AnalPhilosopher

Here is a retrospective column by the inimitable Dave Barry.

12-31-86 . . . At home, I had a nice conversation with Mom about my career plans. She asked me what philosophy is. “I still don’t know; all I know is that it has something to do with arguing,” she said. I hated to do it, but I told her that, as I now understand philosophy, it is not about arguing. Rather, it’s about clarifying concepts and issues—keeping other people, such as lawyers, doctors, and scientists, in line. To give an example, I told her about property, about how it is misunderstood and why someone needs to do the conceptual work. This led to a discussion of my dissertation and about my likely effect on the world. I admitted that I would spend my career writing for other academics, but that, eventually, it might have an effect on judges and laypeople. “I’m not out to change the world, although that would be a nice by-product,” I said. “I’m interested primarily in getting clear on things—so others can make it a better world.”

See here for my latest post at Animal Ethics.

Yup.

Does anybody have a Microsoft Zune? I'm thinking of buying one. I have a Rio Karma music player, which I like, but it holds only 20 gigabytes of music and is almost full. The Zune holds 30 gigabytes, which will give me plenty of room for new CDs. The weight is about the same (5.5 ounces for the Karma, 5.6 ounces for the Zune), but the Zune is flatter (.6 inches as compared to 1.1 inches for the Karma) and will therefore fit better in my bicycling jersey's pocket. I'm not one to run out for new gadgets, just for the sake of having something new, but in this case, the Zune fills my needs better than the Karma. Please don't tell me to buy an iPod. I don't own anything by Apple and never will.

To the Editor:

You are right: “The United States needs a more progressive tax system and the government must find a way to help businesses and individuals with out-of-control health care costs.”

Readers might remember our nation’s last major “ideological conflict.” During and after World War II, the top income tax bracket was 91 percent.

Returning to such a system would accomplish both your objectives. It would help pay for health care, education and countless other needs. In addition, it would restrain the obscenely high compensation of many corporate executives and other believers in “greed is good,” and reduce the alarming gap between the haves and the have-nots.

John Glasel
Hoboken, N.J., Dec. 25, 2006
The writer is secretary of Health Care for All/New Jersey.

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Ah yes, the good old days of confiscatory taxation.

Read this. Is anyone surprised that when the New York Times makes a mistake in its news coverage, it is favorable to progressives and progressive causes and unfavorable to conservatives and conservative causes? If there were no bias at the Times, mistakes would redound to the benefit of no party, no cause, no ideology, and no political morality. You can complete the syllogism.

Here.

Notice how the meaning of the following sentences changes as the word “only” is moved:

1. Only Professor Wu claimed that Socrates wrote poetry. (Meaning: No one else claimed it.)

2. Professor Wu only claimed that Socrates wrote poetry. (Meaning: She didn’t prove it; she only claimed it.)

3. Professor Wu claimed only that Socrates wrote poetry. (Meaning: She claimed nothing else.)

4. Professor Wu claimed that only Socrates wrote poetry. (Meaning: She claimed that no one else wrote poetry.)

5. Professor Wu claimed that Socrates only wrote poetry. (Meaning: She claimed that Socrates didn’t read poetry; he only wrote it.)

6. Professor Wu claimed that Socrates wrote only poetry. (Meaning: She claimed that Socrates wrote nothing besides poetry.)

The first, third, fourth, and fifth of these are listed by Zachary Seech in his book Writing Philosophy Papers, 4th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004), 51. Seech says that the meaning of sentence 5 is “She claimed that Socrates wrote nothing besides poetry.” But that’s the meaning of sentence 6, not of sentence 5. My list, therefore, is both more complete and more accurate than Seech’s. By the way, Seech’s book is very good. It is required reading in my forthcoming Seminar in Research Methods and Philosophical Writing.

Here.

12-30-86 . . . This evening I saw a movie with Gary and Scott at the Quad Theaters in Saginaw. I drove Jerry’s Pontiac J-Car. The movie, The Mosquito Coast, was excellent—much better than I expected. It was about an inventor (played by Harrison Ford) who gets fed up with society and movies his family (a wife and four small kids) to Central America. There, he supervises the building of a magnificent estate in the jungle, only to lose it in a fire that he sets to kill three thugs. All the while, he deteriorates mentally, putting his family through the most difficult of circumstances. The scenery is beautiful. At the end, he is killed in a freak accident and his family lies to him. He asks [as he lies dying] if [sic; should be “whether”] they are staying in the jungle and they say “yes,” when in fact they are heading for the ocean and the United States. It was a real study in mental illness, this movie, and also about the cohesiveness of a family. Gary and Scott enjoyed it. [I have this movie in DVD format. I watched part of it the other day—a television broadcast—on my high-definition television.]

Afterward, we stopped at Burger King for a bite to eat and went bowling at Stardust Lanes. Unbeknownst to me, some bowling alleys now have computerized scoring. All we had to do is punch in our initials and let the computer do the rest. When we finished, we asked the clerk to print out our scores. Neat, huh? I beat Gary and Scott in both games, but not by much. All of our scores except one were in the low hundreds. My best was 123, my worst 115. Scott got the most strikes. I won, it seems, on the basis of my spares. Numerous times I left nine pins standing after the first ball. Earlier, while waiting for our number to be called, we played video games. I enjoyed being around Gary and Scott. It made me feel young again. We dropped Scott off on the way home and I got to sleep at 1:50 A.M.

The reporter who wrote this story would have benefited from a course in critical thinking. If I tell you that I have no intention of leaving my job, when in fact I intend to leave, and if my motive in misrepresenting my intention is to deceive you, then I have lied to you. Whether the lie is justified, all things considered, is a separate question. Perhaps it is; perhaps it isn't. If I tell you, truthfully, that I have no intention of leaving my job, but change my mind and leave, I have not lied to you. I have changed my mind. This is true not just of coaches but of anyone. By the reporter's logic, people who divorce are liars. But that's absurd. I can be perfectly sincere in committing to you, but change my mind thereafter and sue for divorce. It might be wrong for me to do this, but it's not wrong because it's a lie.

John Deigh is a “professor” of law at the University of Texas at Austin. (I put the word “professor” in quotation marks, since Deigh has no legal credentials. His training is in philosophy.) Deigh is the editor of Ethics, a prominent philosophical periodical. In the most recent issue, dated October 2006, he editorializes about the fallacy of deriving an “is” statement from an “ought” statement (not to be confused with the fallacy—known as Hume’s Law—of deriving an “ought” statement from an “is” statement). Deigh gives two illustrations of the fallacy. The first concerns “Stalin’s efforts at falsifying the photographic record of Russia’s October revolution and the early history of the Soviet Union” (page 2). The second concerns the war in Iraq. Let me reproduce the two paragraphs about the war in Iraq:

The Soviet Union was of course a totalitarian regime. Its rulers had vast power over their subjects. Nothing like this sort of propaganda campaign, it is easy to think, is imaginable in modern liberal democracies. Yet the propaganda campaign undertaken by President Bush and his administration in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and during the subsequent occupation of that country should make us think twice. It too was propelled by the fallacy of deriving ‘is’ from ‘ought’. And it too used false and misleading representations of fact to gain support for its architects’ ends. Thus Bush and the leading members of his administration loudly denounced the Iraqi government as an evil regime whose malignancy not only threatened to destabilize the Middle East but placed the Western world in grave peril as well. A regime this wicked ought to be in league with the most diabolical enemies of the West, plotting our destruction, and it ought to be amassing weapons of such destructive power as to give it a real chance of succeeding in these plots. So there followed from the Bush administration a steady stream of alarming, now discredited statements about the regime’s ties to al-Qaeda terrorists, its active program for developing nuclear arms, and its stockpiling of huge stores of chemical and biological weapons. In the words of the head of British intelligence, reporting in the secret Downing Street memo of July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration’s prewar strategy, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” One could not give a better description of the fallacy.

