colleague:

The gender thing, though, has to do with a person who was just a strong, athletic man until she had to submit to a chromosome test, which revealed an x chromosome. The claim was not that she has no essence but that it was scientifically impossible, or only unscientifically possible, to determine whether she is male or female. I suppose you could say that Lacan is an antiessentialist, since he, like Judith Butler and just about everyone else, wants not to think of one having a self, which would be one's essence.

Blosser:

As I said in my remark about Buddhism, I find it interesting that Buddhism arrives at its ANATTA (or "non-self") doctrine by means of a kind of introspective phenomenological analysis of the empirical 'self,' which ends up dismantling any kind of Cartesian notion of an Ego Cogito. On a phenomenological level, I find this entirely compatible with the Christian notion that the self or soul is something unknowable in any self-subsistent way and can come to be known only indirectly or reflexively, as it were, as node or center of relationships with the world, with others, and with God. But I don't see how a moment that any of this leads to the conclusion that we have no self or soul. Why should we think that? The best discussion of this I've found is The Selfhood of the Human Person by the phenomenological personalist, John Crosby.

Colleague:

But Fausto-Sterling's point about gender had to do with the very real inapplicability of labels. (At least, she says it's real.) This was a sort of macro-application of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle--you cannot reveal the truth of her sex but only determine it by choosing your criteria arbitrarily.

Blosser:

I don't know much more about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle than the average non-physicist, I suppose. But I've always felt a bit uncertain (!) about the way in which such principles get applied outside the realm of physics by the laity. For example, I've seen Albert Einstein's Relativity Theory referenced in support of various spiecies (moral, metaphysical, epistemological, even religious) relativism, whereas I've always assumed that the whole theory hinged on the non-relativity of two ineluctable absolutes-- electromagnitism and gravity. But that's a mere detail.

Colleague:

But tell me more about this spectre, the anti-essentialist. There are so many such spectres--two women this week have told me that they're not feminists because they think it's alright for a woman to be a stay-at-home mom. Find a feminist who doesn't! I mean, a real, living, breathing one, not the gothic hairy-armed beast in a gothic, undergraduate mind. Relativist is another spectre--have you ever met one of those? Someone who really believes as an article of faith that it depends how you look at it? (Fausto-Sterling, in the example cited, might seem to be one, but as she shows, it only "depends how you look at it" if male and female are somehow the only two possibilities. The athlete in question, she argues, is an intersexual. And I'm sure she goes in doors and looks out windows, same as us essentialists.) Deconstructionist--postmodernist--skeptic--nihilist--these are Halloween costumes. I'm not saying that all labels are, but that we have our list of ghosts we walking around talking about as if we've actually seen. Republican--that's different. I met one of those once.

Blosser:

Ha! I thought I began hearing the strains of Dance Macabre some time ago ... I know how you like monsters and spectres. But these are your readings, not mine. You ask me to tell you more about "this spectre, the anti-essentialist." I find it much more interesting to talk about the nature of things, with Husserl, who used to say "Zu den Sachen selbst!" Why shouldn't we find our point of orientation in what is, rather than in what isn't, or in what seems capable of identifying itself only parasitically, reactionary-like, by way of opposition to any ostensible definition of what is? Who's to say, furthermore, that the shoe doesn't fit the other foot as well, if postmodernist recoils in horror from the spectre of the thing he hitherto thought harmlessly inanimate: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaah! It's ALIVE!"

Find you a feminist who doesn't think it's alright for a woman to be a stay-at-home mom? Sartre's mistress, Simone de Bouvoir (pictured left), for starters; and I don't recall any hairy arms in the video of the interview with her in our library.

Have I ever met a relativist? Well the more interesting question here might be whether anyone has met an absolutist-- these days, anyway. And I would define "relativism" more narrowly than the belief that it "depends how you look at it," which is quite compatible with absolutism or objectivism, in my opinion. I would define "relativism" as any view that denies the existence of any objective absolute that is not relative to time, place, or opinion. But even those are a dime a dozen. Allan Bloom writes in the opening paragraph of his book, The Closing of the American Mind, the only philosophy book I know of to make the New York Times bestseller list, "There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students' reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4. These are things you don't think about." He wrote that in 1987.

