Right, I'd say the culpability and responsibility are a function of knowledge and strength of will, but these are also things we have control over (and indeed can gain more control over with effort and assistance). As respects volitional acts, those who choose the worse over the better do so either out of ignorance about what is truly best or else suffer from weakness of will.

Progress in the attainment of virtue and knowledge carries with it culpability and duty. As respects taking on duty, there is an important element of reflexive, positive freedom here. One is not "free to become..." a good doctor, teacher, father, etc. without the capacity to understand and live up to the duties imposed by those roles.

Growth in knowledge and virtue is growth towards freedom and responsibility, since both ignorance and vice are limitations on freedom (as St. Augustine says, even a king, if he is wicked, is a slave to as many masters as he has vices). What lies "beyond the call of current duty" for the person in the early stages of the pilgrimage towards virtue lies within the scope of their obligations as they progress.

This is also why the most grievous sins are those committed by people who well "know better" and those in which the intellect, the most divine part of man, is twisted in the pursuit evil.

I would think this is incumbent on all people though. Socrates' duties to his own principles, to the Good, stand despite his not having had access to revelation.

As St. Paul says:

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

19 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.

20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things - Romans 1

And:

14 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:

15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) - Romans 2

Culpability may increase with knowledge but there is also a sort of negligence the ignorant may be found guilty of as well.

And, to 's point, one could see this as applying in the historical frame to mankind and human history as well.

I think you mean "deification," not "supererogation." They seem quite different.

My point would be that what appears as supererogation from the frame of history/man, and thus monstrous to compel, need not appear so from a corrected perspective.

To "take up one's cross," and "be crucified with Christ," are beyond the duties fallen man recognizes for man, for instance.

I don't think the two views are necessarily in conflict. Sokolowski has syntactical structure emerging from the phenomenological character of experience. Hegel ultimately traces this back to being, to the Absolute (in SoL). Sokolowski's inquiry is just significantly more bracketed.

But we still need to ask: Relations among what? I don't think we can talk of "relations" that have no relata.

Relations between the objects we perceive, ourselves, the world, our own abstractions, etc. Hegelian "objective idealism" doesn't deny that such thing exist or are "real." They are just not subsistent, and not "as real" because they are not subsistent.

[Hegel] thinks he has demonstrated, in the chapter on “Quality,” that the ordinary conceptions of quality, reality, or finitude are not systematically defensible, by themselves, but can only
be properly employed within a context of negativity or true infinity...

Note:For instance, one cannot understand “red” atomically, but rather it depends on other notions such as “color” and the things (substances) that can be red, etc. to be intelligible. This notion is similar to how the Patristics (e.g., St. Maximus) developed Aristotle in light of the apparent truth that even "proper beings" (e.g., a horse) are not fully intelligible in terms of themselves.

[Hegel] has now shown, through his analysis of “diversity” and opposition, that within such a context of negativity or true infinity, the reality that is described by apparently merely “contrary” concepts will turn out to be better described, at a fundamental level, by contradictory concepts. The fundamental reality will be contradictory, rather than merely contrary. It’s not that nothing will be neither black nor white, but rather that qualities such as black, white, and colorless are less real (less able to be what they are by virtue of [only] themselves) than self-transcending finitude (true infinity) is…

From Robert M. Wallace - Hegel's Philosophy of Reality, Freedom, and God

Or perhaps the agent/actual intellect, more so in the hands of Averroes. I've heard of interpretations of Kant on an Averroist line where the "mind" in question is a sort of pan-European intellect.

I'm not trying to say that only acts of supererogation improve things, I'm saying that some acts of supererogation are required to improve things and trying to draw out a consequence.

I think this might be tackled in two ways:

First, yes there is a sense in which man must transcend his nature in order to become perfected. This means "going beyond" what we desire by nature. Far from being monstrous, one might see this as a reflection of the divine transcendence. I had written on this before re the question: "Did man have free will prior to the Fall?"

The problem of prominent early views like that of Origen of Alexandria is that, if man can fall away from the divine once (resulting in a "fall into materiality"), then it can presumably happen again. But then how can there be any final beatific return, apokatastasis, the accomplishment of exitus et reditus in salvation history? Won't people always just turn away from the Good again eventually?

The problem of the Fall and prelapsarian sin is: how can anyone truly "freely" choose evil? Wouldn't choosing evil imply either ignorance of the fact that it is evil or else "weakness of will/incontinence?" There is no rational reason to choose the worse over the better. Therefore, if someone chooses it they are either unable to choose the Good, mistake the worse for the better, or else their actions are arbitrary and determined by no rationality at all (and thus unfree). And this would seem to imply that the Fall must be explained in terms of some sort of fundamental weakness of will or ignorance, in which case the question is "why was this imperfection included?"

This was still a live issue when St. Anselm was writing De Casu Diaboli, which focuses on how Satan and his demons could fall (essentially the same question). In that work, the student asks the teacher what benefit the angles who stayed loyal to God gain. He replies: “I do not know what it was. But whatever it was, it suffices to know that it was something toward which they could grow and which they did not receive when they were created, so that they might attain it by their own merit."

The idea here is that a higher good (and for man full conformity to the image of God) requires a sort of self-transcendence and not merely the fulfillment of what is desired by nature. Thus, while Plato differentiates between relative and absolute good, Anselm looks to the good we are drawn to by nature and the super-abundant good sought only in the transcendence of our nature.

Here it's worth noting that what Eve and Adam are tempted by originally is the promise to "become like God," which is itself the promise offered up by Christ: illumination, theosis, union, and deification.

In De Concordia, Anselm gives us the idea of perfected freedom as the soul "willing to will what God wills for it to will" (which is in line with St. Bernard of Clairvaux highest rung on the "Ladder of Love"). This is a conception of freedom as only recognized interpersonally long before Hegel, and I think there is a sense in which Anselm's version includes as well the "free will willing itself," of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in that the perfected free will wills its own freedom to acquiesce to God (beyond natural desire) as its own content (and this can be taken at both the individual level and at the level of global historical Spirit).

And this is right in line with the idea in Plato that all knowing and all of ethical life (even merely learning to act in accordance with basic norms) involves a sort of transcendence and ecstasis. When we strive to know something we do not already know we are going beyond what we already are, "going out to the world," and being joined to it in a union that changes us. Likewise, when we strive to know what is "truly good," as opposed to what merely appears to be good, we are moving beyond current desire, beyond the given of what we already are.

Hence, supererogation is simply what freedom and perfection requires.

However, there is a second solution, which is to say that acts of supererogation are, in fact, according to our nature. We are not, in the end, being forced to sacrifice by doing what is truly good. It only appears that way because we, in our fallen and confused state, prize temporary, mutable, worldly goods above spiritual, immutable goods.

Dante is paradigmatic here. In Canto XVIII of the Purgatorio, in the "discourses on love" that make up the heart of the entire Commedia, Dante asks Virgil to explain love, which is "the source of every virtue, every vice."

The soul at birth, created quick to love,
will move toward anything that pleases it,
as soon as pleasure causes it to move.

From what is real your apprehensive power
extracts an image it displays within you,
forcing your mind to be attentive to it;

and if, attentive, it inclines toward this,
that inclination is love: Nature it is
which is through pleasure bound anew in you.

Just as a fire's flames always rise up,
inspired by its own nature to ascend,
seeking to be in its own element,

just so, the captive soul begins its quest,
the spiritual movement of its love,
not resting till the thing loved is enjoyed.

It should be clear to you by now how blind
to truth those people are, who make the claim
that every love is, in itself, good love.

They think this, for love's substance, probably,
seems always good, but though the wax is good,
the impression made upon it may be bad."

Love for the Good is natural. "The glory of Him, who moves all things, penetrates the universe, and glows in one region more, in another less," (Paradiso I) and we find our natural rest where the light is brightest, in that "Love that moves the sun and the other stars" (Paradiso XXXIII).

It is the result of a fallen and in some sense sick will and intellect (nous) that people prefer (and are so enslaved by) finite goods. Our true, natural happiness lies in what currently appears to us as supererogation. It only appears as supererogation to us because we are in some sense ill.

Hence, while Christ says that: "if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me," (Matthew 16:24), he also says: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30).

However, these two view often don't conflict. For most of the Patristics, and many Medievals, deified man, Christ the God-Man, is the ultimate natural type of man. Man is made for freedom and freedom, as the self-determining capacity to actualize the Good, is itself the ability of will and intellect to recognize lesser goods for what they are and to not only seek but to prefer (to love more fully) higher goods.

Hence, supererogation is neither monstrous (sub-natural) nor angelic (supernatural), but the original, natural state intended for God's image bearer. With that in mind, I think it's worth pointing out how virtue actually can be seen as allowing people to better weather the storms of fortune in a fallen world:

It is the virtuous person who is least dependent on external goods that can be easily lost.xxiii It is also this person who both wants others to flourish and who is most able to weather bad fortune. The person who is wrathful and hateful loses some share of their well-being if fortune dictates that those they hate should find success. The person with the virtues of love and charity flourishes when others flourish, and so is less likely to be forced into zero-sum competition with others.35

For instance, Socrates’s flourishing is not dependent on his avoiding punishment, and this is what allows him to be free to stand up to his accusers in the Apology, and to stand by his principles in the Crito. Likewise, St. Francis or Laozi could both flourish while retiring into the wilderness with nothing, while St. Paul and Boethius were not robbed of their serenity by imprisonment. By contrast, any well-being attained by the infamous billionaire Jeffery Epstein evaporated as soon as his crimes were exposed and he was deprived of his freedom and his status. Epstein was quickly driven to despair and suicide in prison, while Boethius found the peace to pen one of the enduring masterpieces of ethical and philosophical thought from his cell.36

To make the point clear: suppose we think that it is truly better “for us” to be Socrates, Martin Luther King, Boethius, or any of the many other people who have been martyred, tortured, imprisoned, or stripped of their property for “doing the right thing.” Suppose we do not believe it would be better to be cowardly versions of these same people, people who default on their beliefs when threatened. If we believe that the former are truly “better off,” then our understanding of well-being and the pursuit of goodness must be able to capture this.

At the end of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Sydney Carton sacrifices himself, taking the place of Charles Darnay, who has been sentenced to an unjust execution. As the book closes, Sydney Carton reflects on the good that still manages to flourish in the shadow of the French Reign of Terror. His famous closing lines: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known,” must be explained by any ethics. Is what Darnay does “better for him” or is it “better” in an equivocal sense? Does this depend on Darnay receiving some sort of postmortem extrinsic reward in Heaven? Would it be better for him to have not made this sacrifice? Would it be better for him to be the type of person who would not countenance such an act of sacrifice?

And I would argue the answer those questions is "no," it is not better for us to be constrained by fears, appetites, etc. To be truly more free, more self-determining, more able to transcend what we are, is good for us. Asking people to be free when they are slaves might indeed be monstrous, healing them that they might taste freedom is not.

Monstrosity comes into play in a society that sends out conflicting messages like:
-All goods are immanent worldly goods and reason demands a sort of "rational hedonism," but;
-The greatest people are martyrs to the cause of justice, and we should strive to be like them.

And we might add here both the modern focus on conflict and Manichean struggle, as well as the tendency to generally ignore moral education, spiritual disciplines, etc. in the public sphere. The combination here is analogous to demanding that a person with broken legs walk on their broken legs without first attempting to heal them. Physical therapy might be painful, but it is far different from simply yelling "walk!"

Yes this is definitely a site of ambiguity {and perhaps weakness} in my account. When I've been referring to supererogatory acts, I've been wondering if I should've come up with another construct like "acts that would be considered supererogatory if they were not coerced or compelled in any sense". I kept referring to them as supererogatory to play with the question I just asked you regarding that distinguishes an act which one feels compelled to do and an act which one is really compelled to do. It is a hard question, as it seems you agree?

If one feels compelled to do something because it is good/just, but does not want to do so, this would be a state of continence in Aristotle's typology (whereas a state of virtue is where we enjoy and prefer the good). A difficulty in human life is that it is often painful and hard work to move from a state of vice or incontinence to a state of virtue (hence fortitude as a cardinal virtue). However, does this mean we should never attempt to compel people towards such changes?

If one agrees with the proposition that we might be educated in virtue and vice, in "good or bad loves," then it seems that a major (if not the major) goal of education will be to try to support this sort of education. But this will be a sort of "compulsion" to the extent that we are more or less inclined to "bad loves" above "good loves."

The illness/healing motif is very common in the Patristics on this topic. Healing, setting a bone, chemotherapy, etc. are often very unpleasant. Quitting smoking, or drinking, can likewise be excruciating, but loved ones might very well try to compel someone to do these things, ultimately for their own benefit. The goal, greater happiness and freedom, would seem to justify such treatments. After all, the goal of ascetic discipline (the word being derived from the training exercises of athletes) is not to abrogate the passions and appetites, but actually to see them most fulfilled, something that can only happen when the soul and its loves are properly ordered to the Good, True, and Beautiful.