The result has been a major human disaster, whether one measures it by the common conservative estimate of nearly 50,000 civilian Iraqi deaths since the invasion or by the radical estimate published this month in the Lancet of over 600,000 civilian Iraqi deaths or by something in between. And while the death toll in any case is dwarfed by that of Stalin’s tyranny, such comparisons will bring no comfort to the Iraqi people or to the many families of soldiers who have died in the war or have returned home horribly and permanently maimed. A human disaster of this magnitude calls for investigation into its causes. Has it been due to undemocratic features of America’s political institutions? Was it by exploiting them at an opportune time that a determined clique of government officials was able to grab the levers of power and push through policies of unnecessary war and conquest? Or should we conclude that the institutions of liberal democracy themselves have become less reliable safeguards against such efforts than we thought? These are questions for political scientists and perhaps eventually historians. For philosophers the disaster does not appear to have generated new questions for study. Our discipline’s research is not as responsive to current events. But we are not isolated from them. And one thing we can do is to acquaint our students with the fallacy of deriving ‘is’ from ‘ought’, to alert them to the ease with which it is committed, particularly in government propaganda. (pages 2-4; footnotes omitted)

My first reaction upon reading Deigh’s editorial was that it’s a paranoid rant that has no place in a serious philosophical publication. It might be fit for a blog, or even a newspaper op-ed column, but it’s not appropriate for a scholarly organ. My second reaction was that my first reaction was uncharitable. So let’s put the best spin on Deigh’s editorial, even if he doesn’t put the best spin on the Bush administration’s reasoning, for he claims to be making a serious philosophical point. Did President Bush commit the fallacy of deriving an “is” statement from an “ought” statement?

I don’t see it. Deigh refers to a “propaganda campaign” undertaken by the Bush administration. But he doesn’t support this claim. He says the Bush administration used “false and misleading representations of fact to gain support for its architects’ ends.” The implication is that lies were told. But a lie is not merely a false statement; it is a false statement uttered with intent to deceive. If Deigh believes that President Bush lied, then, given the seriousness of the charge, he has an obligation to supply the false statement together with evidence that, at the time it was uttered, it was known by President Bush to be false. Furthermore, he must adduce evidence that President Bush uttered it with the intent to deceive. That one or more of President Bush’s factual claims was false, or turned out to be false, doesn’t make it a lie; nor does it make it propaganda. In short, Deigh makes a number of wild and unsupported assertions. We teach our students not to do that sort of thing. Indeed, we grade their term papers down when they do.

Deigh next complains that President Bush described the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein as an “evil regime.” Was it not an evil regime, by any reasonable standard? How many thousands of people did Hussein have murdered, tortured, raped, and mutilated? How many people did he terrorize, and for how long? Does Deigh deny that it was an evil regime? If it was an evil regime, what is wrong with saying so and acting accordingly? And keep in mind that President Bush did not have to speculate about Hussein having evil intentions toward the United States. There was plenty of evidence that he did, including Hussein’s own statements over a period of many years. As for President Bush’s belief that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, this wasn’t something that the president cooked up for propaganda purposes. Almost everyone in American government, including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry, believed it. Deigh has to show not that the belief was false, for there can be justified false beliefs, but that it was unjustified or unreasonable. He goes no way toward doing this. Deigh’s discussion of President Bush’s beliefs, decisions, arguments, and actions is uncharitable in the extreme—to the point where Deigh’s honesty must be called into question. There is a lesson here for students of philosophy, but it’s not the one Deigh supposes.

As for the Iraq war being a “disaster,” that requires both elaboration and argumentation. Calling it a disaster several times does not make it a disaster. (Students, take note.) Yes, people have died in Iraq since the invasion. Lots of them, on both sides. But people die in every war. Does that make every war unjustified? How many people died fighting Hitler? If Deigh believes that the war in Iraq was unjustified, he must make his case. He must state his principle of just war and apply it to Iraq. He doesn’t. He simply assumes that the war was unjustified and goes on to “explain” why it occurred. That’s called begging the question. Students should take note. That Deigh’s audience (professional philosophers) overwhelmingly believes that the war was unjustified is neither here nor there. Is he merely preaching to the choir? What would be the point of that? He should do what philosophers routinely do, or profess to do, which is to try to persuade those whose minds are not already made up. But this would require more than the three pages he devotes to the topic, and it would require a lot less manipulative rhetoric. Deigh’s editorial is drive-by philosophy. No wonder philosophers get no respect!

Deigh compounds his problem by trying to explain how the “disaster” came about. Doesn’t that have the cart before the horse? First he must establish that there has been a disaster (by what standard?); then he must explain (in a plausible way) how it occurred, so that similar disasters can be prevented or averted. Suppose we used Deigh’s technique on Deigh’s editorial. Suppose we assumed, without argument, that Deigh published a scurrilous, poorly reasoned editorial, and then set about to explain how it could have been published in a journal as prestigious as Ethics. We might say that since Deigh is its editor, nobody had the power or the courage to stand up to him, or to tell him that his editorial is nothing more than a paranoid rant. Or perhaps we would explain it in terms of the left-wing bias of the academy. Everyone to whom Deigh showed the editorial, we might speculate, shared his values, so he got no disinterested feedback. Or maybe it’s just a case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. And so on. I don’t think Deigh would appreciate having his editorial dismissed in this way. So why does he dismiss the arguments of the Bush administration in this way? President Bush made a multi-pronged case for invading Iraq—before he invaded. Other people, including serious scholars, have made a case for war. Deigh ignores these arguments. This, I assure you, is not in keeping with philosophical practice. It is, in fact, a disgrace.

I’ve been teaching logic for almost a quarter of a century. Nothing in Deigh’s editorial convinces me that President Bush committed the fallacy of deriving an “is” statement from an “ought” statement. If anyone has committed any fallacies, it is Deigh. He’s lucky he’s not my student. If I were grading his editorial, it would receive a D.

Addendum: If you came here from Brian Leiter’s blog, see here.

Why do we say “dependent on,” but not “independent on”? We say “independent of.” Is this just a quirk of language, or is there something substantive going on? Can one always replace “independent of” with “not dependent on,” without changing the meaning? If not, then there’s a substantive (if subtle) difference between the two expressions. To use a rhetorical device of Wittgenstein’s, what, if anything, is left over when you subtract “not dependent on” from “independent of”? There seems to be a residue; but what is it?

Here.

To the Editor:

Re “Heady Days for Makers of Weapons” (Business Day, Dec. 26):

If our legislators won’t act to set limits on our soaring defense budget, then we as citizens must demand that they do.

Knowing that our soldiers in Iraq do not get the equipment they need, and that billions of dollars continue to pay for anachronistic cold war weapons, we do not expect our new Congress simply to knuckle under to the defense contractors as they have in the past.