And a Republican. Yeah, I suspect so. I remember Amy and I talking with the kids of the former LR dean of students at Wildacres this past spring, now with kids of their own. They were telling us how they weren't the least concerned about how their kids grew up, what influences they received in their schools, what sexual orientation they chose to embrace, etc., etc., etc. -- the quintessential picture of liberal urbanity-- with only one proviso: "provided they didn't become Republicans"! That -- ha-ha! -- seems to be one predictable absolute among a given cross-section of the population! Which does raise the question again about double-standards, doesn't it-- like Rousseau's insistence that he couldn't be expected to be "clear and consistent at the same time." But at least that has a certain charm about it, I suppose.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 5)

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

Your dog analogy is problematic, isn't it? Sure, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg, but what DOES make it one? I was reading recently about an Olympic hurdler in the 60s who failed her gender test and was barred from competition. She was chromosomally male but genitally female. Susan Fausto-Sterling, a biologist at Brown and the author of the book I read about this in, says that science simply cannot sex you scientifically--it must decide what the criteria are (genitalia, chromosomes, whatever else might bear on the question), and it can apply the criteria scientifically, but the criteria themselves are arbitrary. So I don't know--should I just dismiss this as "postmodernism"? (The Olympic Committee, or whatever it's called, didn't do so--they reinstated her status and took back their decision, though of course long after her career was ruined and she'd been spit upon after she returned to her country in disgrace, etc.) Who says what's a leg and what's not? The leg-ologists, of course. [Abraham] Lincoln's dog metaphor only applies if we assume, as he seems to, that we all know exactly what a leg is, and are only talking about how to name this thing that we all of course understand because it's obvious. Which may be the case with legs, though I have my doubts, but it isn't the case, apparently when it comes to sex and gender, and it isn't the case with abortion either if you're a "pro-choice"-ist. You can pretend that a leg is a leg, a spade is a spade, a life is a life--or perhaps it's not pretending, perhaps a life simply is a life. But I think that someone who actually wanted to communicate with and persuade people of the opposite opinion would take on the question and not beg it, which was the thrust of my original response to the parody. It just seems to me that we're mostly content to divide ourselves into tribes and sing the jingle.

Blosser:

Here we go again. I'm not sure how profitable this line of discussion can be. Yet I think it's an important, so I'll try to say a bit more. First, calling a tail a leg or anything else doesn't "make" it anything, does it? Isn't a thing whatever it is whatever we call it? Now of course that's what the anti-essentialist questions: that natures exist at all. Yet I would not only contend that they do, but that anti-essentialists selectively acknowledge their existence. They are most always seen entering a building through its door, for instance, rather than trying to walk through the wall.

Second, your gender-bender example involves all sorts of unknown details, since I'm not acquainted with the (tragic) case. For example, I don't know whether the person was genitally "female" by virtue of a "sex change" or by some other act of God. But all of this is really beside the point in view of Aristotle's principle that fuzzy boundaries (which he recognized abundantly in nature) don't eradicate genus/species categories. In more recent times, scientists have trouble deciding whether to classify light as waves or particles, just like they have trouble deciding whether to classify a virus as organic or inorganic. But how does the existence of boundary difficulties in these kinds of examples compromise our otherwise very clear distinctions between particles and waves, or the organic and inorganic, or male and female, forsooth (now THERE'S a word!)?

Third, my students typically tend to assume that differences of opinion reduce to differences of perspective, which they think means these differences are beyond adjudication. But we all know some opinions that are simply stupid, just like this one. The most elementary lesson taught by Plato is that the sophist ends up hanging himself on his own "logic." Which brings us to the folly of the members of the Flat Earth Society: just assuming the world is flat won't flatten it, as Sir (now Saint) Thomas More pointed out to Thomas Cromwell and the Duke of Norfolk.