:up:

Of course, this has been taken in two ways. As the mind's construction of intelligible reality, or as the mind's union and co-identity with reality. Reminds me of Perl's comments in Thinking Being:

The key insight of phenomenology is that the modern interpretation of knowledge as a relation between consciousness as a self-contained ‘subject’ and reality as an ‘object’ extrinsic to it is incoherent. On the one hand, consciousness is always and essentially the awareness of something, and is thus always already together with being. On the other hand, if ‘being’ is to mean anything at all, it can only mean that which is phenomenal, that which is so to speak ‘there’ for awareness, and thus always already belongs to consciousness. Consciousness is the grasping of being; being is what is grasped by consciousness. The phenomenological term for the first of these observations is ‘intentionality;’ for the second, ‘givenness.’ “The mind is a moment to the world and the things in it; the mind is essentially correlated with its objects. The mind is essentially intentional. There is no ‘problem of knowledge’ or ‘problem of the external world,’ there is no problem about how we get to ‘extramental’ reality, because the mind should never be separated from reality from the beginning. Mind and being are moments to each other; they are not pieces that can be segmented out of the whole to which they belong.”* Intended as an exposition of Husserlian phenomenology, these words hold true for the entire classical tradition from Parmenides to Aquinas...

In arguing that being qua intelligible is not apart from but is the content of intellectual apprehension, Plotinus is upholding what may be called an 'identity theory of truth,’ an understanding of truth not as a mere extrinsic correspondence but as the sameness of thought and reality. The weakness of any correspondence theory of truth is that on such a theory thought can never reach outside itself to that with which it supposedly corresponds.1 Thought can be ‘adequate’ (literally, ‘equal-to’) to reality only if it is one with, the same as, reality. In Aristotle’s formulation, which as we have seen Plotinus cites in support of his position, knowledge is the same as the known.2

If thought and reality are not together in this way, then, as Plotinus argues, there is no truth, for truth just is the togetherness of being with thought. Plotinus’ arguments against the separation of intellect and being thus resonate profoundly with the nihilistic predicament of modernity. If thought and reality are conceived in modern terms, as ‘subject’ and ‘object,’ extrinsic to and over against one another, and truth is conceived as a mere correspondence between them, then thought cannot get to reality at all, then there can be no knowledge, and in the end, since nothing is given to thought, no truth and no reality. We must rather understand thought in classical Platonic, Aristotelian, and Plotinian terms, as an openness to, an embracing of, a being-with reality, and of reality as not apart from but as, in Plotinus’ phenomenological terms, “given” (V.5.2.9) to thought. This, again, is the very meaning of the identification of being as εἶδος or ἰδέα. Being means nothing if it is not given to thought; thought means nothing if it is not the apprehension of being. Hence at the pure and paradigmatic level of both, intellect as perfect apprehension and the forms as perfect being, they coincide. “We have here, then, one nature: intellect, all beings, truth” (V.5.3.1–2).

And there's the rub: what are "the things that flow"?

An excellent question. I don't know Nail, but in general this would tend to be "anything that is mutable." The question then is: "is anything immutable?"

I have always thought some things do seem quite immutable. For instance, "Adolf Hitler was the first US President" or "the USA had 76 states in 2018" are currently false. This does not seem like the sort of thing that can become true in the future.

Since motion is not a thing but a process, kinetic relations are not strictly empirical, because one cannot directly sense a process “as such,” but only the fragmentary sense perceptions within that relational process are not metaphysical either, since they are material processes, not substances. The conditions of the empirical cannot be anything empirical in themselves, but this does not mean that the kinetic conditions are not thoroughly real. It only means that flows in themselves are not necessarily and fully empirically present or sensible discrete ‘things.’”

This seems somewhat akin to Hume's pronouncement that one cannot observe causation. I would imagine this conclusion depends on some key assumptions about what observing motion or cause would entail. It seems to me that, in at least some sense, seeing a rock sail through a window and shatter it simply is to observe both motion and causation.

This is maybe also akin to statements to the effect that "matter" and "energy" are "unobservable." On the view that this is all that there is, it would rather be that we never experience anything other than matter and energy.

I am not sure why we should assume that only substances are received through the senses. It is true that one cannot have a "fast motion" with nothing moving, but even given a substance-centric ontology it still seems possible for the senses to capture and transmit relation. At the opening of the Phenomenology, Hegel (IMO fairly convincingly) demonstrates how sheer sense certainty would be contentless. However, I would take it that "observation" relevant to empiricism would be broader than "sense certainty," else we would have a quite impoverished view of what sensation does for us. If "nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses," then relation, universals, etc. must be at least virtually present in sensation.

Stoic philosophy, which is enjoying a cultural resurgence, is built on the foundation of apatheia — not mere indifference or callousness, but a state of calm equanimity that comes from freedom from irrational or extreme emotions (mood swings, in today’s language). The Stoics believed that apatheia was the essential quality of the sage, unperturbed by events and indifferent to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. ‘Detachment,’ said one ancient worthy, ‘is not that you should own nothing, but that nothing should own you.’

Indeed, and ataraxia is the first 'medicine' Lady Philosophy gives to Boethius in the Consolation, although this is preparatory to the Ascent. Even if detachment is not the end goal, it and nipsis (watchfulness, the "guarding of the intellect/heart") are often seen as prerequisites for hesychasm (stillness), henosis, fanaa, and illumination/gnosis.

Things are present to us whenever we are experiencing them in any way. So, a thing might be present through sense experience, through memory, through imagination, etc.

Sokolowski gives a certain primacy to names/words as "calling forth the intelligibility of things," and "making them present to us." The "intelligibility of a thing" is "the sum total of true things we can say about it," and not "we" as individuals, but rather what all of mankind can say about something through all our investigations, across the history of the collective "human conversation" (so inclusive of the arts, sciences, etc.). Following Aquinas, he doesn't think we can ever fully exhaust the intelligibility of any one object, since we can always come to experience it in new contexts.

Names call forth a thing and make it present to us. The syntax required for the "human conversation" relies on human biology, but also develops due to the "way consciousness is." A child, in developing language (and the intellect more broadly), is in some sense gaining access to things, to being. The structure here is in part due to the way experience is.

It's a really great book though and I might not be doing it justice in trying to stay brief.


---

I should probably add that in my first comment I was thinking mostly about later advocates of the "soup" view (for lack of a better term lol). I haven't read much about Husserl's thoughts on religion except that he was a convert and committed Lutheran. His prize student, Edith Stein (a nun and later Catholic saint) found phenomenology to flow well with her later work on Christian metaphysics, particularly Dionysius the Areopagite as far as I know, but I'm not super familiar with her work. Or Pope/Saint JPJ II, who was big on phenomenology before his poping stint.

1) Is this theory meant to be a psychological description of how infants begin to constitute objects? If so, how do infants replace the shared-lifeworld aspect that seems so necessary to the description? Some equivalent of a Chomskian universal grammar?

Here is one I like:

[Husserl] tries to show how the formal, logical structures of thinking arise from perception; the subtitle of Experience and Judgment is Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. The “genealogy” of logic is to be located not in something we are born with but in the way experience becomes transformed. Husserl describes the origin of syntactic form as follows.

When we perceive an object, we run through a manifold of aspects and profiles: we see the thing first from this side and then from that; we concentrate on the color; we pay attention to the hardness or softness; we turn the thing around and see other sides and aspects, and so on. In this manifold of appearances, however, we continuously experience all the aspects and profiles, all the views, as being “of” one and the same object. The multiple appearances are not single separate beads following one another; they are “threaded” by the identity continuing within them all. As Husserl puts it, “Each single percept in this series is already a percept of the thing. Whether I look at this book from above or below, from inside or outside, I always see this book. It is always one and the same thing.” The identity of the thing is implicitly presented in and through the manifold. We do not focus on this identity; rather, we focus on some aspects or profiles, but all of them are experienced, not as isolated flashes or pressures, but as belonging to a single entity. As Husserl puts it, “An identification is performed, but no identity is meant.” The identity itself never shows up as one of these aspects or profiles; its way of being present is more implicit, but it does truly present itself. We do not have just color patches succeeding one another, but the blue and the gray of the object as we perceive it continuously. In fact, if we run into dissonances in the course of our experience – I saw the thing as green, and now the same area is showing up as blue – we recognize them as dissonant precisely because we assume that all the appearances belong to one and the same thing and that it cannot show up in such divergent ways if it is to remain identifiable as itself. [It's worth noting the experiments on animals show they are sensitive to these same sorts of dissonances].

[Such experience is pre-syntactical, nevertheless] such continuous perception can, however, become a platform for the constitution of syntax and logic. What happens, according to Husserl, is that the continuous perception can come to an arrest as one particular feature of the thing attracts our attention and holds it. We focus, say, on the color of the thing. When we do this, the identity of the object, as well as the totality of the other aspects and profiles, still remain in the background. At this point of arrest, we have not yet moved into categoriality and logic, but we are on the verge of doing so; we are balanced between perception and thinking. This is a philosophically interesting state. We feel the form about to come into play, but it is not there yet. Thinking is about to be born, and an assertion is about to be made…

We, therefore, in our experience and thoughtful activity, have moved from a perception to an articulated opinion or position; we have reached something that enters into logic and the space of reasons. We achieve a proposition or a meaning, something that can be communicated and shared as the very same with other people (in contrast with a perception, which cannot be conveyed to others). We achieve something that can be confirmed, disconfirmed, adjusted, brought to greater distinctness, shown to be vague and contradictory, and the like. All the issues that logic deals with now come into play. According to Husserl, therefore, the proposition or the state of affairs, as a categorial object, does not come about when we impose an a priori form on experience; rather, it emerges from and within experience as a formal structure of parts and wholes...

This is how Husserl describes the genealogy of logic and logical form. He shows how logical and syntactic structures arise when things are presented to us. We are relatively passive when we perceive – but even in perception there is an active dimension, since we have to be alert, direct our attention this way and that, and perceive carefully. Just “being awake (Wachsein)” is a cognitive accomplishment of the ego. We are much more active, however, and active in a new way, when we rise to the level of categoriality, where we articulate a subject and predicate and state them publicly in a sentence. We are more engaged. We constitute something more energetically, and we take a position in the human conversation, a position for which we are responsible. At this point, a higher-level objectivity is established, which can remain an “abiding possession (ein bleibender Besitz).” It can be detached from this situation and made present again in others. It becomes something like a piece of property or real estate, which can be transferred from one owner to another. Correlatively, I become more actualized in my cognitive life and hence more real. I become something like a property owner (I was not elevated to that status by mere perception); I now have my own opinions and have been able to document the way things are, and these opinions can be communicated to others. This higher status is reached through “the active position-takings of the ego [die aktiven Stellungnahmen des Ich] in the act of predicative judgment.”

Logical form or syntactic structure does not have to issue from inborn powers in our brains, nor does it have to come from a priori structures of the mind. It arises through an enhancement of perception, a lifting of perception into thought, by a new way of making things present to us. Of course, neurological structures are necessary as a condition for this to happen, but these neural structures do not simply provide a template that we impose on the thing we are experiencing...

-Robert Sokolowski - The Phenomenology of the Human Person

John Deely also has a lot of interesting stuff on the emergence of the lebenswelt, and his semiotic approach bridges the gap on some of the thorny epistemic issues that come up in representationalist readings of perception. Nathan Lyons has some interesting stuff here too that I've shared before. It tries to get at what is prior to individual instances of perception:

These [information carrying/encoding] energy and chemical patterns revealed by modern empirical science are the place that we should locate Aquinas’ sensory species today.14 The patterns are physical structures in physical media, but they are also the locus of intentional species, because their structure is determined by the structure of the real things that cause them. The patterns thus have a representational character in the sense that they disperse a representative form of the thing into the surrounding media. In Thomistic perception, therefore, the form of the tree does not ‘teleport’ into your mind; it is communicated through normal physical mechanisms as a pattern of physical matter and energy.

The interpretation of intentions in the medium I am suggesting here is in keeping with a number of recent readers of Aquinas who construe his notion of extra-mental species as information communicated by physical means.18 Eleonore Stump notes that ‘what Aquinas refers to as the spiritual reception of an immaterial form . . . is what we are more likely to call encoded information’, as when a street map represents a city or DNA represents a protein. 19... Gyula Klima argues that ‘for Aquinas, intentionality or aboutness is the property of any form of information carried by anything about anything’, so that ‘ordinary causal processes, besides producing their ordinary physical effects according to the ordinary laws of nature, at the same time serve to transfer information about the causes of these processes in a natural system of encoding’.22

The upshot of this reading of Aquinas is that intentional being is in play even in situations where there is not a thinking, perceiving, or even sensing subject present. The phenomenon of representation which is characteristic of knowledge can thus occur in any physical media and between any existing thing, including inanimate things, because for Aquinas the domain of the intentional is not limited to mind or even to life, but includes to some degree even inanimate corporeality.