Our representatives have to learn that the citizenry doesn’t see it as being “soft on defense” when they restrict the enormous profits of the weapons industries, cut unnecessary weapons programs and ensure that the people who actually fight our wars get the protection they deserve.

Sayre Sheldon
Natick, Mass., Dec. 26, 2006

Here is Peg Kaplan's latest post—from frigid Minnesota. Thanks for the Christmas greetings, Peg. Where have you been for the past five days?

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

If the Iraqis had any sense, they'd put Saddam Hussein's hanging on pay per view. Imagine the money they'd rake in! The money could be used to compensate Hussein's victims.

Addendum: Has anyone noticed the oddity of saying that Saddam Hussein (or anyone else) was executed? To execute, literally, is to follow (or carry) out. Executives, whether in business or in government, are those who are charged with carrying out (implementing) policies, laws, or programs. The executive virtues are those virtues, such as decisiveness and leadership, that are essential to, or that facilitate, the carrying out of policies, laws, or programs. Some people have these virtues; some don't—which is why not everyone would make a good executive. (I, for instance, would not.) What we're doing in capital punishment is executing (i.e., carrying out) a sentence. "Executing X" is therefore shorthand for "executing X's death sentence." Perhaps we use "execute" because it's milder than (i.e., a euphemism for) "kill" or "put to death." Many people are squeamish about killing, even when it's justified. What we should say is that Hussein was punished by death. That both states the ground of the killing (namely, punishment) and describes the kind of punishment it is (namely, capital).

Addendum 2: Michelle Malkin has just the right slogan for Hussein's death: "Sic semper tyrannis" (thus always to tyrants). Does anyone know which assassin shouted this?

It's almost time for your New Year's resolutions to take effect. You might want to read this before you make them. I'd be interested in hearing what your resolutions are, if you'd care to share them in the comments section. Me? My only resolution is to continue to kick leftist ass. In philosophical terms, I will (1) expose inconsistencies in leftist thought; (2) identify fallacies in leftist reasoning; and (3) show where, why, and how leftists play fast and loose with the truth. I hope you join me in this noble crusade. I may have an advantage over you, however. I used to be a leftist. I know how leftists think, what they're trying to accomplish (and why), and which rhetorical and other tricks they use to achieve their nefarious goals.

Here.

To the Editor:

“Arizona Displaces Nevada as Fastest-Growing State” (news article, Dec. 22) depicts the economic pull driving growth in urban Arizona.

My family and I recently spent nearly a decade in Tempe, Ariz. One of Arizona’s economic draws, low property taxes, is a myth when you consider that outside affluent areas most schools are mediocre at best. We paid dearly for private schooling.

Here in Trumansburg, N.Y., we pay substantially higher property taxes, but the public school is excellent. Add the clean air, low crime, and a sense of culture and community that comes from living in a long-established place, and we are glad to have migrated from Arizona.

David Turkon
Trumansburg, N.Y., Dec. 22, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: I, too, am glad that David Turkon and his family migrated from Arizona.

I have yet to see an argument against capital punishment that is not also an argument against punishment. Unless you're an anarchist, that will be unacceptable. Here is a perfect example. The New York Times concludes its rambling editorial opinion as follows: "Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won’t either." The argument would appear to go as follows:

1. Executing Saddam Hussein won't create a new and better Iraq.
Therefore,
2. Saddam Hussein ought not to be executed.

Notice: Imprisoning Hussein won't create a new and better Iraq, either. Therefore, by the Times's logic, Hussein ought not to be imprisoned. Plug in any sort of punishment—corporal, pecuniary, reputational—and you get the same result. So Hussein ought not to be punished! The editorial board of the Times needs a refresher course in critical thinking.

Addendum: I hope the Times isn't implying that only the consequences of punishment are relevant to its justification. We punish people because of what they did, not because good will come of it. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the consequences of punishing Hussein are relevant to its justification. We must identify and assess all consequences, good and bad, both short-run and long-run, on people's character, motives, and actions. For example, what effect will executing Hussein have on other tyrants? Will they be deterred from doing to their people what Hussein did to his? The Times does nothing to show that the overall consequences of executing Hussein will be bad.

Addendum 2: For some reason, the Iraqis aren't listening to the New York Times. Mindy Hutchison sent a link to this.

My daily newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, carried this essay by a UC-Berkeley doctoral student. Let's deconstruct it:

When I first heard about Mel Gibson's new film, "Apocalypto," I was curious. As someone who is Mexican Indian, I was struck by Gibson's investment in a project about an ancient Mesoamerican civilization.

The film is visually stunning with its reconstruction of Mayan architecture. And it casts mostly Native American actors who speak in the Mayan Yucatec language. But the plot fills me with disgust, rage and indignation.

What is so offensive is the film's violence. Gibson shows a head falling from the steps of the central Mayan pyramid. He also shows several scenes of sharp obsidian blades plunging into human flesh to extract pulsating hearts.

This nonstop carnage portrays the Mayans as bloodthirsty savages, a stereotype that is painfully familiar to Native people.

Whether it's a stereotype depends on whether the events depicted occurred. Perhaps Mayans were bloodthirsty savages. Perhaps heads did roll. Perhaps hearts were extracted.

While sacrifice was an important and mostly symbolic part of Aztec and Mayan spirituality, many of the accounts given by Spanish soldiers and priests were grossly exaggerated. Archeologists have been unable to find the mass numbers of sacrifices that Spanish accounts claimed.

So sacrifice was part of Mayan culture, indeed an "important" part, but it was "mostly symbolic." Do you suppose it mattered to the sacrificial victims that their deaths were (merely) symbolic? Would it matter to you? (And by the way, isn't sacrifice by definition symbolic? Is something tangible gained by it?) The author's complaint seems to be that there weren't as many sacrifices as has been claimed. That reminds me of the joke about the prostitute. A woman offers herself to a man for $100. The man makes a counteroffer of $25. "What sort of woman do you think I am?" she screams in outrage. The man replies, "We've already established that; now we're dickering over the price."

What's more, scholars who study the art of warfare of Mesoamerican societies, like the Mayans and the Aztecs, acknowledge that these civilizations followed strict rules of war. While warrior societies did set out to find captives, they did not raid villages or burn houses or rape women or dispose of children. Such cowardly acts would have brought them shame and dishonor.

So they were depraved enough to enslave and sacrifice innocent people, but not utterly depraved. This is like defending Hitler on the ground that he could have done worse than he did; after all, he didn't kill everyone. And why is it cowardly to "raid villages or burn houses or rape women or dispose of children" but not to enslave and sacrifice innocent people? What a strange moral code!

The Mayans were one of the greatest civilizations in the Americas, as Gibson's film rightly acknowledges. They were advanced in astronomy, architecture, the arts and mathematics. They gave the world the concept of zero, came up with the most advanced writing system in the Western Hemisphere and designed a calendar far more accurate than the Gregorian one we live by today.

Unfortunately, instead of paying tribute to these contributions from Mayan society, Gibson chose to highlight only sacrifice.

Wait. You say that Gibson "rightly acknowledges" the greatness of Mayan civilization, but immediately criticize him for not "paying tribute" to particular contributions. What exactly did you want him to do, make a documentary? Why do I think that if Gibson had done all those other things, you would still criticize him for depicting violence—violence that you admit occurred?