Fourth, there are limits to our ability to persuade one another, as you point out; and this may be as distressing to some as it is boring to others. Joe's ability to persuade Roger of anything rests in part on the willingness of Roger to accept certain premises in common with Joe, as well as upon the soundness and cogency of Joe's argument. There are limits to this, however, as discussed previously. The court of ultimate appeal, of course, is the reality of the world, which, as Max Scheler (pictured right) notes, offers "resistance": the wall that the anti-essentialist refuses to try and walk through. At that point he may want to accuse the essentialist of begging the question, but he (the anti-essentialist) demonstrates by his own behavior that he accepts the existence of natures or essences (such as the solidity of walls), whatever he may say. So one test of the viability of a view of things is very likely the ability of a person to consistently live out the view. And I just don't quite see how the anti-essentialist manages it without being selective or inconsistent. While I admit, as Aristotle did, that there are fuzzy boundaries to various genera, I think (like him) that distinguishing between men and women is generally a task not condiserably more difficult than distinguishing between a dog's tail and his leg. But then, I've been called "dogmatic," "fundamentalist," along with all sorts of other names (though I'm not sure how any of that's relevant).

Colleague:

So you say that "I don't think there's any real need for an argument on this point," which I assume is the point of what's a life and what isn't, and I feel like I must be either a dolt or some spiritually craven fiend for falsity (and maybe I am), but I disagree. I don't think I'm arguing for a straight pro-choice platform but just quietly insisting that the issue is complex. I think the question of "where and why killing human lives is justifiable" is less interesting and also less important here. I don't know why I think that, though--interesting question.

Blosser:

I assure you that I have no wish to offend you. Maybe I was a bit blunt. Maybe there are complications. I know an acquaintance of mine just had a son whom she refused to abort even though he is mentally retarded, has cerebral palsy and is blind (his brain was growing outside his skull in the womb and required surgery upon delivery to correct that problem). Life can be complicated and often tragic, though often it seems like it's amidst the tragedies that God seems to pour out His most abundant and miraculous graces. But I feel a little like the British member of parliament who quit his party the day it simultaneously adopted a platform affirming abortion-rights and the protection of Gold Fish. Albert Camus (pictured right) wrote:

"The world expects of Christians that they will raise their voices so loudly and clearly and so formulate their protest that not even the simplest man can have the slightest doubt about what they are saying. Further, the world expects of Christians that they will eschew all fuzzy abstractions and plant themselves squarely in front of the bloody face of history. We stand in need of folk who have determined to speak directly and unmistakably and come what may, to stand by what they have said."

I view myself as an unworthy aspirant to that ideal-- an ideal, which, in my humble opinion, the Catholic Church has come very close to meeting, especially in the person of the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II. Not many people (Catholics included) may LIKE everything the Church stands for, but I doubt whether many have serious questions about what that stand is.

No organization comes close to having the network of social service programs for feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless, clothing the naked, assisting unwed mothers and battered wives, providing orphanages, etc.-- not even the United Nations. But amongst all these programs there is one thing that I've never heard called into doubt: the belief the life is sacred and that deliberate abortion is murder. If the Church is doing her job on this front, I'm not really too concerned if arguments fail to persuade, because I know when it comes right down to what's most important, people are far more apt to be persuaded by personal compassion than by an argument.

Colleague:

I don't know--it's an interesting question to me. Suppose you think that (in the context of this discussion, which I take to be a discussion of the moral and legal issues of the abortion question) that there is no substantive difference between a fetus and an abortionist, and I think there is. How do we proceed? We don't just look up the answer in the World Book Encyclopedia, do we? Categories are not absolute but creative, or so I've always thought. Do we determine the outcomes or results from the category assumptions and then backtrack, judging the assumptions accordingly? (I.e. you must be right, because your assumptions lead [let us say] to criminalizing of abortion, whereas mine [let us say] do not). But then we would have to know a priori that abortion should be criminalized, which is precisely what we want to find out. Do we manipulate categories creatively, just for the fun of it? Do we sit up all night, Quaker-style, praying and listening for an answer, and refusing to budge until consensus has been achieved? I can't think of a better way than that, but I'm not sure how philosophical it would be.