As an historical analog, you might consider why Heraclitus felt the need to provide for a Logos at work in a world of unceasing, inchoate flux. The charge of Aristotle, which perhaps could be laid at the feet of some modern analogs of Heraclitus, is that this is simply a post-hoc explanation for the apparent order at work in reality.

Yet I think the more pressing concerns lie around the Problem of the One and the Many. Does the "soup" of flux and constraints/regularities that lies prior to the constructions of the human intellect include things or is it just one thing, a single process?

There is a lot of overlap here with the "classical metaphysical tradition," even in the need to speak of the "soup" (God in the earlier tradition) by way of analogy.

So, as a contrast consider:

...these principles are that (1) the world of space and time does not itself exist in space and time: it exists in Intellect (the Empyrean, pure conscious being); (2) matter, in medieval hylomorphism, is not something “material”: it is a principle of unintelligibility, of alienation from conscious being; (3) all finite form, that is, all creation, is a self-qualification of Intellect or Being, and only exists insofar as it participates in it; (4) Creator and creation are not two, since the latter has no existence independent of the former; but of course creator and creation are not the same; and (5) God, as the ultimate subject of all experience, cannot be an object of experience: to know God is to know oneself as God, or (if the expression seems troubling) as one “with” God or “in” God.

Let me spell out these principles at greater length. In medieval hylomorphism (the matter-form analysis of reality), pure Intellect (consciousness or awareness) is pure actuality, or form, or Being, or God: it is the self-subsistent principle that spawns or “contains” all finite being and experience. Intellect Being is what is, unqualified, self-subsistent, attributeless, dimensionless. It has no extension in space or time; rather, it projects space-time “within” itself, as, analogously, a dreaming intelligence projects a dream-world, or a mind gives being to a thought. The analogy holds in at least three respects: (1) like dreams or thoughts, created things are radically contingent, and dependent at every instant of their existence on what gives them being; (2)as there is nothing thoughts are “made of,” so there is nothing the world is “made of”: being is not a “something” to make things out of; and (3) dreams and thoughts have no existence apart from the intelligence in which they arise, but one cannot point to that intelligence because it is not a thing. In the same way, one cannot point to the Empyrean, the tenth heaven that the Comedy presents as the infinite intelligence/reality “within” which all things exist; remove it and the universe would instantly vanish. Note that the analogy in no way implies that the world is “unreal” or a “dream” (except in contrast to its ontological ground); rather, it expresses the radical non-self-subsistence of finite reality. This understanding of the radical contingency of “created” things is the wellspring of medieval Christian thought, without which the rest of medieval thought makes little sense.

Conscious being spawns experience by giving itself to it, by qualifying itself as this-or-that, and thus in one sense becoming other than itself. This is how the world comes into being: it is one valence of the Incarnation and the Trinity. ...As Beatrice puts it in Paradiso 29: conceived in itself, the ultimate ontological principle is a splendore, the reflexive self-awareness of pure consciousness; creation is its re-reflection as an apparently self-subsistent entity, a limitation of its unqualified self-experience as something, as a determinate thing. This voluntary self-experience of self as “other” is love; thus Dante can say that creation is an unfolding of divine love

Christian Moevs - The Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy - Introduction: Non-Duality and Self-Knowledge - pg. 5-6

This obviously contrasts starkly with the common modern view of the consciousness as a contingent/accidental re-presentation of being, and of things and matter as self-subsistent building blocks of reality. But it also contrasts with Post-Kantian philosophy that heads in the other direction, which tends to assign to the specifically human intellect the power to bestow intelligibility on the world of experience, whereas in the older view the human intellect is not the ground of this intelligibility. Another difference is that the "pre-experiential soup" is often described as arational, irrational, or pre-rational, whereas God is said to be "super-rational" (this distinction in turn implies the much greater role for finite, and specifically human intellects).

Of course, the other big difference would be a conception of reality where consciousness can be contingent, being without "whatness" or intentionality.

The old Scholastic adage that "everything is received in the mode of the receiver" becomes dominant in Kant and later thinkers. I suppose that what tends to be obscured from sight by the inflation of this principle is the role of ecstasis in knowing, knowing as primarily union, a "going beyond and outside the self." This second principle, when taken with the first, notes that while "everything is received in the mode of the receiver," the mode of the receiver itself is determined by this joining with being.

IDK, there are a lot of parallels between the Kantian noumena and its development in later thinkers and earlier conceptions of God, and in some ways they are very similar and in others they could not be more unlike.

Reading, study, seeking knowledge and understand, etc. can greatly enrich a life, but only the circumstances of the elite 10% to 20% of the population allow it.

How so? What exactly is so expensive about study that you need to be wealthy to do it? All you really need is an internet connection. Is watching Netflix out of the reach of all but the elite? But having access to all sorts of books and lectures is cheaper than having access to Netflix.

This strikes me as being a bit like the complaint that "eating healthy is expensive." Is it really? Bulk beans and grains, or frozen vegetables are just about the cheapest things you can buy. Rather, eating healthy with the convenience of prepared meals and without having to expend effort in learning how to cook is expensive. If anything, the status and career concerns of the wealthy seem like they are often a barrier to spending time on the intellectual or spiritual life.

The average student from the average family attending the average classically-oriented school will not graduate into the elite (unless his or her parents are already elite, generally) and will not readily put their classical knowledge to use in building a fine meaningful life. They will have to navigate the same crappy consumer political economy as everybody else does who belongs to the mass rank and file, and not to the elite.

What's the assumption here, that in order to put Aristotle or Dante's teachings to work one must be wealthy? Why?

If anything, they might suggest to you that spending your life chasing wealth and status is not time well spent. That's a key realization that St. Augustine has in the Confessions, one of the texts of the "literary canon."



Obviously the former. I mean, we could consider here how Plato was even skeptical of books, since they allow people not to memorize things (and thus not to fully understand them), while appearing as sources of authority.



Agreed, or jumping on the bandwagon for the wrong reasons. I don't think it's the sort of thing that is easily done well, or likely to be easily "scaled."

in order to reveal how we have surpassed old superstitious and doctrinaire ways of thinking.

It seems to me that it might be even more important to reveal current superstitious and doctrinaire ways of thinking.



Is "indoctrination" ever a good thing? I think only the military openly claims to have a period of "officer indoctrination." However, is all religious education necessarily indoctrination?

At any rate, it seems obvious to me that secular ideologies are every bit as capable of advocating for a sort of "indoctrination," and also every bit as capable of precipitating existential crises.

For instance, "everything is little balls of stuff bouncing around" and "any notion of goodness or value is necessarily illusory," thus "we should embrace a sort of rational hedonism," seems to set plenty of people up for nihilism and existential crises. Yet such a view is sometimes defended with religious zeal, in part because it is an essential component of some religion-like philosophies (e.g. one cannot be strong and "overcome" the meaninglessness of reality and rejoice in one's own strength and "freedom" if one is not assured that the world is properly absurd).

Right, if I recall, part of the analysis relies on a (IMO, false) dichotomy. Either our wants are grounded in the passions and appetites, or they are grounded in the intellect, but not both. I would just counter that in some cases our wants do seem to be grounded in the intellect, e.g. "All men by nature desire to know." That, "sometimes we want to eat because of our appetite," does not, to my mind, rebut "sometimes we want to know something because of an innate desire for understanding and truth."

Re "monkish virtues" I always thought Hume, Nietzsche, and some of the other "masters of suspicion" had a very poor understanding of asceticism. They deal with pallid straw ghosts of Plato, or the authors of the Philokalia (literally "Love of Beauty) rather than grappling with why they thinkers though asceticism was useful.

To quote something I wrote earlier:

Here, it may be helpful to look back to Aristotle’s teacher, Plato. In the Republic, Plato examines the way in which an individual can become more or less a self-determining whole. We all want what is truly good for us, not what merely appears to be good, or what is said to be good by others.28 It never makes sense for us to intentionally choose what is truly worse over what is truly better. Those who claim to “prefer evil,” prefer it because they see it as “better for them.” Even Milton’s Satan must say “evil, be thou my good.”29 It would not make sense to say “evil, be thou evil for me” and then to pursue evil.xvii

For Plato, it is the “rational part of the soul” that both seeks, and is able to determine, “what is truly good.”xviii Hence, it is also the rational part of a person that is capable of ranking and ordering the passions and appetites, and only it is suited to determining the means through which they might be satisfied. A person’s thirst tells her nothing about how to pursue her anger. Her sorrow cannot tell her whether or not she should give in to her desire for sleep. Only reason has the calculating power to judge between desires and to determine which is most worthy of satisfaction.

Thus, the rational part of a person must reach downwards and shape the lower parts. For Plato, as for Aristotle and St. Thomas, we always desire things that are in some way good. We do not consciously wish evil on ourselves. The appetites and passions, however, seek only relative goods. If we are led by them, we shall stumble into evil through seeking a fractured part of the Good, its appearances, rather than the whole/absolute.30

Pace Nietzsche, this is not meant to be “the tyranny of the reason,” and the abrogation of the passions. The “just man” is not merely a special case of the “tyrannical man,” one with the proper part of the soul acting as tyrant. The just ruler focuses on what is good for the whole; the tyrant on what is good for himself (a mere part). As Plato makes clear in the Phaedrus, it is the rule of reason that will allow the passions and appetites to be most fulfilled, allowing them to get to what is truly best for them.

Whereas, if the parts of the soul are in conflict, the person will bounce randomly between different objects of desire, like a chariot whose rider is not in control of its horses, never getting to what any part of the soul would truly benefit from most. We might consider here the sex addict, who—through the tyranny of their appetites—does not enjoy even the object of their addiction as much as they would if they were properly oriented towards it. Thus, Plato can affirm the need for the rule of reason, while still speaking of the philosophers’ eros (appetitive desire) and love (passion) for goodness and truth

Hence, there is no conflict between the “well-being of having what reason knows as truly best” and the “well-being of fulfilling the passions and appetites most fully.” Such a multiplicity of goods is a contradiction in terms for Plato (and for Aristotle and St. Thomas as well). Indeed, Plato, and others following in his footsteps, such as St. Augustine, often describe the Good they pursue in highly sensuous terms. Consider St. Augustine’s prayer to God in Book X of the Confessions31:

“You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness.
You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness.
You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you.
I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you.
You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

It is this desire of reason to have what is “truly best” that allows us to transcend what we already are. Reason is transcendent in this way. When we strive to discover something that we do not already know, or when we try to figure out if “what appears good to us” is “truly good,” we are moving beyond our current limitations, transcending current beliefs and desires. Hence, the “rule of reason” is also what allows us to become self-determining. When the rational part of the soul fails to unify a person in this way they become less a true whole, more a heap of warring appetites and passions. There is a “civil war in the soul.”32

This is why Socrates’s parting request to the Athenians after they have sentenced him to die in the Apology is that they should properly chastise and punish his sons if they do wrong. Socrates wants the Athenians to encourage his sons to live justly, so that they will not “think they are something when they are nothing.”33 To slip into vice—to be ruled over by mere parts of oneself—is to cease to function as a true whole, to become more a mere bundle of external causes, and so to slide towards non-being.


Relevant footnote: Indeed, Plato’s discussion of the “tyrannical man” in Book IX of the Republic sheds more light on why it is only reason that can unify and properly lead the soul. At 571b-c, Socrates distinguishes between necessary and unnecessary pleasures and desires. It is reason that is capable of making this distinction. When the lower parts of the soul “rule,” a person might prioritize the unnecessary over the necessary. Yet this can often lead to misery, since we will end up not having our more basic needs met because we have prioritized some ancillary concern. Consider here the wrathful individual who pursues vengeance at the expense of all else, and ends up miserable as a result.

In particular, I think Humean or Nietzchean accounts often have a difficult time explaining something like Harry Frankfurt's second-order volitions. We can intentionally shape our own tastes and preferences, or be educated in them. Indeed, one of the goals of asceticism and the spiritual life (and of education more generally in the past) is to achieve this, and sometimes people seem to be remarkably successful at this. Our wants are not unanalyzable primitives that the intellect must figure out how best to accommodate, but are in fact shaped by the intellect.

Part of the problem then is not just an impoverished conception of reason and the intellect, but also an impoverished psychology.

Critics of Hume have pointed this out. Likewise, the attempt to secure ethics through sentiment seems open to all sorts of attacks. For the egoist, it seems obvious that one should only pay any attention to sentiment and social norms when it appears to benefit oneself. Hume also famously argues to the ought of being good to children from an is about human nature about eight pages after claiming this sort of inference is never warranted.

When approaching Hume's Guillotine—the "is-ought gap"—I think we should ask: did Hume discover something seemingly obvious and fundamental that millennia of past thinkers simply missed? Or does Hume start from different assumptions?

I think Hume's Guillotine essentially just begs the question re a certain sort of moral anti-realism, and then obfuscates this move. It's also far from clear that Hume successfully demonstrates that desire is always irrational, or that his extremely deflated view of the intellect/reason as largely mere calculation is preferable to prior conceptions of the intellect. Past thinkers had the desire to know truth as a "desire of the intellect," and it seems to me that a strong case can be made for this position. At the very least, Hume's assumptions are far from obviously true.