But if carnage was what Gibson was after, why not focus on the mass genocide of Mayans during the Spanish Conquest?

Or the contemporary genocide Mayans suffered during the Central American civil wars of the 1980s, which the U.S. government helped fuel?

Quick answer: Because there are plenty of leftists, both in and out of the academy, already focusing on these things. Gibson is telling the rest of the story. You know, fair and balanced.

At a time when the portrayals of Native Americans in the mainstream media are scarce, Gibson chose to depict the Mayans as exotic, violent and ultimately disposable. He has done Native people no favor.

Is it Gibson's job—anyone's job—to portray Mayans in the best light? And by your own admission, they were a violent people. They kidnapped, enslaved, and murdered. For symbolic purposes, of course.

Here.

Two days ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all-time high: 12,510.57. (It fell a bit yesterday.) Maybe the flourishing of the stock market is unrelated to George W. Bush's presidency, but don't you just know that if the stock market were at an all-time low, it would be President Bush's fault—and further proof of his incompetence? By the way, I don't read Paul Krugman's New York Times column any longer, since it's not worth the paper it's not written on, but it must kill him that the economy is doing so well. To add injury to insult, Krugman is probably making a killing in the stock market under President Bush. Ah, the cognitive dissonance of being a Bush-hater.

I'm doing great in my bowl picks so far. Not! See here.

Hi, great blog!

I have a blog on amusing Wal-Mart news, and I think you might be interested in a post I have today. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release today calling on Wal-Mart to pull a Christian video game from its shelves because it promotes "religious intolerance."

But did CAIR have anything at all to say about a video game released earlier in the year by the Global Islamic Media Front that lets players kill Christians and take shots at our president? Of course not!

Anyway, link below. I hope you enjoy it. Keep up the good work!

Phil Van Treuren
The Walmart Files

Gerald Ford hasn’t been dead two days, and already his words are being distorted for political gain by opponents of President Bush such as Chris Matthews and Bob Woodward. “What words?” you ask. Unfortunately, all we have to date are cherry-picked passages from an interview by Woodward. I’m going to quote a few paragraphs from Woodward’s Washington Post column of this date, followed by my comments. Here goes:

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. “I don’t think I would have gone to war,” he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford’s own administration.

Compare what Ford is quoted as saying with how Woodward characterizes it. That Ford would not have gone to war in Iraq does not imply that he thought the war was “not justified,” much less that it was in fact not justified. You can be sure that if Ford had said that the war was unjustified, Woodward would have quoted it.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford “very strongly” disagreed with the current president’s justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney—Ford’s White House chief of staff—and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford’s chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

Again, Ford’s doing something differently does not imply that he thought the war unjustified.

“Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction,” Ford said. “And now, I’ve never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do.”

Woodward needs a course in critical thinking as well as a course in reading comprehension. First, there’s a difference between an action and its justification. Second, there can be more than one justification for a given action. I can abstain from meat for several reasons, including concern for animals, concern for the environment, and my health. Third, if there is more than one justification for a given action, one or more of them can be stated or emphasized while the others are left unstated or unemphasized. It’s pretty clear that the “big mistake” to which Ford refers was not going to war but emphasizing only one of the war’s justifications. In other words, the war was not sold properly to the American people. That hurt President Bush, and indirectly the interests of the nation. He should have emphasized several justifications, or all of them, not just one, for when it transpired that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the president’s critics had a field day.

In a conversation that veered between the current realities of a war in the Middle East and the old complexities of the war in Vietnam whose bitter end he presided over as president, Ford took issue with the notion of the United States entering a conflict in service of the idea of spreading democracy.

“Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people,” Ford said, referring to Bush’s assertion that the United States has a “duty to free people.” But the former president said he was skeptical “whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what’s in our national interest.” He added: “And I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.”

Ford had a policy disagreement with President Bush. They have different visions of the role of the United States in world affairs. This is a far cry from Ford’s thinking the invasion of Iraq was unjustified. And who is to say that Ford would have come to the same conclusion had he had the information about national security that was (and is) available to President Bush?

The Ford interview—and a subsequent lengthy conversation in 2005—took place for a future book project, though he said his comments could be published at any time after his death. In the sessions, Ford fondly recalled his close working relationship with key Bush advisers Cheney and Rumsfeld while expressing concern about the policies they pursued in more recent years.

“He was an excellent chief of staff. First class,” Ford said. “But I think Cheney has become much more pugnacious” as vice president. He said he agreed with former secretary of state Colin L. Powell’s assertion that Cheney developed a “fever” about the threat of terrorism and Iraq. “I think that’s probably true.”

This has nothing to do with the justification for the war. At most, it’s an expression of regret that Vice President Cheney has a different policy preference, or that he changed. I hope to God he changed. A little thing called 9/11 might induce a high-ranking public official to take threats of terrorism more seriously.

Describing his own preferred policy toward Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Ford said he would not have gone to war, based on the publicly available information at the time, and would have worked harder to find an alternative. “I don’t think, if I had been president, on the basis of the facts as I saw them publicly,” he said, “I don’t think I would have ordered the Iraq war. I would have maximized our effort through sanctions, through restrictions, whatever, to find another answer.”

Once again, this has nothing to do with whether the war was justified. All Ford is saying is that he would have done things differently, or waited longer. It’s unbelievable how Woodward has twisted the former president’s words, putting the very worst spin on them to make President Bush look bad. And you wonder why journalists are so lightly regarded? I want to read the entire interview with President Ford, not just the parts that Woodward cherry-picked as part of a partisan agenda.

How sad, that we have gone from Johnny Unitas to Terrell Owens. See here.

Today's Dallas Morning News has the following headline (in the sports section): "Auburn's roster has but one proud Texan." I wonder why the other Texans aren't proud.

Wow. Does this site ever bring back memories!

Here.

In discussing miracles, we must be careful not to conflate two questions: first, “What is a miracle?”; and second, “What attitude should one take toward putative miracles?” The former is a logical (or ontological) question; the latter is an epistemological (or epistemic) question. The latter, but not the former, is normative in nature, as indicated by the word “should.” That is to say, it presupposes a norm—which might not be universally shared—about attitude formation. (Epistemology is the normative study of belief, just as ethics is the normative study of action.)

Another way to put the difference between the two questions is that the first concerns identity conditions for miracles, while the latter concerns identification conditions. Compare the concept of a person. It’s one thing (although hardly an easy thing) to state the necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood; it’s quite another to state the means by which we identify persons in practice. Can there be a disembodied person? If so, how would we identify him or her? Perhaps bodies are inessential to personhood, but useful or even necessary as a means of identification.

A miracle, strictly so called, is a violation of a law of nature via the intervention of a supernatural agent (which includes, but is not limited to, deities). Atheists such as David Hume and theists such as Richard Swinburne share this understanding. It is neutral as to (1) whether there are any miracles, (2) whether we can know that there are miracles, and (3) whether it is ever reasonable to believe that a miracle occurred.

Logically, there are three things one can say about a putative miracle:

1. The event in question did not (in fact) occur.
2. The event occurred, but did not violate a law of nature.
3. The event occurred and violated a law of nature.