Blosser:

I don't have sufficient time here for this, but I wouldn't write off entirely the Quaker-style thing. At least, I agree with Pascal that spiritual and moral dispositions affect how we see the "data." Love opens our eyes to things that others (who don't love or who hate) are blind to. Etc. So I would want to say something about the importance of this factor in the background. The other thing might be to go take a look at the abortion scene and, if possible, to witness an abortion, or watch one on TV or something. Talking to women who have been through abortions is eye-opnening. The repression, sublimation, and scarring are beyond imagining. Then there's the carnage of the act itself, which is awful to behold. There's always a chance that none of this would affect one, but I would think it important to check it out. My own humble page on this issue can be found here. Then, in turn, I should probably be open to hearing and prayerfully reflection on the stories of some of the more outspoken opponents of the pro-life position. Something like that, maybe.

Colleague:

And the equity thing is interesting, too. You're right, of course, that we are in no sense equal in any meaningful sense, even if we're identical twins. Perhaps it does follow from this that equality as a political banner or slogan just makes no sense. It's a relatively new idea, of course. Medieval peasants didn't think they were "equal," I bet--nor did their owners. But two questions: isn't it the case that we simply cannot say this on today's cultural scene? You can be against abortion, but you cannot be against equity and equality: whatever your opinion on whatever you're opinion is on, the need for equity must warrant it. So you say, if there's such a thing as equity, then the fetus must have its share, etc. But you cannot say, men and women simply are different, and they have different gifts and different consequences, and must therefore orient themselves differently vis-à-vis (let us say) sexuality--even though all this us quite obviously true. I mean, we can say it, but Bush can't--no elected official can, and it seems to me the whole debate is conditioned by that universal need to self-censor.

Blosser:

You have never uttered a truer word. This self-censorship thing is simply amazing to me. I have caught the most unlikely people engaging in the most amazing acts of self-sensorthip in this way. The ungrammatical singular "they" is the most notorious linguistic example. Even Catholics tip-toe around the wording of Ephesians 5 by talking about "mutual submission" of husbands and wives to one another, though of course the text says no such thing.

Having said that, I think we would both acknowledge that there's a distinction to be made between the moral and the legal and the politically possible, and that the difficulty of supporting a position politically is insufficient excuse for supporting it morally, if it calls for support. It would have been so easy for the then Sir Thomas More just to sign the Act of Supremacy-- so easy ... but for that little thing called conscience.

Kant vs. Bush

A colleague of mine forwarded to me the following piece of skywrighting offering a Kantian reading of Bush by a Bruce Merrill:

Here is an election day quote from the close of the 18th century (1795), which applies (I contend), to the current president of the USA.

"Just as we view with deep disdain the attachment of savages to their lawless freedom-- preferring to scuffle without end rather than to place themselves under lawful restraints... consequently preferring a mad freedom to a lawful one-- and consider it barbarous, rude, and brutishly degrading of humanity, so also should we think that civilized peoples (each one united into a nation) would hasten as quickly as possible to escape so similar a state of abandonment. Instead, however, each nation sees its majesty... to consist in not being subject to any external legal constraint, and the glory of its ruler consists in being able, without endangering himself, to command many thousands to sacrifice themselves for a matter than does not concern them."

Thus Kant notes, in his essay on "Perpetual Peace" [Perpetual Peace, and Other Essays on Politics, History, and Morals (HPC Classics Series)], which, despite the rationale for a past social contract that everyone acknowledges, individual nations and rulers continue to behave in a barbaric & brutish manner.