Consider the oppositions' case (and it's worth noting that the opposition is quite diverse, running from New Atheists like Sam Harris to contemporary Thomists). It seems obvious that there are empirical facts about what is good for us. For instance:

• It is bad for children to have lead dumped into their school lunches.
• It is bad for people to be kidnapped, tortured, and enslaved.
• It is bad for a fox to have its leg mangled in a trap.
• It is bad for citizens of a country to experience a large-scale economic depression.

There are also empirical facts about values involving social conventions. E.g. "Gary Kasparov is better at chess than the average preschooler."

It seems fairly obvious that the truth of such statements is something that we can discover through the empirical sciences, the senses, etc. To insist otherwise is to insist that medicine, veterinary science, biology, welfare economics, etc. never provide us with information about what is truly good or bad for humans or other living things.

Now, the Humean will often try to counter here in two ways. First, they will try to move to universal maxims, with the Enlightenment assumption that ethics must be formulated in terms of universal maxims. So, they might claim: "ok, maybe you can reason from empirical observations to the fact that being lit on fire is bad for you, but you can hardly move from this to 'no one should light another on fire.'" But such a move simply defaults on the is-ought gap, since it allows that we can still reason from:

P1. The effects of burning are bad for me (i.e. burning is not choice-worthy).
P2. If I throw myself into the fire, I shall burn.
C. I ought not choose to throw myself into the fire.

The Humean might object that we need some sort of additional "ought premise" here, something along the lines of:

We should choose what is truly better over what is truly worse. That is, we should choose what is truly choice-worthy.

This seems completely unnecessary to me, since to be (truly) better, i.e., to be (truly) more choice-worthy, simply is to be what ought to be chosen. Further, it certainly seems that empirical sciences such as medicine, vetinary science, etc. can at least sometimes tell us about what is truly choice-worthy. Someone committed to the Guillotine can, of course, object to this. They can claim that there simply are no "facts of the matter" about what is truly choice-worthy, or that such facts must be always be epistemically inaccessible. Fair enough. I think that is a hard position to defend, but at least now the particular brand of anti-realism/skepticism that underlies the Guillotine is explicit.

It's worth noting here that some groups, e.g. most Thomists, agree that we need an additional premise. They claim that "we should always choose what is truly better over what is truly worse," is the axiom of practical reason (and it seems hard to disagree with this axiom without simply denying that anything can be "truly better"). However, they also point out that such an axiom is required for theoretical reason as well, something along the lines of "we should prefer truth to falsity."

After all, theoretical inquiry is value laden. What constitutes "good reasoning," "good science," "good argument," "good faith," "good evidence," etc., and the very choice-worthyness of truth over falsity is itself an issue of value. If the Humean is committed to all issues of value ultimately stemming from wholly irrational passions, then this applies just as much to all questions of truth. Hence, the foundations of reason, logic, etc. would themselves be irrational (some are indeed willing to accept this).

The second counter is to claim that all notions of goodness ultimately stem from some sort of kernal of irrational preference. It's easiest to see how this works in reductionist descendants of Hume. These argue that experiences have a sort of atomic, irreducible element of pleasure or pain (positive/negative valance). This element, they claim, is irrational. In order to argue that "being melted with acid is bad for us" one must appeal to this irrational pleasure/pain element. And so, really, there is no "fact of the matter" as to whether being melted with acid or run over by a steamroller is bad! The fact must always be tied back to ultimately irrational atoms of pleasure and pain (again, the assumption is ultimately anti-realist).

The obvious problem here is that this sort of account tends to be straightforwardly question begging. Reason cannot determine facts about what is choice-worthy because what is considered choice-worthy is presupposed to be irrational and not based on facts alone. The conclusion is assumed, rather than argued for. And of course, a great many decisions people make involve selecting unpleasurable experiences over pleasurable ones, precisely because they think these choices are truly better. It's hard to see how martyrs, particularly atheist ones, are always motivated by the drive towards experiences with positive valance without simply assuming such a thing and trying to argue back to that starting point in a post-hoc fashion.

I've been looking for whether people like Land and Vance understand the population they're cozying up to. Do they understand that the alt-right is where Neo-Nazis go? Or are they just not afraid of that?

You should check out Land's concept and advocacy of "hyperracism." In general, Land tends to at least tacitly support the conclusions of some sort of "race realism" (their term). Such views conclude that cognitive and behavioral differences grounded in genetic variation across races is such that it makes DEI efforts counterproductive for society as a whole, and makes equality (in terms of sector participation, income, etc.) an unrealistic and unhelpful goal (a similar sex realism often goes along with this).

However, Land, being something of an elitist who also tends to conflate sci-fi and reality, also thinks that racial categories are not the most relevant dividing line here. He thinks that a sort of "cognitive sorting" in mate selection (of the sort Charles Murray discusses in the Bell Curve) is creating a new class of cognitive elites.

Basically:

• Universities (and university entrance exams that are heavily G loaded) act as huge cognitive sorting apparatuses. People tend to find mates at school.
• Employers do the same thing. People tend to find mates at work.
• So, do housing markets, by pricing low to medium income people (who tend to have lower intelligence) out of many locales. People tend to find mates who live around them.
• People tend to have kids with people who have the same level of educational attainment as them, and moreover who went to the same tier of educational institution, and who have careers with similar earnings or at least prestige.
• Intelligence and other factors (e.g. Big Five personality traits, impulse control, etc.) that play a role in career success appear to be fairly heritable.
• Hence, the elite will increasingly become a genetically distinct class.
• Also, wealthier parents provide better environments for their kids. So do more intelligent/educated parents, regardless of their wealth, so there is a positive feedback loop related to the environment in play here too. Point being, elites are those who are best equipped to manage society and to help it develop.
• The same thing plays out at the level of the collective, social environment, e.g. in neighborhoods, schools, peer effects, etc.

Land adds to this his tendency to think sci-fi technology is closer than it probably is. So:

• Elites will have priority access to gene therapies, selective IFV, etc., which will further increase their advantages.
• They will also have priority access to cybernetics, etc.
• At the same time, they will be the ones who own AI, which will shift earnings away from labor and towards capital (a trend in advanced economies over the last 60 years anyhow).

The result is an elite that holds all the cards and is superior to the lower classes (with genetic engineering and other enhancements, plus a much better environment they would in theory be smarter, stronger, healthier, faster, etc.)

A more general point is that liberalism, particularly a commitment to equality, preferences the desires of the lower cognitive classes at the expense of the highest achievers (recalling Nietzsche a bit). But at a certain point enforcing equality must become draconian. Yet most of the gains in our standard of living, life expectancy, ability to defend ourselves, etc. come, at least on some tellings, from this small group at the top (creating new technology , etc.). Not allowing them freedom to "push the envelope" is in some ways the greatest restriction on freedom imaginable, since it is a restriction of the capacity of mankind as a whole in order to serve the needs of the current many (arguably to the detriment of future generations who will miss out on innovation and advancement).

He sees the collapse of liberalism as inevitable. Hence, accelerationism simply tries to accelerate the process by which liberalism destroys itself.

A related point I don't recall Land ever speaking to is that AI and automation are also making it so that mass mobilization and "the people" are increasingly irrelevant to winning wars. The shift might be every bit as relevant as the stirrup (which ushered in feudalism) in that both prioritize small, elite, highly skilled and expensively equiped cadres of soldiers over mass mobilization. This has obvious follow on effects because the rights of commoners and the growth of the welfare state itself can be seen as largely an outgrowth of the need for states and elites to court "the people" to win wars, and to head off revolts. Changes in military and surveillance technology might allow far smaller groups to have an effective monopoly on force in terms of both inter and intra state conflict.


His views on race seem to be that conventional racists are "more right" than "race deniers" (who say race has nothing to do with things like career success, etc.), but that their view is still deficient (they are essentially racial plebians). They fail to see that existing racial categories are not the categories that will come to define the future elite, and so not particularly relevant, nor that the "superior stock" is likely to come from a diverse background.

There are all sorts of questions one might have about this sort of speculation. It's based on a quite loose and speculative extrapolation of empirical data, and unfortunately, since argument is rarely taught, mounding up citations is taken as the gold standard of argument, and someone like Charles Murray can mound up citations quite well. Since the generic response to this sort of thing has been to simply shout "racist" at it, the more substantial critiques that could be offered up against it never get off the ground. After all, why even engage with what is obviously evil? Stephen Pinker makes this point in a few places, including The Blank Slate. Liberal discomfort with racism is such that they essentially cede the ground on whether the racists' conclusions about public policy and ethics would hold up even if their empirical case had merit. So, unfortunately, the people who find themselves swayed by this sort of thinking never see the "even if they are right about x, y, and z, they would still not be justified in asserting p, q, and r" sorts of rebuttals.

Just for one example, it seems like one could have easily made this sort of case for the superiority of the aristocracy prior to the end of noble privileges given their existence as a discrete, inbreeding class. Wasn't becoming a noble a sort of difficult to pass "genetic filter?" And yet the nobility did not tend to fare well with meritocratic reforms. Second, the most famous subgroup in intergroup intelligence research are Ashkenazim Jews, who tend to score about .75-2 standard deviations higher in verbal-logical IQ metrics than the general European population (and about the same on visio-spatial IQ).

This finding is fairly robust, showing up even countries where Jews tend to be a marginalized, lower income group. There are a number of hypotheses about how this might have occured. The big one is that, since Jews were often excluded from owning land (and thus the main occupation back then, farmer) and from trade guilds, they tended to work in more cognitively demanding fields (e.g. medicine, banking, as merchants, etc.). Those who lacked the abilities to succeed in these environments could always convert, and leave the community. These pressures, combined with quite strict restrictions on mixed relationships, and perhaps some other factors (e.g. a long-term status preference for scholarship) is at least one hypothesis for this divergence.

Yet this difference is still not that wide, and, even if this hypothesis was right (it is still quite speculative), the effect plausibly took around 1,500+ years to emerge, despite vastly stricter "sorting" in terms of relationships than what we see today. Land, Murray, and co. extrapolate from single generation studies taking place largely in ceteris paribus contexts (twin studies have some minor variability in social class, although impoverished families do not tend to adopt, and are almost always within the context of developed countries). However, genetics is not the sort of thing where we would expect to see perfectly linear relations, where this sort of "sorting" would necessarily produce effect sizes that carry over from generation to generation. Indeed, the general trend has been the opposite, natives across social classes in developed countries are becoming less intelligent. I have not heard of the wealthy or well-educated bucking this trend, which is what Murray, Land, etc.'s theses would suggest. Maybe researchers have just missed this (although it seems unlikely since this sort of hypothesis is quite old and well known), so it would seem that even if the hypothesis was correct it is being outweighed by environmental effects and perhaps the skyrocketing age of high SES mothers and fathers.

Not to mention there are all sorts of other problems here. Height is correlated with basketball success; almost all NBA players a huge outliers. Height is quite heritable. The Netherlands, Denmark, and Estonia are the tallest countries on Earth. Yet, you'd hardly select these populations as the ideal places to recruit a superstar basketball team if you knew anything about basketball, nor would you want some random 6'11 Dane on your team over 5'9 Isaiah Thomas. Land and Murray would probably allow for this sort of idea, that the best way to screen job candidates is never wide population metrics; I take it their point is more about the relative worthwhileness of various DEI efforts. However, in general the "race realists" do try to argue that racial (and often sex) discrimination is actually a good heuristic for things like employee selection, which it quite obviously is not.

A question about this, though. "Necessity by accident" has an odd ring. Is the idea that, if "Socrates is currently sitting" is true, then as long as it remains true, it is necessarily the case that Socrates is sitting? The necessity would arise from the fact that there is only one way (allegedly) for a statement to be true, and that is by its stating something that is the case? I'm struggling to phrase the necessity in some understandable way -- maybe you can help.

That true statements are necessarily true is an interesting topic. In Book IV of the Metaphysics, Aristotle points out that, taken alone: "it is true that Socrates is standing" adds nothing to "Socrates is standing." Basically, there is an implied assertoric force in fact statements.

For truth is: "to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not" (Metaphysics IV). Likewise, to say "a man" versus "one man" changes nothing, and the same is true of "a man" and "an existent man." And here we get part of the ground for the Doctrine of Transcendentals re "Being, One, and True."

But this is probably not the most helpful example, since it's pretty opaque. An easier one would be that a man with many siblings is necessarily not "the oldest living sibling" if he is dead. Yet neither is he necessarily dead. The man was alive at one point, and perhaps at some point, when he was alive, he was the oldest living sibling. However, the accident of his death necessarily precludes his being the "oldest living sibling."