Hume argued, in effect, that it is always more reasonable to believe the disjunction of 1 and 2 than 3. Thus, it is never reasonable to believe that a miracle occurred. Swinburne denies Hume’s claim. He maintains that it is not always more reasonable to believe the disjunction of 1 and 2 than 3, i.e., that it is sometimes reasonable to believe that a miracle occurred.

To the Editor:

Re “Bush-Watchers Wonder How He Copes With Stress” (news article, Dec. 25):

How are wounded veterans, their parents, spouses, children and other loved ones coping with stress? To whom do they turn for solace?

And the survivors of those killed in action in President Bush’s war, how are they coping? How are they faring? Why do they remain so invisible while we consider, with a startling degree of sympathy, the reactions of the man responsible for this debacle?

Mary A. Ellis
Bloomington, Ind., Dec. 25, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: This woman suffers from BDS.

Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, continues his fine blogging. I visit his blog every day. Do you? Check out The Progressive Lite Bible. It's hilarious. By the way, someone please explain to me what "moral relativism" means in popular discourse. In my Ethics courses, I teach the metaethical doctrine known as relativism, but it bears little or no relation to the "moral relativism" certain people are accused of subscribing to or promulgating.

Here.

Keith:

You say reasonably: "In the strict sense, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature via the intervention of a supernatural agent." I wonder whether in your lectures on this topic you dealt with what seems to me to be an epistemological problem associated with a belief that there are miracles in this sense. The problem is that the notion might be contradictory.

Let us suppose that there is an entailment from some TRUE law of nature that such and such, say that the amount of energy in some portion of substance is less than X energy units. And suppose by miracle, much more than X energy units say ten million times as much is derived from some portion.

I guess this would qualify as a miracle, e.g. maybe one could run every power station in America on part of one pound of balsa wood.

So now the question . . . were this to happen, how could one IN PRINCIPLE distinguish such a situation from the banal one where a putative law of nature is simply falsified by a bona fide counterexample? How could one, in the face of the above situation, not rationally conclude that the putative laws of nature just weren't true? That is, what kind of laws of nature could entail P, face an instance of a state of affairs instantiating not-P and still be TRUE?? Can miracles refute the principles of logic and keep P and not-P both true? That is, does not this notion of miracle threaten the very notion of truth?

Best, and Happy New Year

Paul

He [Anselm] shocked his fellow monks at a colloquy one day when he told them that he would rather God condemn him to hell, even if he had committed no sins, than that he be allowed into heaven with the soil of sin still staining his soul.

(Alyssa Lyra Pitstick and Edward T. Oakes, "Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy: An Exchange," First Things [December 2006]: 25-32, at 31)

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Compare my statement, which I have made many times in all sincerity, that I would rather my beloved Detroit Tigers not make it to the World Series at all (indeed, that they finish in last place in their division) than that they make it to the World Series and lose. I get the same shocked reaction from baseball fans that Anselm got from his fellow monks!

See here.

Julio Franco. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)

To the Editor:

Rather than luring or conscripting more young people into the military and spending incomprehensible amounts of money to arm them, we should do what is right and rational: sit down with our “enemies,” without preconditions, and talk.

The belief that a strong military can protect us is delusional. The true enemies facing us—religious fundamentalism, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases, poverty, unsustainable methods of energy and agriculture production and violence—are global issues. There will be no military solutions to any of them.

The last thing the world needs is more soldiers sworn to kill for their dictators, theocrats, absolutists and commanders in chief.

Jeffery Blackwell
Delafield, Wis., Dec. 22, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Why the quotation marks around "enemies"?

Here.

If I’m not mistaken, former president Gerald Ford, who died yesterday at the age of 93, is the only president to have been born in the Great Lake State. That alone ties him to me. I was born in Lapeer, Michigan, on 7 April 1957. In November 1976, I was a rawboned kid of 19½ years. Just five years earlier, the 26th amendment to the United States Constitution had been ratified, giving 18-year-olds the right to vote. (Michigan ratified the amendment on 7 April 1971—my 14th birthday.) I was a political-science major at the University of Michigan-Flint, so I was excited about the presidential race between Ford and Jimmy Carter. I took my civic responsibility seriously. I wasn’t so deluded as to think that my vote would affect the outcome of the contest, for clearly it wouldn’t, but it had symbolic significance. Casting it meant that I was a citizen, a participant, an adult.

I don’t know how to describe my political views at the time. They were certainly not developed, as they are now. I guess you could say that I was a classical liberal in the Millian tradition. I opposed big government, whether of the Right or of the Left. I rejected both conservative attempts to legislate morality and progressive attempts to redistribute wealth. I decided to vote for Ford, not so much because I liked him (or his views), but because I despised the blatant religiosity of Carter. (I’ve been an atheist since I was old enough to have a concept of God.) It sickened me that Carter wore his faith on his sleeve. He sold himself to the American people as a Sunday-school teacher from Plains, Georgia. Ford, by contrast, seemed cosmopolitan, open-minded, and suave.

I was in college from August 1975 to May 1979. Ford was president from August 1974 to January 1977. At some point during his presidency, Ford came to my university to speak. I remember sitting in an auditorium with many other people. I remember Secret Service agents. I wish I knew the date (it must have been between August 1975 and January 1977), the occasion, and the topic of his speech, but alas, these things have receded into the mists of time. Perhaps Ford was on a campaign swing through the state, in which case it was probably during the fall of 1976.

As incredible as it may sound, given my opinionated nature, I don’t recall having strong feelings about Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. Truth be told, I don’t remember much about Watergate, even though I was 17 years old when Nixon resigned. My interest in politics developed during college. As for why I majored in political science, I think it was because someone told me that it was good preparation for law school, and my plan was to go to law school. I don’t regret studying political science, but I now know that philosophy would have been far better preparation for law school. I explain why in this document. Feel free to share your memories of President Ford in the comments section.

Addendum: Oops! Ford was born in Nebraska, not Michigan. But he (was) moved to Michigan at the age of two and grew up there. Close enough.

Addendum 2: Here is the New York Times obituary.

Here.

Kevin Stroup sent a link to this column by Walter Williams.

"Balls to the Wall" (1984).

See here.

Here is an interesting New York Times story about the intersection of politics and religion.

A similar, and possibly more repugnant position is held by all those who treat 'violence' as the ultimate sin. The football hooligan, the riot policeman and the political terrorist are all awarded the same shudder of distaste. At least sometimes one of these is engaged in voluntary and limited combat, one is responding to the initiation of violence in the interests of civil order, while the third is wilfully killing and maiming people to express his values, emotions or identity. Of anyone who equates the three, I feel entitled to say that he has no serious capacity for moral judgement.

(Lincoln Allison, Right Principles: A Conservative Philosophy of Politics [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984], 75)

To the Editor:

The compensation Goldman Sachs gives to its employees at the end of the year is a turnoff, any way you look at it. Henry Blodget argues that such a bonanza is provided by the unrestrained capitalism that prevails in this country, which he promotes as the best economic system on the planet.

I am from Sweden, a prosperous, pluralistic country where socialism and capitalism walk hand in hand, and where a liberal welfare system prevents unfortunate individuals from falling deep into poverty and hardship, while allowing talented and ambitious individuals to make themselves a fortune. Sweden consistently ranks among the top three countries in the world whether judged by level of democracy or economical competitiveness.

I think individuals and society as a whole are far better off with an economic system that does not have a huge polarity in wealth, such as between the homeless person and the Goldman employee on Broad Street.