Well, [Merrill writes] certainly our ruler "sees [his] majesty... to consist in not being subject to any external legal constraint." International law and UN sanctions are for other weaker nations. Certainly not for those born-again men who swagger out of Texas. And then, too fearful to "endanger himself" in 1972 in a war which he ostensibly supported, and hardly endangered now, he takes great satisfaction-- "bring it on!"-- in the power of sending those not as wealthy and entitled as he to the front lines, where they fight & die a war whose true rationale (the geo-political game-plan of the Bushites) remains essentially concealed, and "does not concern them."

To this, I offer the following brief rejoinder:

Kant's "Perpetual Peace" was written under the Enlightenment assumption that sin is a myth and that the scourge of war, like the aberrations of interpresonal conflicts, could ultimately be resolved through universal Reason. Hence, when planning his world-government, Kant had not the fears of England's Lord Acton, who said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. By contrast, I find at least some small comfort in the notion that our tradition of liberal democracy, whatever its many shortcomings, emerged from the widespread assumption that the checks and balances upon human government are necessary ("that government is best which governs least") because human nature is fallen. The Christian ideal without doubt is a theocracy with Christ as King. Short of that, we are left incapable of the best three forms of government described by Aristotle (monarchy, aristocracy, and polity), because our we cannot trust our own nature to govern for the wellbeing of the governed; and thus we must have recourse to the least opressive of the worst types of government described by Aristotle (democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny). Since tyranny is out of the question, we're left with democracy (government by the greed of the majority) or oligarchy (government by the greed of the rich). Of these two, the least objectionable is democracy, which has the virtue of slowing the inevitable progress of society towards tyranny by its colossal inefficiency.

Our country's reluctance to submit to the tribunal of international judgment could in fact be motivated by a primitive and barbaric desire for selfish autonomy. But it could just as readily be motivated, at least on the part of some, by distrust of any tribunal in which the highest recourse is the arbitrary law of the majority, subject to no further sanction of divine or natural law. I find it interesting that those most hesitant to trust the judgment of the United Nations and/or World Court tend to be individuals who believe in natural law, if not divine law, while those most trusting of these international bodies tend to be individuals who believe in nothing higher than the voted will of the majority, which makes me think of the French Revolution and Rousseau's lovely notion of the Volente General and of dissidents who must be "compelled to be free." Our country today may no longer have the virtues observed by Alexis de Tocqueville, but I like to think that the American people, including the local farmers and Joe Six Packs, are still possessed of a sufficient residue of that legacy in their common sense, that I can repose more trust in their collective judgment than in that of the power-mongers of world government. Of course, I could be sorely disappointed. We're all merely human, after all.

An exchange on pro-choice logic (Part 4)

(Continued ...)

Colleague:

You are exactly right about corporations taking advantage of the perceived need for equity and somehow managing to get two for the price of one, which sucks for everyone. I don't see how the earlier system of gender policing was preferable, however. What would be interesting to me would be an argument against equity as a value. But if we continue to value equity, legislating in favor of it is going to mean legislating for control over one's body. I think an argument against equity might be so new and surprising that it might get some attention, but people seem afraid to make that argument, preferring to just say abortion = murder.

Blosser:

Well, stating the obvious (we're killing human lives here) is no argument, but it's enough to keep most simple-minded people from me from thinking it's a good thing. I don't think there's any real need for an argument on this point. Where the argument is needed, rather, is where and why killing human lives if justifiable.

The equity thing is interesting. I've always thought so since reading Jose Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses (pictured right). And I do see how it's socially related in some of the feminist discourse, but I don't see how it's logically related in any way that really makes sense (unless I'm missing something here). People often want to tie the issues together in terms of a woman's right to control her own body, but this seems to miss the simple point that the baby's body is not her body, even if it's hosted by her body, as well as the further point that equity would seem to demand granting that infant a right to the protection of his or her little body as much as the mother has to the protection of hers.