Modality was often conceived of in terms of act/potency, not in terms of simultaneous/synchronic "alternative possibilities" (possible worlds ), but rather in terms of diachronic potentialities. Hence, a man is not equally "possibly living and possibly dead," for, to be in act as "living" necessarily excludes being (actually) dead. So too for all contraries: hot and cold, dark and light, etc.

I would just add that what seems like a small difference here might be seen as having huge consequences. Freedom in ancient and medieval thought was often conceptualized as something like: "the self-determining capacity to actualize the good." In modern views, it is often "the ability to do otherwise (other than what is actual)," and this has tremendous import for how people see all sorts of philosophical issues (e.g. Sarte wanting to dispatch any human essence to safeguard freedom, whereas on the earlier view having an essence is a prerequisite for any human good for freedom to achieve).

Avicenna makes a distinction here between necessity per se ("in itself") and necessity per aliud ("by another"). If you throw a rock through a window, it will necessarily break (physical necessity), but the window is not "necessarily broken" per se.

Modern conceptions of modality in terms of possible worlds will probably be inadequate to capture these distinctions. As Plantinga explains, if something is "possibly necessary" in this frame, it is necessary. For, to be "possibly necessary" is "to be necessary in at least one possible world," but then to be "necessary" is "to be in every possible world" (this seems to me analogous to the frequentist account of probability, which has been so popular after the early 20th century). Yet this is clearly not the sort of distinction folks like Aristotle, Al Farabi, and Avicenna are trying to elucidate, since these attempt to look to the why of necessity.

The ideas of potentiality and modality on the one hand, and probability on the other, are obviously related. If something is necessary, it occurs 100% of the time, if it is impossible it occurs 0% of the time. If it is possible, but not necessary, it must be somewhere in between. Hintikka unhelpfully labels to Aristotelian view a "statistical view " on the grounds that Aristotle recognizes this fact, and it's unfortunately all over analytic treatments of modality in earlier eras, making them out to be much more like the dominant (and problematic—"Bernoulli's Fallacy" is a great book here) frequentist paradigm in modern statistics than it actually is.

In particular, Aristotle rejects wholly unrealized potencies because he thinks the cosmos is eternal, so everything that could happen has had time to happen, but very many of his interpreters (particularly Jews, Muslims, and Christians) reject this view. More problematically, it might seem to presuppose that things are necessary or not in virtue of such frequencies, not vice versa (mixing up quia and prompter quid, cause versus effect). This is sort of akin to identifying valid arguments as "those arguments which never have a false conclusion when the premises are true" as opposed to those where the conclusion "follows from" or can be "inferred from" the premises.

Obviously, you can describe the example above in terms of possible worlds. If a man is dead in the actual world, he is not the oldest living sibling in all accessible worlds. Or "there are no possible worlds where the man is both dead and the oldest living sibling" (a frequentist explanation). This is sort of a flattening though. You could try to trace the distinctions through accessibility relations, but it's really the "because," "in virtue of," etc. questions re necessity that they attempt to address, which is not addressed by comparing frequency across datasets.

"Man is an animal," in contrast, would be a good example of a Kripkean synthetic necessity. There is nothing analytic about the notion; it so happens, though, that we have discovered it to be true. And Kripke would go on to point out that we don't need this necessary truth in order to designate "man" -- we were able to do this quite well before we knew any science. Had it turned out that humans were not in fact animals, we would not have said, "Oh, we we were wrong in our identification of what a human is. We'd better call them doomans instead" Rather, we would have said, "We thought humans might be angelic or unique, but that is not so. They're still humans, just different from what we thought." (This is Kripke's "gold" example in a slightly different wording.)

It's a similar topic approached in a different way. There are actually four modes of per se predication (as well as per se accidents) and they don't map neatly to modern distinctions. "Analytic" statements would fall under per se primo modo, which relate to essential definitions (e.g. a triangle having three sides). By contrast, Kripke, in keeping with his epoch, puts epistemic concerns front and center as opposed to metaphysical ones. For instance, it flows from the essence of fire that it is hot, but what it is to be fire is not identical with what it is to be hot, else all hot things would be fire. All foxes are made of flesh and bones, but what makes a fox a fox is not possession of flesh and bones (hence, we can recognize foxes' eidos in stone statues).

That the Categories and Porphyry's Isagoge were considered introductory, foundational texts in logic, not metaphysics, is perhaps indictive of the difference in approaches.

It is perhaps becoming clear how two somewhat different uses of "necessity" are at work here. One has necessity as opposed to analyticity, the other has necessity as opposed to possibility. Early philosophy did not make this distinction, leading to difficulty. Aristotelian essentialism apparently does not differentiate analyticity from possibility.

In general, the common sin of the medievals is not to fail to make distinctions, but rather to make so many that it becomes difficult to follow them. Where Hume (and Kant, following him) has a two pronged fork grounded in epistemic concerns, they have a minimum of six, generally grounded in metaphysical concerns. But also, essences are known through the senses, not as a priori analytic truths. The Peripatetic Axiom is: "there is nothing in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

Analyticity roughly (but imperfectly) corresponds to predication per se primo modo, which is just one mode of per se predication (there are also per se accidents), and the Islamic philosophers in particular have many distinctions vis-a-vis modality. Some (e.g. Al Farabi), largely do exclude necessity from an indeterminate future, however they still have necessity through causes, not solely through definitions. In some sense, principle/cause must be prior, since the Many that possess disparate definitions are downstream of their unifying principles (One).

There is obviously some relation. If to be a triangle is to have three sides then a triangle cannot possibly have four sides. Likewise a light room can not possibly be dark, in that the two contraries do not admit of being both in act simultaneously (but note that in contrary, as opposed to contradictory, opposition we can meet somewhere in the middle). If something is necessarily in act, its contrary is necessarily excluded, but this relation need not have anything to do with analyticity. Not being a square, hypercube, circle, dodecahedron, trapezoid, etc. is necessary for all triangles, but is not "what a triangle is."

Literally, de dicto is "of the said/expressed" and de re "of the matter/thing." For example, suppose some little girl says: "when I grow up, I want to marry the richest man in the world!"

De dicto, we could interpret this as the girl having perhaps a bit of an avaricious streak. She wants to marry the richest man in the world, whoever this happens to be. De re, this would be equivalent to "when I grow up, I want to marry Elon Musk!" bespeaking a fondness for our glorious DOGE master.

Re modality, clearly Elon Musk is not "the richest man in the world" by necessity. This is subject to change. The predication of "richest man in the world" of Musk is per accidens as opposed to per se.

You could also consider: "The number of states in the USA is necessarily evenly divisible by five."

De re, the sentence is equivalent with:"Fifty is necessarily evenly divisible by five," which I think most people would allow is true. De dicto this is clearly false. In the past, the US often had a number of states that was not evenly divisible by five, and once our glorious orange Augustus annexes Canada and Greenland it seems we will also be left with a number of states that is not divisible by five.

I am most familiar with how this ties into modality in terms of how it relates to the apparent conflict between divine foreknowledge and free will (or contingency as a whole). A key discussion here is St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae, Q.14 A. 13, .

If something is a fact, then to report that it is the case is to report that it is necessarily true. If Socrates is sitting, "Socrates is currently sitting" is true by necessity, but this is necessitas per accidens. By contrast, "man is an animal" is necessitas per se, de re (assuming for the sake of the example that all men are necessarily animals.)

That said, I don't know helpful this will be since modality is here considered in terms of necessary and contingent being/beings and causes (obviously a much broader notion of cause/principle than mechanism or constant conjunction alone), as opposed to possible worlds. I imagine the distinction would have different implications under different assumptions. I seem to vaguely recall Quine eventually rejecting the distinction on the grounds that it would imply essentialism.

But, if you're interested in the context:

In evidence of this, we must consider that a contingent thing can be considered in two ways; first, in itself, in so far as it is now in act: and in this sense it is not considered as future, but as present; neither is it considered as contingent (as having reference) to one of two terms, but as determined to one; and on account of this it can be infallibly the object of certain knowledge, for instance to the sense of sight, as when I see that Socrates is sitting down.In another way a contingent thing can be considered as it is in its cause; and in this way it is considered as future, and as a contingent thing not yet determined to one; forasmuch as a contingent cause has relation to opposite things: and in this sense a contingent thing is not subject to any certain knowledge. Hence, whoever knows a contingent effect in its cause only, has merely a conjectural knowledge of it.


Summa Theologiae, Q.14 A. 13

Perhaps also helpful:

Necessity, in a general way, denotes a strict connection between different beings, or the different elements of a being, or between a being and its existence. It is therefore a primary and fundamental notion, and it is important to determine its various meanings and applications in philosophy and theology.

In Logic, the Schoolmen, studying the mutual relations of concepts which form the matter of our judgments, divided the judgments or propositions into judgments in necessary matter (in materia necessaria), and judgments in contingent matter (in materia contingenti). (Cf. S. Thom., I Perihermen, lect. xiii.) The judgments in necessary matter were known as propositiones per se; they are called by modern philosophers "analytic", "rational", "pure", or "a priori" judgments. The propositio per se is defined by the Schoolmen as one the predicate of which is either a constitutive element or a natural property of the subject...

When we consider the divers beings, not from the point of view of existence, but in relation to their constitution and activity, necessity may be classified as metaphysical, physical, and moral.

- Metaphysical necessity implies that a thing is what it is, viz., it has the elements essential to its specific nature. It is a metaphysical necessity for God to be infinite, man rational, an animal a living being. Metaphysical necessity is absolute.

- Physical necessity exists in connection with the activity of the material beings which constitute the universe. While they are contingent as to their existence, contingent also as to their actual relations (for God could have created another order than the present one), they are, however, necessarily determined in their activity, both as to its exercises and its specific character. But this determination is dependent upon certain conditions, the presence of which is required, the absence of one or the other of them preventing altogether the exercise or normal exercise of this activity. The laws of nature should always be understood with that limitation: all conditions being realized. The laws of nature, therefore, being subject to physical necessity are neither absolutely necessary, as materialistic Mechanism asserts, nor merely contingent, as the partisans of the philosophy of contingency declare; but they are conditionally or hypothetically necessary. This hypothetical necessity is also called by some consequent necessity.

MERCIER, Ontologie (Louvain, 1902), ii, 3; RICKABY, First Principles of Knowledge (London, 1902), I, v; IDEM, General Metaphysics (London, 1901), I, iv.

I think for many, classical education includes denying America's racial history.

For many, education in general involves denying America's racial history. People who want to do this can and will attempt to do it as much in one education style as any other.

Last time I checked, Florida school curriculum requires describing the benefits black people were provided by slavery.

First, those are guidelines for Florida public schools in general, it has nothing to do with classical schools (which are largely private).

Second, did you read the guidelines in question? The guideline is phrased poorly, but this is a fairly bad misrepresentation.

The offending bullet point in question (the document is not a narrative history) could be taught poorly or well, but I take it the point is that African American slaves were not exclusively menial laborers and that some were able to leverage their skills (indeed, sometimes to aid the abolitionist cause). This is something that can be taught well or poorly, just as teaching that some Jews acted as concentration camp enforcers for the Nazis in exchange for preferential treatment need not be an apologia for death camps (indeed, this detail seems more fraught, but one can hardly call covering it "whitewashing.")

By the metric used by critics though, Mike Duncan's analysis of the Haitian Revolution, which depicts slavery there as nothing short of "Hell on Earth," would also be "whitewashing history," because it discusses the fact that some slaves were able to escape the incredibly lethal agricultural work on the island through their vocations (in turn allowing them to take leadership roles during the Revolt, which is also relevant to how leaders emerged during Reconstruction).

The offending passage is surrounded by guidelines stating that students should be required to read primary sources written by abolitionists and former slaves, learn the history of slave revolts, etc., so, taken as a whole, it is hardly the apologia for slavery it was represented as, and certainly not "slaves benefited from being enslaved," as the Florida teachers' union put it. No doubt, some conservatives do want to whitewash uncomfortable areas of history, but it is almost as unhelpful to demand that they be reduced to manichean narratives and sanitized of any offending complexities.

Remember too that classical education was king when colonisation, slavery and institutionalised misogyny and racism were key instruments of power.

Misogyny and racism have been endemic to the human race throughout history. They aren't exactly a unique product of the West. They are, for instance, present in most of the classics of non-western literature to some degree. But there is also plenty of value there as well.

Anyhow, that's an incredibly broad "guilt by (loose) association" critique. You could just as well argue in favor of it because it was the dominant mode of education for the elite when slavery was abolished, universal education funded, child labor ended, and women's suffrage passed, etc.



I wholeheartedly agree.



Well, what do you mean by "leg up" and "benefit?" I agree that Boethius probably isn't going to help you earn a bunch more money, or be able to consume more (the most common metric for educational success these days). And, if you take him to heart, he probably won't do much for your social status. However, he might remind you that these are ultimately not the most important things in life, or maybe even particularly important things.

I find it a bit ironic that so much of our culture revolves around denigrating elites for their moral failings (a hobby of both the right and the left). Yet we also hear all the time about what a rat race the kids of elite families are forced into. It seems to me that defining success the way we do (largely in terms of power, wealth, and status, without reference to virtue) is a great way to end up with adults who are poor leaders.