Peter Hook
New York, Dec. 21, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: We look forward to your return to socialist utopia, Mr Hook.

Bernard Goldberg was a guest on The O’Reilly Factor yesterday. (I think it was a rerun.) He’s a former television executive, so he knows the journalism industry inside out. He made an interesting comparison last night between network newsrooms and the Ku Klux Klan. Just as Klan members take it for granted that blacks are inferior, and feel perfectly at ease in saying and implying as much when they’re together, journalists take it for granted that President Bush is an imbecile and don’t hesitate to express it. They also take it for granted that there should be a permissive abortion policy, that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, that capital punishment should be abolished, that affirmative-action programs are defensible, and so on.

Fish, Goldberg said, don’t know they’re wet, since they’re always wet. They have nothing with which to compare wetness, or to contrast with it. By the same token, journalists don’t know they’re outside the mainstream of American thought, since they’re always on the fringes with other leftists. In gatherings of journalists, no leftist belief needs to be defended by argument or supported by evidence. What would be the point? Nobody disagrees with you. You would be preaching to the converted, and hence wasting everyone’s time.

I don’t know as much about television newsrooms as Goldberg, but I know academia. I went off to college in the fall of 1975. I’ve been there ever since (although I did other things besides, such as practice law). Academic settings are very much like the Klan meetings Goldberg describes. I know this not just as someone who has been in academia for more than three decades, but as someone who used to participate in the conservative-bashing that is so pervasive on college campuses. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in a committee meeting with professors from other schools or departments and heard someone make a disparaging remark (or tell a mean-spirited joke) about President Bush or some other conservative. Think about it. It’s a gathering of several people of different races, sexes, religions, and backgrounds, but it’s taken for granted that everyone is a leftist. It would take a person of unusual courage to stand up to such talk—assuming, of course, that there was someone present who didn’t share the prevailing sentiment.

Here’s what puzzles me—and I mean this seriously. Why would someone want to be in a setting where everyone thinks alike, or has the same values? What could you possibly learn in such a setting? Leftists love to talk about diversity. It has become their mantra. They say it enhances the intellectual experience. But the sort of diversity they’re talking about is physical: skin color, sex, sexuality, disability status. What scholars, qua scholars, should care about is intellectual diversity, i.e., diverse ideas, values, methods, frameworks. Many academic settings are little more than echo chambers. The same ideas get bounced around ad nauseam.

I don’t know about you, but I like different types of music. I would get bored stiff listening to only heavy metal music, or only jazz, or only new age, or only classical. My music collection is eclectic. Intellectually, I crave diversity. It’s why I subscribe to, and read every word of, First Things. Most of the essays in this periodical presuppose the existence of God. I’m an atheist. But I learn something from every essay I read. I want to understand Christianity thoroughly, as if from the inside. I want to understand every religion, every political morality, every normative ethical theory, every scientific theory, and every legal and economic theory. Isn’t that what being an academic is all about? Aren’t we truth-seekers? Isn’t it our mission to expand human knowledge? How can you get the truth, and thereby expand knowledge, if you arbitrarily limit yourself to one intellectual framework or one set of values?

Professors cheat themselves by hiring only like-minded people. They close off avenues to growth, insight, and edification—the very things we purport to teach our students. One wonders why such people went into academia in the first place. They should have joined a political party or become an adherent of a religion, where it’s understood that everyone thinks alike. But it’s worse than that: They also cheat their students, who would benefit beyond measure from having intellectual and evaluative diversity in the ranks of their instructors and mentors. What we have today, sad to say, is little more than brainwashing by leftist professors. If I were a student, I’d be outraged by this dereliction of pedagogical duty—and that would be so even if I were disposed to leftism. I didn’t go to college to become someone’s dupe. I went to become an independent thinker.

Here.

Here.

If I weren't so damned anal-retentive, I'd start blogging on my new site today instead of waiting for the new year. It just seems fitting to start a new blog on the first day of a new year. Six more days! Now is your chance to comment on the new blog's appearance. What do you like and not like about it? The font, at least, is the same: Bookman Old Style. As you can see, I've imported only two months' worth of posts: November 2003 and November 2006. At the end of December, I'll import the posts of December 2003 and December 2006. Each month thereafter, I'll import another month's posts. Eventually, as I said the other day, the new blog will be a superset of the old blog, i.e., it will contain everything the old blog contains and more. I plan to keep AnalPhilosopher in existence, even though it means continuing to pay for it. If I let it die, all the links will go bad, and what's a blog without links?

If you visit my blog on a regular basis, you probably have at least some interest in philosophy (or in how philosophers analyze things). Here is a blog by another philosophy professor, Stephen Parise. I have added it to the blogroll.

Before turning off my computer for the day, I decided to play the lottery. So to speak. I typed "Christmas Borneo" into Google. I don't even know where Borneo is. I was shocked to get more than a million hits. This blog was near the top.

I never thought I'd see the day when someone defends flip-flopping. See here. What's next, a defense of betrayal? Cowardice? Weakness? Recklessness?

I don't know where Mark Spahn finds these things, but I'm glad he does. My favorite is the "tramp stamp."

It could be Hillary the harpy versus Rudy the psycho in 2008. Aren't we lucky? See here.

Read this. The tenor of the story is that there's something wrong with President Bush because he won't publicly acknowledge that things aren't going well in Iraq. But wouldn't it be self-defeating for the leader of our country—its commander in chief—to gnash his teeth in public? His job is to lead and inspire. If he expressed ambivalence about the war, it would be lost in a heartbeat. For us to have any chance to win, he must remain firm and strong. Leftists say that he's being insincere, even duplicitous. They want him to pour his guts out, to admit to doubts, to wonder aloud whether he did the right thing by invading Iraq. In short, they want Jimmy Carter. Leftists don't understand leadership, perhaps because it's been so long since they had power. President Bush is doing what he believes right, and he was elected twice to lead this nation. Those who don't like his decisions or his leadership style can elect someone more to their liking in 2008.

I recently lectured on the concept of miracle in my Philosophy of Religion course. There's both a loose and a strict sense of the word "miracle." In the loose sense, a miracle is an unexpected, beneficial event. (Few people would call a detrimental event, however unexpected, a miracle. Imagine someone describing the Asian tsunami as a miracle.) In the strict sense, a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature via the intervention of a supernatural agent. In this New York Times story, famed heart surgeon Michael DeBakey describes his recent successful heart surgery as a "miracle." He's obviously using the term in the loose sense, since his recovery from surgery is not a violation of the laws of nature. What he means by "It is a miracle" is something like, "Wow; at 97 years of age, I didn't expect to survive this surgery; I'm glad I did!"

I would not wish to be understood as devaluing the sturdy self-reliance and freedom-loving individualism that is so much a part of American culture. The concern I have expressed here is that the ascendancy of law as a carrier of common values has promoted the spread of hyper-libertarian, ultra-individualist ideas that can undermine the very conditions that are essential for the maintenance of a free republic.

(Mary Ann Glendon, “Looking for ‘Persons’ in the Law,” First Things [December 2006]: 19-24, at 24)

Here.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good day!

To the Editor:

Whenever we have a major disaster, we become aware of the plight of the poor. Unfortunately, our concern is short-lived.

