Meta-Philosophy

Moral Philosophy 101

Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post has a conundrum today, Dec. 18.

Barry Bonds' records are going to be asterisked because he was juiced on steroids when he hit all those home runs. Yet home run # 568 was off pitcher Kevin Brown, who was also juiced on steroids at the time. That leveled the playing field, so to speak.

Shouldn't the asterisks be removed from all records set by one steroid user against others?

The Ballad of Orpheus Quine

I will sing to you of Orpheus Quine, not the ancient Greek lyrist but his modern American counterpart. Orpheus Quine dared to love, not Eurydice (“wide-judging”), but Sophia (“wisdom”) herself. When Sophia languished under two heavy fetters—the Dogmas of Empiricism—he rescued her. When she was lost in the tortured labyrinth called The Ways of Paradox, he found her and her free. On sparkling summer days he chased her up the Tree of Logic, quoting and disquoting like a madman—but Orpheus Quine was hardly mad; he was a logician.

Now there were many other fetters on Sophia, and these were fetters which Orpheus Quine could not even see. There was the Fetter of Bivalence, which held that if you don’t get things wholly right you get them wholly wrong (so don’t say anything whatever unless it is perfectly certain to be true); the Fetter of Whimsical Problems, which held that there is no way to tell which issues are worth discussing and which are a waste of time (so you may say something, perfectly certain of course, about anything whatever); the Fetter of Reference, which held that talking about a thing doesn’t change that thing; and many others. These fetters were unseen by Orpheus Quine, but they weighed Sophia down. She slipped away beneath the earth, to the Underworld of the Philosophical Dead, where she was taken prisoner in the awful Palace of Night.

Orpheus Quine followed her without hesitation. For three days and nights he ran along the edge of mighty Ocean, until he came at last to a giant cave—the gaping mouth of the Underworld of the Philosophical Dead. He entered and followed the cavern down to the very center of the earth, where the rocks groaned and the dankness dripped and the fearsome doors of the Palace of Night yawned like a freshman in a Kant class.

The Palace of Night had originally been built by Parmenides; but like the rest of the Underworld, it was now ruled by a horrific creature with three heads on a dog’s body. One head was Hegel; one was Heidegger; and one was Sartre. A more awful creature for a logician to confront could not be imagined (not that Orpheus Quine had a lot of imagination; for as I say, he was a logician).

Orpheus demanded that the horrific creature release his dear Sophia; but all three heads snorted. “You push symbols,” said Hegel head—“what do you know of wisdom?” “Logic is technology,” said Heidegger head. “What do you know of wisdom?” Sartre head said nothing, for in truth it was not snorting but snoring, having fallen asleep on an overdose of antihistamines.

Orpheus Quine addressed the Two Wakeful Heads. “Wisdom is no stranger to logic,” he said; and when the Two Wakeful Heads snorted again, Orpheus Quine called for a blackboard and chalk.

You may say that the sounds of a Mozart are beautiful, and you may say that the colors of a Botticelli are lovely—but what, then, would you call the symbols of Orpheus Quine? The chalk smoked and whistled as his fingers raced around the blackboard, proving and proving and proving yet again. Frege and Goedel rose and fell; words and objects flashed past; variables were properly bound (O fortuna! Velut luna!); quantifiers dodged in and out of opaque contexts. When it was all over, Orpheus Quine had covered three blackboards with his theorems, and the Sun of Reason had begun to shine into the Underworld of the Philosophical Dead.

“You may take your Sophia,” said the Hegel head heatedly, and the Heidegger head nodded in bewildered exhaustion. “Only do it before the Frenchman wakes up.”

Hegel head continued: "Sophia will follow you to the surface of the earth, but you may not look back at her or speak to her until you have reached, not merely the surface, but the first human habitation. As soon as you come to a place where mortals live, suffer, and solve their problems, you may look upon your Sophia, and hear her wisdom. But not before.”

Pleased with this arrangement, and (I say again) with little imagination, Orpheus Quine began walking back upwards. On the path behind him he soon heard dainty feet—his Sophia! On and on they walked, until they came to the gaping entrance, and passed through. Once they were out in the open air it was harder to hear the delicate steps behind him and Orpheus Quine began to be disquieted. But still he walked on and on, and on.

In the quiet dusk of the third evening they found themselves walking in a warm drizzle along a beach. Fog was on all sides and the ocean stretched blankly into it, like a silver floor. Orpheus Quine was not sure where they were. In the three days since leaving the cave he had not seen a single human habitation. He began to fear that they had wandered away from mortal dwelling, and that if they kept going like this he would never be able to turn around and look upon dear Sophia. And now he could not even say for sure that he heard her in the sand—perhaps the gossamer footsteps behind him were only the rhythm of the waves….

He could stand it no longer and he turned around, intending  to steal just a glance at his beloved, to let the merest corner of his eyes reassure him that she was there. But his pupils froze in horror, for he saw behind him, not his Sophia at all, but—himself! Yes, Orpheus Quine stared backwards, back into where he had been, and there staring at him was…Orpheus Quine!

As he stood with frozen eyes, he saw this other Orpheus Quine, this allos autos, begin to dissolve. He saw horror surge across its face, and it exactly matched the horror he felt on his own visage. As the other Orpheus, bygone Orpheus, slowly became one with the mist, Orpheus Quine felt the evil fog invade his own extremities—and then his somatic cavity…his eyes…his mind….And Orpheus, too, faded inexorably away into nothingness, even as did his avatar. For no one can exist without their past.

The next morning, when the skies cleared and the local people ventured forth from the nearby houses, for in fact there were many houses nearby, they found on the beach two piles of fetters.

Attack ads on philosophers

Terry Pinkard sent me to the most vicious attack ad I've seen in some time, here. What makes this ad so vicious, of course, is its philosophical nature.

Larry Hatab, to whom I forwarded the ad, pointed out that you could do a whole history of philosophy on that basis--as a 2500-year-chain of attack ads. I don't have anything like the expertise for that, but came up with a few slogans:

Plato--promised us truth, gave us empty words (Aristotle, Metaphysics 991a21).

Rene Descartes--he thinks he is, and that just isn't good enough!

David Hume: just where does the skepticism stop?

Hegel--isn't that "systematic comprehensivenes" just a… wide stance?

Jean-Paul Sartre: "freedom is great....for me!"

W. V. O. Quine: too good for analytic/synthetic?

Jürgan Habermas: quasi-transcendental? Or just quasi?

Martin Heidegger:

Let's Reflect on the APA

We're supposed to be reflecting on the institutions and practices of contemporary philosophy. the two main sintitutions are (a) the department, and (b) the professional groups which link philosophers from different departments with one another.

Let's start at the top. Does anybody out there think the American Philosophical Association is not doing its job?

What, in fact, is its job? I can think of four reasons for having a national organization of philosophers (or of members of any discipline).

(1). To provide meetings at which all members of the discipline can get outside their departments and meet with one another at a national level.

(2). To provide advocacy to outsiders on behalf of the profession.

(3).  To publish articles and comments of interest to all philosophers.

(4).  To provide a fair and effective job market.

is there any reason to think the APA is not up to snuff on any of these?