How should I know?



I hardly see how this is the case. Obedience to proper authority is part of "right behavior." If children refuse to listen to their parents or teachers, employees refuse to listen to their bosses, citizens refuse to listen to the police or tax collectors, nurses assisting a surgeon refuse to obey the surgeon, cops refuse to obey elected officials, etc. there will be obvious problems.

This is fairly obvious is contemporary American society, where we see police forces (paramilitary organizations) openly heckling what are essentially their commanders-in-chief (i.e., mayors, sheriff's, commissioners) and responding to orders with: "nope, don't feel like doing that," or "maybe if you pay us a large donative we will consider following that order." For instance, when elected officials try to respond to citizens concerns and anger over law enforcement, impunity, etc., a not uncommon response has been for forces to simply to stop doing their jobs in protest.

Simply ignoring the rule of law is another example. Yet such behavior by those in positions of relative authority only makes sense in a frame where the "common good" is merely a means of maximizing the fulfillment of the individuals' desires, and where there is no such thing as "right desire," but merely acts that maximize utility—the fulfillment of existing desire—or fail to.

Unfortunately, because World War II has become something of the foundational mythos of modern Western liberalism, obedience to proper authority has become something of fraught issue. But obedience still gets taught in primary schools because it would be impossible to run them without it. "Don't listen to any authority unless they tell you to do things you want to do," is obviously disastrous though, even with issues as banal as traffic lights and stop signs. But it's also a sort of historical myopia, because many of histories great disasters stem, not from totalitarianism, but from a collapse of authority and precedent. Indeed, often authoritarianism is itself the result of a collapse in proper authority, the strong, but capricious ruler preferable to abject chaos.

E.g., the refrain in the Book of Judges: "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes," which is particularly noteworthy because the monarchy is not represented as a positive thing, some divinely sanctioned plan for society, but rather a largely negative consequence of the people's inability to abide by the authority of moral law and their collapse into genocidal civil wars.

The former I would expect to be located in a quaint New England town, the latter in the hills of Southern Appalachia.

Right, the dominant mode of Evangelical religious education was to focus heavily on the Bible and particularly on modern interpretations of it. The classical education tends to take a much broader view, centered around the liberal arts, which is why it is sort of a sea change.

It's perhaps important to distinguish it from the subject area of "classics," which focuses pretty exclusively on Greek and Roman culture in antiquity. The traditional liberal arts education is a lot broader than this, it doesn't preclude reading the Brothers Karamazov or Song of Solomon, which are generally considered to be classics of Russian and American literature. What it would do is approach them through a particular methodology and structure.

The boom of which you speak is the mouse's squeak, but loud, not weak.

Indeed, still quite small. Homeschooling and private education as a whole has blown up since the Pandemic though, so that is part of it.



Maybe, although I somehow doubt that is a major concern of most parents. More a sort of bandwagon to jump on maybe. I do know Desantis sort of jumped on it for Florida but I have my doubts about how successful that will be. It seems like the sort of thing where hiring is very important (the material is complex, although certainly teachable to teenagers), and doing some sort of rapid mass expansion seems liable to make doing the job well quite difficult unfortunately. I don't think simply shifting the curricula probably does much.

However, it's at least an improvement on solely focusing on earnings prospects (and thus future ability to consume as the goal of education), or, in the religious/homeschooling context, a narrow focus on religious education within a fairly small echo chamber.

but putting control in the hands of conservative ideologues strikes me as dangerous, especially these days.

I don't see how a classical education entails this. I am aware that more than a few liberal outlets have put forth hit pieces advancing the theory that "classical education" is simply a "dog whistle" for "racist Christian nationalism," but at least from my main exposure to the movement (e.g. the "Common Place" podcast on Charlotte Mason/classical ed, or "Classical Stuff You Should Know") this seems every bit as unhinged and based on vague guilt by association as the right wing drive to "stop critical race theory from taking over public education." It's something like "look at what some professors/activists at this university have said somewhere else, and look, they're vaguely involved in this charter school over here. And look who donated. It's Soros/the Koch brothers, so it's clearly woke communism/Christian white nationalism!"

Aside from that, the main critique seems to be the a classical education necessarily cuts out "other views." I don't think this is true, and it certainly isn't necessarily true. This seems like people simply jumping to false conclusions, assuming that "classical" must mean "never reading anything that isn't Latin or Greek." But the podcast I mentioned before is by teachers at a classical high school and they talk about teaching the books they discuss, many of which are modern.

Anyhow, this complaint always struck me as somewhat off base, because what is really meant by "diversity?" Are kids in mainline schools reading the classics of other cultures? Confucius, Al Farabi, or Shankara? The Tale of the Genji, Journey to the West, or the Thousand and One Nights? Generally, no. If anything, I'd imagine students might be more likely to read these in a classical setting. (Actually, more and more often, students don't read any complete books anyhow, only short excerpts).

Sometimes "diverse perspectives" seems to mean merely: "more modern books by those with a squarely secular outlook, still from Western countries, but who have ancestry from somewhere other than Europe (or maybe some Western-centered diaspora writing catering to Western audiences). Yet even if one sticks to a narrow view of classical occidental literature, is the range from Scotland to the Persia from 500BC to 1700 or so, really "homogenous" compared to contemporary literature published largely after 1900 in the US by people of differing ethnicities?

The 'perennial philosophers' who hark back to the so-called world wisdom traditions are often arch-conservative, to the point of being reactionary.

Some, yes. Parts of Plato (although other parts are fairly radical, and his mentor was executed for subverting tradition, not defending it), Confucius, Cicero, even Boethius to some degree. But others are fairly radical, challenging existing power structures, for instance Augustine or Dante.

But then, so much of what is taken for granted - the new normal, so to speak - is wildly radical in their eyes, and we don't see it, because we're immersed in it.

Yes, and this is also true to some degree outside of the West. I

Obviously, if people want to make a thread to discuss objections to climate change related theories or mitigation efforts, they are welcome to. I am a little reticent about having to take on moderating a Lounge topic about a fairly complex empirical topic.

For one thing, when it comes to mitigation there are plenty of valid concerns about the costs of any particular mitigation efforts/policy outweighing the benefits, particularly since both economies and ecosystems are very complex and full of tipping points. Hence, it hardly seems right to disallow any questioning of particular policies or projections.

So, it might be better just to flag low quality or troll posts.

The old site is archived too: https://web.archive.org/web/20130925165535/http://www.thedarkenlightenment.com/the-dark-enlightenment-by-nick-land/

I have tried to discuss Land, Yarvin, BAP, etc. here before, but not gotten any takers. Secondary sources (largely from journalists) tend to be absolutely horrendous here. They see the lable of "traditionalist" and just parrot it unquestioningly, missing that the appeal to "tradition" is almost wholly aesthetic, or to the "traditionalists" of the early 20th century (e.g. Evola, Guenon, etc.), the movement itself being essentially a sort of right-wing post-modernism. Deleuze, Foucault, Nietzsche, Hume—these are the waters Land swam in prior to his political leanings leading to a sort of exile, not, as coverage might sometimes suggest, Cicero or Epictetus. But then the primary sources are not always particularly accessible (BAP is, it's just written in annoying memespeak).





They will probably only try to unwind some of DoE's enforcement mandates and side programs. Their main role is acting as a pass through for federal funds that go to local school districts and managing and astoundingly large loan portfolio. The largest, Title I and IDEA, for low income and special ed students, go all over the country, to rural and urban areas alike, in all the states. It would be extremely unpopular to hold these back since most school districts and many local governments run on a June 1st fiscal year and have already begun making their budgets.

I suppose they could just not disperse the funds. It wouldn't be catastrophic. Even in school districts that are like 90+% low income, Title I isn't a huge share of the budget. However, it is a meaningful share, a few %, which would mean a few million dollars in shortfalls for even smaller districts with like 5,000 students. It's actually normally a comparably larger share of total funding in poor rural and Republican led states, because there tends to be lower state and local funding there.

And, while reforms to the student loan process would be welcome, simply revoking access to credit overnight won't work. It would have a massive effect on the university system and leave people part-way through degrees stranded, curtailing the supply of new doctors, engineers, etc. So, I imagine they will have to tread much more carefully here.

I will say though that critical readings work very well for answering other sorts of questions. For instance, Isaiah very likely has writing from different people, perhaps part of a single "school." Ezekiel, by contrast, is very likely the work of a single man with minimal editing.

That is the "critical style" of reading the Scriptures, i.e. the focus on authorial intent and cultural setting. It is quite popular, obviously in academia, but also in Protestant, and even some Catholic circles. Not too long ago I was reading Jean-Claude Larchet's _What is Theology?: An Orthodox Methodology_, and it, like many Orthodox outlooks, is critical of this approach. It sees it as breaking up the unity of the text, and taking away our ability to interpret one part of the text through another.

I think both are useful. The critical approach has some drawbacks that aren't readily apparent though. To his point, even on an entirely atheistic outlook, there is a danger here in that a focus on "the original authors" tends to occlude the very intentional decisions made in compiling the texts, preserving them, and vis-a-vis their acceptance as Canonical, all of which looked towards a certain unity. For example, some studies of Kings will spend most of their effort trying to figure out which proposed "sources" correspond to which lines, their historical setting, etc. However, such an analysis can overshadow the role of the compilers and editors of a books like I & II Kings. (BTW, no one denies it is a compilation, it makes frequent reference to its sources, which are now lost).

Second, how people of the same culture, with the same native language interpreted the same texts relatively shortly after they were set down (e.g. how the Apostolic Fathers, who knew the Apostles or those who they trained, viewed the New Testament) seems like an important witness to me. Sometimes critical approaches do privilege these, but sometimes they don't (which, IMO, is usually a mistake).

There are other difficulties here. History, as a field, is not immune to ideological currents. I've heard professors lecture on how all history should be analyzed through the "holy trinity" of "race, sex, and class," and prior to such sentiments there was also the drive to reduce history to economics and political economy. Hence, we get readings of the "David story" in the books of Samuel and the start of I Kings as "a compilation of political propaganda pieces." There is a "Sauline propaganda narrative," a "Davidic" one, and a "prophetic one" (which looks to the prerogatives of the Levites).

This sort of analysis of I & II Samuel has fallen into disrepute, because of both the unity of style and dramatic elements use throughout the books of Samuel and because, if these stories are supposed to be "propaganda," they are pretty terrible at that role. The entire second half of the David story is a tragedy, one where David's shortcomings play the key role. Things like the literary echo of David, as a now feeble old man being confused by the sound of conflict outside during the coup attempt at the start of I Kings, as recalling/echoing the situation of the priest Eli at the opening of I Samuel, seems hardly the incidental work of "splicing propaganda narratives."

Yet, I think the most obvious drawback to the critical reading technique (which may be useful in some cases) is that it is usually incredibly speculative, and even experts seem to often forget just how speculative it is. You get things like Bart Ehrman claiming to have successfully psychoanalyzed the author of Revelation through his access to the text alone, such that he can determine that the author "made Jesus God" specifically to one up Roman claims to their emperor's divinity. This is frankly, ridiculous. Or we get claims about "recovering what the Apostles really thought about Jesus when he died" from people who also claim we don't have a single letter of authentic writing from any of these people. Yes, such speculation is in part just a way to sell books, but it seeps its way into scholarship as well.

One might think that critical methods would at least acts as a bulwark against the tendency of every generation to reread old texts and "discover" that the authors of the classics all had sensibilities just like them. It probably can fulfill that function in the right hands. But it seems to get employed just as often to give us bizarre characters like "the 'secular humanist Dante' who admires the damned in Hell (who “conquer it” through the triumph of the human spirit)", or "the 'skeptical Plato' who wrote 2,000 pages of complex dialogues as a sort of ironic reminder that “all we can know is that we cannot know much of anything," and who was then immediately badly misread by all the people he spent decades teaching as well as later thinkers who shared a native language with him."


Which is all a bit of a rant I know.

So things like method and ontology are devices we're bringing to the text to make sense of it more than what the writers were thinking about in writing.

I agree on method, perhaps not on ontology. People thought about metaphysics in the era when these texts were set down. It's just that they didn't go about philosophy in the systematic way the Greeks would later start doing.

There is a (quite speculative) thesis that Plato got the idea of the forms from Egyptian Memphite theology for instance. There are similarities I'm told, and going way back it was always a story that Plato went to Egypt and studied there. Regarding the Bible, Ecclesiastes is obviously more explicitly philosophical, and parts of it feel like they could have been written in the 20th century.

In the later books, e.g. the Wisdom of Solomon, a sort of philosophy is more explicit. Here, it is often hypothesized that Stoicism and "middle Platonism" are some of the key inspirations, however it's entirely possible it could be a sort of convergent evolution, or less direct influence. But the Greeks were there, and Solon's proverb advising that we "count no man happy until he is dead" makes it in, so a direct influence seems totally possible.