Thirty-seven million Americans are living below the official poverty level. They are the invisible, dismissed with brief public statements of concern, only to be forgotten again.

I find it hard to believe that we can talk about building a permanent base on the moon but can’t find a solution to poverty. I believe that if we put our vast resources to better use we can end poverty.

The preamble to the Constitution speaks of promoting the general welfare. Let us begin by guaranteeing every American a job with a living wage.

Lenny Krosinsky
Albuquerque, Dec. 21, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: How many people do you propose to employ, Lenny?

Here is Mylan Engel's latest post.

Like beauty, messiness is in the eye of the beholder. See here. I'm not the least bit troubled by dirt, grime, dust, or cobwebs, but I cannot tolerate household disorder. Everything must be in its place. How about you?

Addendum: Shelbie, my three-year-old canine companion, has several toys, including a cloth tug toy. At least once a day, I pick it up off the floor and put it on the fireplace bricks with her other toys. Within minutes, it's back on the floor. Sometimes she watches me put it on the bricks, waits a few seconds, and goes to get it. I'm serious!

In some people's minds 'racism' has become the single great sin which dwarfs all others. It includes many different kinds of action and attitude: it includes the man who dislikes people of a different race and the one who has a set of values and beliefs such that people of a different race are 'inferior' in some respect, alongside the man who attacks the houses and persons of people of different races as well as those who run extermination camps. This is a dangerous trivialisation of morality; people should be judged by what they do, not by what they feel and believe. There are many worse sins than 'racism', in its passive aspect: to equate a failure to cope with immigration with participation in racial extermination is both to blow a normal human reaction out of proportion, and thus to set an unattainable standard, and to trivialise something appalling.

(Lincoln Allison, Right Principles: A Conservative Philosophy of Politics [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984], 75)

"Shattered Dreams" (1987).

I don't know of any issue about which there is more intellectual dishonesty than wage parity. Over and over, you hear that women earn X% of what men earn, but seldom do you get specifics. Seldom is the comparison class made explicit. Do men and women make similar choices in the workplace? If not, then why would one expect them to earn the same salary? Read this. Eight paragraphs into the story, you get an acknowledgment that something besides male oppression may account for the pay disparity:

The reasons for the stagnation are complicated and appear to include both discrimination and women's own choices. The number of women staying home with young children has risen recently, according to the Labor Department; the increase has been sharpest among highly educated mothers, who might otherwise be earning high salaries. The pace at which women are flowing into highly paid fields also appears to have slowed.

Feminism is about giving women choices. It is not about giving women choices without consequences. If a woman wants time with her children, she's not going to earn as much as a man who doesn't; nor should she. If a woman wants a flexible schedule, or one without travel, she's not going to earn as much as a man who doesn't; nor should she. If a woman wants reduced responsibility, less stress, more contact with people, or less danger, she's not going to earn as much as a man who doesn't; nor should she. The point is, you must compare similarly situated people, not just people who have the same academic credentials. Otherwise you're talking nonsense—or spouting ideology.

Addendum: Here's what's weird about the story. The author repeatedly refers to a "pay gap," even while—even after—pointing out that it may well be the result of differential choices by men and women. Are we to assume that the author thinks men and women should be paid the same no matter which choices they make? One female doctor quoted in the story said that she went into dermatology because it brought her into contact with a broad range of people. She knew full well when she undertook that specialty that it paid less than other specialties. I quote:

"You get paid enough to support your family and enjoy life," said Dr. Kingsley, a lifelong Indiana resident. "Yeah, maybe I won't make a lot of money. But I'll be happy with my day-to-day job, and that's the reason I went into medicine—to help other people." She added: "I have seen people do it for the money, and they're not very happy."

The gender differences among medical specialties point to another aspect of the current pay gap. In earlier decades, the size of the gap was similar among middle-class and affluent workers. At times, it was actually smaller at the top.

Unbelievable! Is the author suggesting that this doctor, who made a perfectly voluntary choice to be a dermatologist, should be paid as much as a heart surgeon? That's idiotic. The market sorts things out. Sexism, like racism, is economically irrational. That alone ensures that there will be preciously little of it in the workplace.

To the Editor:

Re “The Grinch Delusion: An Atheist Can Believe in Christmas” (Week in Review, Dec. 17):

As an atheist, I find myself in agreement with both Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris on the celebration of Christmas, but with perhaps less reluctance.

As Mr. Dawkins pointed out, many of the traditions connected with Christmas have little to do with religion, and in fact they never have.

Many of the celebratory rituals, as well as the timing of the holiday, have their origins outside of, and may predate, the Christian commemoration of the birth of Jesus (the Romans celebrated Dec. 25 as the birth of the sun god long before Christianity appropriated the date) and centered on the hope of a better tomorrow, symbolized by the winter solstice.

These traditions, at their best, have much to do with celebrating human relationships and the enjoyment of the goods that this life has to offer. As such, I have no hesitation in embracing the holiday and joining with believers and nonbelievers alike to celebrate what we have in common rather than sitting out the season because of what we disagree on.

John Teehan
Brooklyn, Dec. 18, 2006
The writer is an associate professor of religion at Hofstra University.

Here.

Mark Spahn, a longtime reader of this blog, thinks it’s question-begging to use “who” (instead of “that”) to refer to animals. I agree. To beg a question, in the philosophical sense, is to assume what needs to be proved. The question (presumably) is whether animals have moral status, i.e., whether the interests of animals must be taken into account in our deliberations. Using “who” assumes that the being in question has moral status (even if not full-blown personhood).

But notice: Using “that” also begs the question, for it assumes, without argument, that the being in question lacks moral status. So both usages are question-begging. I don’t know of a neutral way to refer to animals: one that doesn’t make an assumption about moral status. Do you?

If both usages are question-begging, and if there’s no neutral reference, what’s wrong with choosing the usage that accords with one’s view of the moral status of animals? Surely it would be unreasonable to expect me—someone who believes that animals have moral status—to use a form of reference that assumes that they lack moral status! My usage reflects my belief. If you, dear reader, believe that animals lack moral status, then you will refer to them with “that.” I wonder, though, whether those who use “that” use it in reference to their dogs and cats. Suppose you’ve lived with a dog for 10 years. Wouldn’t it be odd to say such things as, “I have a dog that eats grasshoppers”? Compare: “I have a car that gets 25 miles per gallon.” Does your dog have the same moral status as your car? Are both of them mere objects?

Here.

Happily, in the United States, our practice is often better than our theory. But theoretical concepts can wreak havoc on good practices when they migrate from their proper context into everyday life. The American framers’ concept of the human person, though incomplete from a philosophical or anthropological point of view, was not inappropriate for the limited purpose of designing a federal framework within which civic life could flourish under conditions of ordered liberty. What needs to be kept in sight (but unfortunately is too often forgotten) is that the liberal principles enshrined in the United States’ founding documents were political principles that were never meant to serve as moral guides for all of social and private life. Those principles, with their encoded image of the free, self-determining individual, grounded important and lasting political achievements: the establishment of a republic with democratic elements, the protection of liberty, and the promotion of individual initiative.

(Mary Ann Glendon, “Looking for ‘Persons’ in the Law,” First Things [December 2006]: 19-24, at 23 [italics in original])

Mylan Engel has taken to blogging the way a vulture takes to a corpse: with relish! Here is his latest post.