But the equity thing has also been subjected to a great deal of mistification, in my view. For, in what sense are people equal? We're not equally healthy, intelligent, wealthy, strong, education, wise, gendered, able to carry babies in our wombs, diligent, etc., etc. I might want to argue that we're all equally human, but that presupposes a common human nature, which those disposed to puke at any hint of Aristotelian "essentialism" would seem to want to deny. So where does that leave us? We might want to argue that people have the right to equal rights before the law? But what does this mean when natural law is denied so that all we're left with is positive law (arbitrary human laws), which can be horribly unjust, and when "rights" seem to have reduced to whatever anyone wants to do that they can get away with doing?

Personally, I'd want to argue that the only viable defense of any kind of equality of rights before the law would have to be tempered by the demands of justice and based on the good consonant with their nature as human beings. There's really nothing that complicated about this. Natural law says we learn what a thing is from what it does, and we should treat things according to their natures. We don't water our tomato plants with gasoline, and we don't put water into our fuel tank. We learn to treat things according to their nature. What is the nature of a human being? Aristotle walks us through this in his The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford World's Classics). It's not that hard. At least, it wasn't until this case of collective amnesia suffered by the readership of the New York Times, or at least that part of it which shares the presuppositions of those who write that parish magazine of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment.

Colleague:

I was not aware that an unborn child could both be killed and inherit property. That does seem contradictory, though I'm not sure how to resolve the contradiction. Very interesting. I guess in a sense the point is moot, since the child can only inherit the property if it is born and lives.

Blosser:

It's one of the many crass and hypocritical inconsistencies ensconced in our contemporary system of positivistic, analytic jurisprudence.

Colleague:

I try not to get emotional about whether staying at home is shit-work or some wonderful privilege. I suppose at issue is choice. I will be honest with you: I have never found the idea of a "wife," or at least the concatenation of images that term conjures up in my head, to be anything but repulsive. I have no objection to anyone being a "wife," if that means staying at home and playing with kids and baking cookies and beaming radiantly or snarling bitterly depending upon her mood, but I don't want one in my house, thank you. I feel about wives about the same way I feel about TVs--don't want one. A friend and lover, someone with whom to share life's adventure, that I can see, but not a wife, a soccer mom, or what have you. But that's just me personally. I feel about "wives" the way I feel about war--if someone had to go to war and kill and die, I'd rather that person be me than someone else, but it seems better if no one has to. But if people want to . . . But anyway, as I say, the issue is choice. Choice is political, so sexuality is political. I've threatened to tell you about my father, but some day I'll tell you about my mother, too, if you're not careful.

Blosser:

I thought you said you were going to try not to get emotional here! But this sounds downright pathological, if not Pavlovian! Good heavens. Just what did happen between you and your mother!? You're working with a model of "wife" here that is appalling. Your wife must find this amusing, to say the least. Of course you may not like the connotations involved in her "having" a "husband" and you're "having" a "wife." But unless something has escaped me, that's what you apparently are to one another, like it or not.

Abraham Lincoln used to ask, "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" When people would answer, "Five," Lincoln would correct them: "No, the answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one." But then, that's just common sense. Lincoln didn't know anything about postmodern insights.

Colleague:

I'm sorry I missed your guest--I don't remember any notice of her visit.

Blosser:

She was good. Sorry you missed her.

Colleague:

. . . I don't know that I have an opinion about the politics of abortion. My head is full of leftist arguments, as I have said, but I enjoy having this discussion with you and am learning a lot.

Blosser:

I don't know that I follow you here. On the one hand, you seem fond of saying that you don't know how pro-choice people think because you've never read any, and that you don't know whether you have an opinion about the politics of abortion. On the other hand, you state here that your head is full of leftist arguments. But then it would seem to me that it should be perfectly clear to you what pro-choice arguments would be and that you would have a definite opinion about the politics of abortion. In fact, it would seem that this datum would rise to the level of public knowledge, unless someone's missed something here.