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"

Well, Ur-Trumper Steve Bannon has already had his ire raised and proclaimed that Musk should be "deported back to Africa."



One can incite people without doing anything illegal. Hell, people can do things that are corrupt without breaking the law. For instance, both the Clinton's speaking fee arrangements and several of the "gifts" accepted by Supreme Court justices (particularly Thomas) would be slam dunk felony offenses for local or state officials, and for lower level federal employees. It is completely illegal to let someone with whom you have official business give you hundreds of thousands in "gifts" or to let them buy a house for your mother, even if you are just a volunteer member of some local zoning board. This is true regardless of what the intent was. Merely allowing for the appearances of corruption is a felony for most officials.

For the most powerful officials, it isn't illegal at all. The people at the top of the federal government have long been exempt from anti-corruption legislation aimed at lower level federal workers and they have refused to pass laws aimed at fighting corruption and the appearance of corruption that are common at the state level. Based on recent SCOTUS rulings, it's not even clear if an explicit selling of pardons would be illegal. The parties will accuse each other of corruption, but they seem loathe to actually do anything about it.

Clearly illegality is not the proper benchmark of corruption, nor is it the proper benchmark for "incitement."

The aid or presence of the Spirit does not usually suggest divinity though. The "Holy Spirit," the "Spirit of the LORD," etc. comes to/upon prophets throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The support of the Spirit, or its "rushing/descending upon," someone, or aiding them, need not imply anything like even Arianism (i.e. Christ as the "first creature," through which and for which all things are created) let alone the Trinity (i.e. the Son/Logos as fully God). Hence, this need not be contradictory at all.

The Hebrew Scriptures, which are also embraced by Christians, have God's Spirit (viz. the distinct person of the Holy Spirit for Christians) "rushing upon" Gideon and Sampson in the Book of Judges, for instance. Neither are God, or even particularly flawless exemplars piety and righteousness. The Apostles likewise possess the Spirit, as do those they convert. St. Paul has it that the bodies of all Christians are "temples of the Holy Spirit," (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and indeed this feeds into the theme of illumination, theosis, and adoption into deification (St. Athanasius' "God became man that man might become God."

In Acts 8, Simon Magus actually offers to pay Simon Peter to give him the Holy Spirit so that he can have more sorcerous powers. In Acts, Simon Magus is simply rebuked, and even seems like he might of learned his lesson, but in apocryphal sources he continues on and even tries to contest the Apostles. Hence the term "simony" and "simoniacs" for those who buy and sell Church offices. He's also potentially where we get the image of witches flying broom sticks, because he flies around St. Peter as he enters Rome, basically showing off his sorcery to win followers away from Peter. Peter piously prays and Simon Magus crashes from the air and plunges into the ground with only his feet sticking out (the punishment which Dante will later give to the simoniacs and Lucifer—the image of being inverted and uselessly kicking without the ability to move being a metaphor for the misdirection and impotence of sin and spiritual sickness).

Does this mean that the Qur'an declares that Jesus is God, yes or no? Open question for everyone.

No, it is quite explicit about this. For example Surah An-Nisa - 171:

O People of the Book! Do not go to extremes regarding your faith; say nothing about Allah except the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was no more than a messenger of Allah and the fulfilment of His Word through Mary and a spirit ˹created by a command˺ from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers and do not say, “Trinity.” Stop!—for your own good. Allah is only One God. Glory be to Him! He is far above having a son! To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And Allah is sufficient as a Trustee of Affairs.

Or in other words, I don't think there is a clear case to be made for the primacy of the will over the primacy of the intellect, as if the will must be regenerated before and independently of the intellect. Still, insofar as our age overemphasizes intellect, an emphasis on the will is meet.

To take but one example, "blindness" to signs is simultaneously an intellectual defect and a volitional defect. Additionally, that some abuse signs does not mean that others do not properly use them, and the Bible is filled with both types. There is even serpentine Ahaz who refuses to ask for a sign for all the wrong reasons, and this captures the way that intellect and will are all mixed together.

:up: I wholeheartedly agree. And with the Patristics, it is often the nous in particular that has become subject to corruption and must be regenerated. Or, for another example, right at the center of the Commedia Dante has four cantos of discourses on love ("love" being the word at the exact middle of all the words written), and there it is "rational love" that allows "natural love" to go astray. Love, in responding to beauty, is equally divided between the will and the intellect.

For instance, how is one to recognize "true beauty" if the intellect has fallen into the Anglo-empiricist schema of viewing beauty as nothing but "the pleasure experienced associated with some sense datum?"

It certainly takes the wind out of Plato's sails: And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

It's both philosophical and Scriptural. So on the latter, there is:

• Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
• Malachi 3:6 - For I the LORD do not change
• James 1:17 - Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
• Numbers 23:19 - God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.(This is repeated in I Samuel and I'm pretty sure elsewhere).
• Hebrews 6:17–20 - So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
• Psalm 102 - to paraphrase: the world will wear out and pass away, but God never changes (Ecclesiastes has similar lines)

From a philosophical perspective there are several lines of argument:

• Aristotle's argument that the Prime Mover must be pure act with no potency. Something without potency cannot change. If God had any potency, then the part of God that was pure act would be the part that was really the Prime Mover (and in any event, God having parts was also denied).
• Boethius' argument that to be mutable is to not possess all of oneself at once (made less well by others previously.)
• Boethius and others argument that God does not exist in time and is not a thing.
• The difficulty of explaining what God's will would be attracted towards if it changed since God is the Good itself by which all things are good.
• The difficulty in explaining how anything would act on God if God is the ground of all being "in which we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17).
• The idea that causes/principles have a higher ontological level than their effects (downwards causality), but that God is the first principle.
• The idea that true knowledge must be of the immutable "intelligibles," and that these were generally thought of as "ideas in the mind of God/Logos." If they were changing, knowledge would be impossible; but knowledge is possible, thus they cannot be changing.

I'm sure there are others. These are the "classical" ones, "classical "simply in the sense that they are old and embraced by the Church Fathers.

Yes, God also "repents" of making Saul king over Israel in I Samuel. Aside from being immutable, God is often taken to be impassible, but there are many references to changes in God's emotional state in Scripture. This is often interpreted as figurative, instructional, or analogical language. Then there is also the distinction between knowledge of God's energies, which are immanent and mutable in effects, and God's essence (generally held to be unknowable and immutable).

The latter is probably the distinction most often called upon re "God's changing acts in history."

I think the common theme of my comment and your quote from Moevs' is that it doesn't make sense to think that God, at least this kind of God, is limited or defined by human conceptions or logic. That would put us somehow above God.

That's certainly one way the difficulties have been taken, particularly in the modern period. The opposing view would tend to be that "human concepts and logic" come from "the world" and thus reflect the way the world is, the way "being is." That is, our concepts and logic come from the world at the individual level (i.e. from learning and sense experience), and perhaps also at the species level (our lineage's interaction with being, and the effects of this interaction at the biological and cultural level). On the assumption of a creator, such notions come, ultimately, from the creator.

This makes God, in the terminology of Dionysius the Areopagite superintelligible as opposed to unintelligible. A key difference then is that God does not violate rationality, is not devoid of it as First Principle and source of the Logos, but is rather beyond human logos. Yet the transcendent is not absent from what it transcends.

This allows for an approach to philosophical theology that runs through the via negative, apophatic theology that precedes by negation (e.g. "what God is not.") But others go a step further with the analogy of being, the analgoia entis, whereby God is approached through analogy. On this view, "wise" can be intelligibly predicated of God. This is not the predication of mere human wisdom, but it is also not an entirely equivocal usage either. It is an analogy of proper proportion.

Either approach might work for the OP since the question seems to be more about implying something about God from what is thought to be true of creation. However, I agree that it is a topic where things are fraught.

The idea would be that it is indeed a revealed truth that Jesus is God. But then I have to ask: must everyone have this revelation? If someone is simply incapable of appreciating this truth, or if someone has no faith whatsoever, what would be the best course of action for the Christian, then?

Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house. (Ezekiel 12:2, see also: Matthew 13:15, Jeremiah 5:21, Isaiah 6:10)

Responses here vary. In some (modern) theologies there is a strong division between the "natural" and "supernatural." Man, owing to his entirely fallen nature, can only recognize God through supernatural intervention. Man can see the evidence for God, enough to be under condemnation, but never enough to repent (a reading of Romans 1:20 that tends to downplay natural theology).

This is a minority view though. The Church Fathers often frame sin in terms of disease, and ignorance of what is truly best, God, in terms of disordered and improper love. Everything in the cosmos is moved by love, and a sign of its First Principle, beginning and ending in the Good (viz. existus et reditus). And on this view, it is the pursuit of virtue and wisdom (through grace) that turns one from the desire for base and worldly things to the questioning pursuit of what is truly best and actually true.

Such a pursuit is always questioning because it always involves transcending what one already is, the given of existing belief and desire, and it is always ecstatic, going beyond oneself to something else. But this is precisely the sort of "transformative journey" (man as "pilgrim") where demonstration is unlikely to play a major role. And indeed in evangelism, demonstration normally does not play a major role, and if it does, it is a sort of intermediary demonstration aimed at either demonstrating the choiceworthyness of virtue (not always even the theological virtues), the shortcomings of all finite goods, or else pointing out error in ascribing to God the features of a finite idol.

Hence, in terms of "argument," it is not "lack of signs" but "eyes to see" that tends to be the focus, just as one would not attempt to teach a blind man something using pictures until one has unclouded their sight.

12. The creatures of this sensible world signify the invisible things of God [Rom. 1:20], partly because God is of all creation the origin, exemplar, and end, and because every effect is the sign of its cause, the exemplification of the exemplar, and the way to the end to which it leads; partly from its proper representation; partly from prophetic prefiguration; partly from angelic operation; partly from further ordination. For every creature is by nature a sort of picture and likeness of that eternal wisdom, but especially that which in the book of Scripture is elevated by the spirit of prophecy to the prefiguration of spiritual things. But more does the eternal wisdom appear in those creatures in whose likeness God wished to appear in angelic ministry. And most specially does it appear in those which He wished to institute for the purpose of signifying which are not only signs according to their common name but also Sacraments.

13. From all this it follows that the invisible things of God are clearly seen, from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made; so that those who are unwilling to give heed to them and to know God in them all, to bless Him and to love Him, are inexcusable [Rom. 1:20], while they are unwilling to be carried forth from the shadows into the wonderful light of God . But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who has transported us out of darkness into His wonderful light, when through these lights given from without we are disposed to re- enter into the mirror of our mind, in which the divine lights shine .

St. Bonaventure - Itinerarium Mentis in Deum. Chapter 2.12-13

(There is a tangentially related issue here of culpability, in that one is only culpable to the extent that one can know that one's actions are wrong, and this is why the sins of concupiscence, of wrong desire, have almost always been seen as much less severe than sins involving the conscious misuse of the intellect, e.g. fraud).

Here, it is sometimes taken that an appeal to the cardinal virtues (justice, fortitude, prudence, and temperance) may be the first "medicine," just as Lady Philosophy gives Boethius the "numbing medicine" of Stoicism to quench his despair before bringing him on the philosophical/erotic ascent in the Consolation. Because if the issue is taken to be the corruption and degeneration of the nous, demonstration cannot be the first step.

So:

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8)

But in terms of revelation as solely "miraculous" empirical data, would it even work? The Hebrews wandered the desert with the pillar of fire and rebelled. The prophet Elijah fed the Widow of Zarephath and her son continually on their last small bit of flour and oil, yet only when he brought her son back to life, an even greater miracle, did she finally proclaim: " Now by this I know that thou art a man of God" (I Kings 17:24). Likewise, St. Thomas saw the risen Christ and would not believe until he had touched him:

"Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." (John 20:29)

Earlier in John we see:

Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man. (John 2:23-24)

And in Kings, shortly after Elijah asks God to kill him because he cannot bear the suffering of his prophetic mission (a common refrain among the prophets), sensible signs are given:

He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence (I Kings 19:11-13, emphasis mine)

But God "is not in" any of the signs. As to God's presence in the "sheer silence," Scripture is silent. An intriguing message, since no ear hears silence, it is rather the absence of the sensible species.

If it is not a revealed truth that Jesus is God, then Jesus is not God.

Hmm, I get trying to mirror the Christian argument, and I feel like it mostly works, but it does leave room for a few weird objections to P1 on the grounds that "Christ is God" is true, but that this is not "revealed truth."

Would anyone genuinely argue such a thing? I sort of doubt it. There are some people who argued that Christ can be known through natural reason alone because the Gospels are "fitting," a sort of "rationalist theology" that crops up in the 19th century. However, I'm pretty sure these folks said it was both revealed truth and accessible/confirmable through reason, not that it wasn't a revealed truth.