To the Editor:

Re “Flunking Our Future,” by Maureen Dowd (column, Dec. 20):

Ms. Dowd has postulated that men are not necessary to get the work of the world done; and that should include the internecine, intraparty political battles that are as fierce as battles between competing political persuasions. And now we see that it’s not necessary to be a man to participate in these battles.

The power struggle between the next speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and Representative Jane Harman could be properly lambasted as self-defeating for the Democratic Party, which can be properly urged to resist the impulse to snatch defeat from victory’s jaws.

But to call Mrs. Pelosi’s differences with Ms. Harman a feminist “catfight” amplifies stereotypical anti-woman rhetoric. Such characterization not only demeans women, it also perpetuates the myth that a tough, strong woman is an unpleasant one, who can’t play well with other women.

From my personal experience, both of these women are intelligent, capable, pleasant and tough as nails. Their differences are as legitimate as those between men, which would have been accepted as merely part of the political theater.

Gloria Feldt
New York, Dec. 20, 2006

Note from AnalPhilosopher: Dowd and Feldt are having a catfight about the appropriateness of calling the Pelosi-Harman imbroglio a catfight. Don't you love it?

A former student wrote to me with holiday best wishes—and to say that he had Googled my name and found several sites devoted to hating me. “What’s going on?” he asked. I wrote back to tell him—only half-jokingly—that all powerful people are hated. Jefferson was hated. Lincoln was hated. Reagan and Thatcher were hated. Clinton was hated. George W. Bush is hated. These days, anyone who expresses opinions about public affairs or anything else is hated. The Internet simply makes hatred visible. I predicted some time back that eventually, everyone—including you—will have a hate site devoted to him or her. It will be a forum for jilted lovers, disgruntled students, spiteful employees, envious colleagues, and anyone else who dislikes you, your appearance, your behavior, your ideas, or your values. Won’t that be wonderful? Google a name and get all the dirt on that person.

What I find interesting is that nobody hated me—at least publicly—when I was a leftist. They loved me! It was only when I came out as a conservative that the vilification began. People who don’t know me personally, but who know that I’m conservative, feel perfectly justified in calling me names, attacking my character, belittling my work, even lying about me. As far as I’m concerned, that says more about them than about me, and it’s not flattering. In my experience, leftists are much more prone to hatred than are rightists. I don’t know why this is. If I had to speculate, I’d say that it’s because leftists have grand egalitarian visions to implement. They view conservatives such as me as impediments. This generates frustration, which leads to aggression. Hatred is a kind of aggression. The mere fact that I exist, with the values and beliefs I have, is an affront to leftism. That I defend those values and beliefs publicly, in columns and in my blog, is galling—and unforgivable. Truth be told, I like being the bane of leftists’ existence.

Do you think George W. Bush cares one iota that there are people out there who hate him? He’s a man of world-historical importance. He’s the most powerful person on the planet, and has been for almost six years. None of his assailants, including such prominent haters as Paul Krugman, has a millionth of his power. Obviously, I’m not as powerful as President Bush, or even Krugman, but I must have some power or I wouldn’t attract the creeps I do. Think about it. Wouldn’t it be the height of folly—indeed, proof of insanity—to devote attention, energy, money, or time to someone who is impotent? I love it, in a perverse sort of way, that there are people who hate me. It means that I loom large in their consciousness. It means that they attend to my every move and hang on my every word. Hate away, I say, but keep reading me. Who knows? You may learn something. As I said a while back, if you read me, I own you; and who—honestly—doesn’t want to own another human being?

Here.

Read this. The only people who want a draft are leftists. They don't want a draft because it's militarily necessary. They want it because it will rile up young people, especially on college campuses. They want protests, demonstrations, sit-ins, draft-card burnings, conscientious objection, and flights to Canada. It's all about nostalgia—about reliving the 60s.

Has anyone seen this movie? I highly recommend it.

Here is Peggy Noonan's latest column.

Here.

I have great news to report. Francis Beckwith, who is a brilliant young scholar and a fine gentleman, successfully appealed his adverse tenure decision at Baylor University. Brian Leiter, the academic thug, did everything he could to destroy Beckwith's promising career, for the sole reason that Beckwith is a conservative, but it was to no avail. See here for details. Congratulations, Frank! May your academic career be long, fulfilling, productive, and prosperous.

Here is an interesting New York Times story about population changes in the various states. I'm sorry to see that my former home, Arizona, is the fastest-growing state. The beautiful deserts will be destroyed eventually, especially if immigration remains uncontrolled. I left Tucson in August 1988. Already, houses were creeping up the mountains that ring the city. I haven't been to Tucson since 1991. I'm afraid I'd cry if I saw the changes. The state of my birth, Michigan, has been losing people. It's a beautiful state, with a rich history and wonderful people, but the winter weather is terrible. I can't believe most of my family remains there. As for my current home state, Texas, it, too, has been growing. Here are two paragraphs from the Times story:

In the one year covered by the latest estimates, from July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, Texas gained 579,275 residents, more people than live in either Boston or Washington. Nonetheless, the annual increase fell short of records set in California in the early 1980s.

In raw numbers, Texas gained more people than any other state—a quarter million more than second-ranked Florida, which was followed by California, Georgia and Arizona. More people moved to Texas from elsewhere in the United States than moved to any other state. Texas ranked second, between California and New York, in foreign immigration.

Leftists such as Brian Leiter love to sneer at Texans. (He must hate being stuck in this state—but who else would hire him, given his thuggishness?) They say our schools (including our public universities) are inadequately funded; that we don't spend money on mental health (or on health generally); that there are few protections for workers; that corporations have too much influence in Austin; and that the people are suffocatingly religious. Obviously, the people flocking to Texas from other states see things differently. To them, Texas is the land of opportunity, where hard work, discipline, initiative, creativity, and loyalty are rewarded, and where self-sufficiency is expected. Perhaps, come to think of it, that's what leftists hate about this state. It treats people like adults instead of like children.

To the Editor:

Orlando Patterson describes the belief held by some that “freedom is a natural part of the human condition.” Nothing could be further from the truth. If it were true, we could expect to find free societies spread throughout human history. We do not. Instead, what we find are every sort of tyrannical government from time immemorial.

Whether they were monarchies, theocracies, oligarchies, dictatorships or some combination, the human condition is far from naturally free. We are prone to repressive leadership that seeks power for its own pleasures. We form democratic governments to limit governmental power.

Individual and economic freedoms have been hard won by people who banded together to throw off the heavy yoke of kingly repression. Though the idea of freedom can spread, it cannot be spread through benign repression or well-intended military action.

No indeed, it is not God’s gift; it is the gift of previous generations to our descendants, for which we are only granted the honor of temporary guardianship.

John Taylor
La Habra, Calif., Dec. 19, 2006

As if tax rates aren't high enough, Paul Krugman* wants to take more money from people against their will and give it to others. Isn't that theft? Benevolent theft is still theft! If I break into Krugman's house to steal his valuables, then sell them and give the proceeds to the poor, I'm no less a thief than if I keep the proceeds myself. If Krugman and his fellow egalitarians want to help the poor, they should donate their wealth. Nobody is stopping them. Leave the rest of us, who aren't egalitarians, alone.

* "Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults" (Daniel Okrent, "13 Things I Meant to Write About but Ne