And I suppose some people could argue that Christ is God but that there is no evidence for this, making it not "revealed truth." Rather, faith is essential precisely because there is no evidence and it cannot be inferred as true or even likely. This second view might be more common actually. However, it seems like a quibble since presumably they would still say that they believe Christ is God due to revelation, just that such a thing is not "proven true by evidence/reason," if that makes sense.

You apparently do not understand your own terms. Or maybe you do. I should like to see you make the sandwich of which you have an idea. Of course you won't need anything at all from the grocery store, yes? Or for that matter anything at all that can be called real, or that exists, right? It's ideas all the way down that you're somehow going to make real.

Now I agree you can think about a corned beef on rye, and you can make or buy a real corned beef on rye sandwich. And I will wager that you can tell the difference between the idea of a sandwich and a real sandwich. You can, can't you?

The two terms distinguish what can be real, and what, as idea, cannot be. That's what it says. Maybe read it again?

I see what you're saying now. The idea is that something with independent existence, like a fox or a sandwich, can be an intentional object of thought. So, St. Anselm's question is whether or not God exists only as an intentional object of human thought, an entity with dependent existence, or is an entity with independent existence. That something is an intentional object of thought does not preclude it being an independent entity. If it did, all the concepts we use to think could never be related to anything that exists outside our mind.

At least in the framework Anselm is assuming, that something is an object of thought doesn't preclude it from being ens reale (this would be a "first intention"). You bring up an interesting point though, because in modern representationalism we might make a stronger distinction here. Still, most representationalists will allow that the objects of thought can have existence independent of the mind, elsewise it seems that the world would be epistemically inaccessible. This actually seems particularly problematic for those who would claim that we only ever experience mental representations.



Yes, if A is possibly necessary than it is necessary. Plantinga has an intuitive explanation of this. If something is possibly necessary then it is necessary in at least one possible world. But to be necessary is to be necessary in all possible worlds.

That seems unobjectionable. However, "if any thing is necessary, then everything is necessary" or essentially "either everything is contingent or nothing is," seems to be problematic for a system that's supposed to let us discuss modality. I can't find any source that discusses this consequence though.

Plantinga argues that God's creative acts are contingent and that if God is possible then God is necessary.

Yes, some want to leave. Most want to stay.

I would assume this is likely true. But this is precisely why I don't get the blanket denial on letting people leave. In particular, some people had the courage to speak out with journalists about their unhappiness with Hamas during the war, and might very well be facing retribution. This is a case where someone would normally have a good asylum claim. Likewise, particularly effective critics of Israel might have similar concerns.

Smart people are not always wise. They can be subject to ideological blinders outside their areas of expertise. At least some of the those pardoned for their acts on January 6th were comically guilty, caught on tape assaulting police officers because they were angry that their candidate lost an election. "The masses who fell victim to psychological warfare to wonder what made them so vulnerable to manipulation," thing is ironic.

Was it overblown to claim a bunch of disorganized rioters were a "coup?" Sure. Is it even more ridiculous to claim that people who are on video committing felony offenses are the "victims" of politicized prosecutions? Absolutely. As is the idea that "actually, there is a vast conspiracy we just don't have evidence of that really, the rioters were tricked into rioting. Yes, the crowd control wasn't tight enough, and they used pepper spray, clearly and indication that they were trying to bait people into rioting!" You know, because tourists also generally begin looting and vandalizing things when they are "let in" as well trying to kick down barricades until one of them is shot dead. Just tourist things.

You know, because peaceful protestors often bring their own pepper spray to demonstrate and then they just get viciously tricked into spraying into police officers faces. :roll:

For instance, Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument, was anything but inciting.

He literally said the election was stolen in that speech. How can that be anything but inciting?

Many who were present hoped the president would reveal new information—about evidence of fraud

Yes indeed. Evidence given those claims would have been nice. It's weird how even a loyalist like Barr left over no such evidence existing.

I see attraction to deflationary theories because I don't like to decide metaphysical questions on the epistemic side -- there's going to be implications no matter what, but the epistemic side is attempting to minimize the number of implications a given theory of truth will have.

I see. From my point of view, "nothing is really true tout court, but this varies by context," seems like a very consequential metaphysical position. It claims that most metaphysical outlooks (certainly historically, but also likely in contemporary thought) are crucially mistaken.

Likewise, what is the status of moral realism when the truth values of moral facts are allowed to vary based on "whim," as you put it?

One can bracket the question of "what is truth," and investigate how the term is used in language, mathematics, etc. without having to commit to deflation however. I do not agree that it is a position that comes with fewer commitments. Agnosticism would be a position that comes with fewer commitments.

Deflation is at least a position though, and I respect it for that. The only approach that really irks me is the methodology of trying to present every significant philosophical problem as a "pseudoproblem." Some problems are pseudoproblems of course, but these folks are like someone who thinks every problem must be a nail because they have discovered a hammer.

But you obviously still cannot talk about that without words - the intellectual activity of truthing is then asserting 'what is the case' with words.

What about mathematical modeling? Or drawings, diagrams, sculpture, and other forms of artistic depiction? Can't lies be carried off with more than words?

These all seem like they can be more or less truthful depictions of their subject matter. We speak of "truthful depictions," in drama, and paintings as "true to life," and the same is true for historical replicas or scale models (the latter of which once played a major role in engineering). Likewise, artifacts, words, etc. can be more or less true to our intentions, a different sort of truth. Hence, true can be predicated in many ways.

I also think the focus on language might be massively underselling the role of the unconscious/subconscious processes involved in cognition, something we've discussed earlier.

Words are also not a perfect representation of what is in the intellect (truth to intentions). A perfect example of this is the Stroop Test.



It is much more difficult for people to properly report the correct names of the color of text font rapidly if they are given the names of colors spelled out in a font that is a different color. People go much slower and make more mistakes. If you just do colored squares, instead of text, this effect disappears.

A view that looked only at words and behavioral outputs might conclude that this somehow shows a difficulty in our ability to know colors in such cases. However, this is not how it is interpreted because it is obvious, from a phenomenological perspective, that the colors still appear to us as obviously as they always do. The difficulty lies in word recall, in overriding a strong habit of reading text irrespective of color (and likely due to neuroanatomy as well). Yet the truth of what color things appear to us as is about as surface level as one can get. The truth is certainly not absent from the intellect until the correct words are found, and this is shown by the fact that unfocusing one's eyes so that one cannot read the text makes the task extremely easy again. Similarly, someone with aphasia who cannot produce speech can still know a great many truths and communicate this in other ways.

I think it's determined by the individual's whim more than even usefulness.

Truth is determined by whims? Am I reading that right? But surely someone can decide that it is "true" that their flying machine will work, "on a whim," and then be corrected when it slams into the ground. Truth asserts itself. People can claim that pigs and goats are the same species all they like, "on a whim," but if they try to feed their family by mating the two they will starve. They will be forced to assent to the truth.

I prefer deflationary theories of truth if we have to say anything about truth at all, but usually I think it's best to understand truth as something very simple, which is part of why it escapes our theorizing. The deflationary theory is there to try and escape some of the criticisms of the substantive theories of truth, but for the most part I take it that truth is embedded in language -- it's a meta-lingual predicate which talks about sentences and the properties we attribute to sentences. Our changing a theory of truth won't change truth, but it's really only because we like truth -- attribute truth to sentences -- that we wonder about and theorize about truth.

I would disagree. For one, animals don't use language, but they certainly seem to have beliefs and to get flustered when what they believed to be the case turns out not to be. Likewise, human who are non-verbal do not seem incapable of being perturbed by illusions, knowing they have been deceived, etc.

I would put it this way: "truth is the adequacy of thought to being." That sentences can be true or false is parasitic on the fact that language is a product of the intellect. Language thus functions as a sign of truth in the intellect. "True" is predicated of speech acts and text analogically, they are signs of truth in the same way that a healthy complexion is a sign of health (but complexions do not possess truth fully themselves). The focus on formal logic to the exclusion of material logic (form in the absence of content) occludes this fact. Yet a non-verbal person, or the victim of aphasia, clearly seems capable of having beliefs that are either true or false, even if they are not expressed in language.

Many philosophers also admit of a distinction between ontological truth, the truth of things, and truth as the conformity of language to things. We can also see how this works in terms of lying. When we lie, our words are not signs of our beliefs (although a lie may be, by coincidence, a true statement, and it may reveal something about our true beliefs).

I think part of the motivation for deflation arises from the position that truth applies only to sentences. Such a position seems to lead down that path. Perhaps the idea that knowledge is just belief that happens to be justified and true also leads down this way. Earlier eras distinguished between many types of knowledge. Continental philosophy also tends to be more likely to differentiate many types of knowledge. Plato had four, Aristotle five (and arguably more). "Knowing how to ride a bike," sense knowledge, noeisis, etc. However, if knowledge, the grasp of truth, is always propositional, then it makes more sense for sentences to be the primary bearers of truth, and also for what is "known" or "true" to vary by language game.

Anyhow, an interesting consequence of sentences being true "of themselves" without relation to the intellect is that a random text generator "contains" all truths. There is some interesting stuff to unpack there. From an information theoretic perspective, a random text generator only provides information about its randomization process, the semantic meaning of any output being accidental (and highly unlikely).

↪Count Timothy von Icarus your post amounts to justifying making conditions terrible enough for people to want to leave and then ask "why is it bad that they want to leave?" I'm all for avoiding death and suffering but let's not blame the victims shall we

Where did I do that?

Do you think I drew the comparison to between Israel and Assad, Hitler, the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from across the Middle East, and the Germans from Eastern Europe because I thought those were all clear examples where the aggressor was justified?

Let me ask, was it "justifying" the Hutu genocide of the Tutsi to allow Tutsi civilians to flee over Rwanda's borders?

Why is this different? Why in this one case must refugees desperate to flee a war zone be penned in? Why was it acceptable for Yazidis to flee, and for countries to help them, even as it "gave ISIS what they wanted," and helped erase them from the region? Or was it not, should the Yazidis have been forced to stay?

I know why the Arabs absolutely opposed letting Gazans have the status of other refugees. One, because they don't want to deal with the potential political unrest and fallout. Libya and Qatar previously ethnically cleansed their Palestinians, close to 500,000 were expelled in the later case. The history in Jordan and Lebanon is significantly more bloody. So there is a fear of getting embroiled in a in political or military conflict.

However, I hardly think this remains the main reason. The real reason is far more dubious. Even today, Christian nationalists and ethno nationalists fantasize about the day when "Constantinople will be reclaimed by the West." This was a major goal of the Russian Empire in WWI, the "Third Rome" restoring the "Second Rome" and the historical heart of Eastern Christendom. It's part of why they kept gambling on a losing war, even after the Tsar fell. That was half a millennia after Muslims took the city. The appeal to "one day" retake Jerusalem is every bit as strong in the Arab world.

This is explicitly why Gaddafi ethnically cleansed his Palestinian population. The PLO was considering a two state solution, and this meant giving up claims of reconquest. He also advised all other Arab states to do the same, a punishment for not being willing to "tough it out" until the day of victory. This is also explicitly why Hamas carried out its massive terror campaign, to try to derail the formation of a Palestinian state because it would be giving up claims on territory, primarily Jerusalem.

Obviously, Christian powers would form alliances with the Ottomans over the centuries. They accepted their short to medium term existence, all while holding out for the day of reconquest. The same is true for many vis-a-vis Israel. This is obvious in the case of the Europeans, since they pounced on the opportunity to retake the city when it finally came and just failed to win the city back.

That is why Gaza is the one place where there can be active urban fighting, but it would be "wrong" to allow women and children to leave the fighting. This is why the idea of even allowing voluntary temporary relocation to Europe is condemned. The Palestinians are there to function in much the same way that Russians settled in Ukraine after the Holodomor, or Germans settled out east during German conquests, to hold the land, or at least a claim on it, by their presence. But shouldn't they have a say in this?

This is also why the Palestinians Arab allies didn't grant the Palestinians citizenship after 1948, or let them seek employment, but instead herded them into squalid camps under military rule (this, despite their explicit goals in 1948 being to annex that land, not set up a new state). We know from documents at the time that this was explicitly to "keep the conflict alive," to have the door open on another attempted reconquest (obviously with a subsequent ethnic cleansing by the victorious party). Such attempts were made, they just failed. It is not any different today.

This is also why the Gulf States are happy to work with China, to buy billions in arms from them and provide them oil, even as they carry out a massive ethnic cleansing campaign against their Muslim population. East Turkestan is not a place nationalists and fundamentalists dream of reconquering, so it has no salience.

No doubt, many Palestinians would not want to leave Gaza for similar reasons. Nowhere did I suggest they should be removed by force. I said it does not make sense to force those who do want to leave, who would be treated as valid refugees if they were from anywhere else on Earth, to have to stay in a war zone, under a violent and repressive regime, in order to "stake other's long term claim to the land."

This position makes no sense from a Western liberal point of view. It is astounding to me that people who are otherwise fierce advocates of the rights of refugees are bamboozled into this, and I can only suppose that it is because their politics and philosophy tell them that they must defer to Arabs on Arab issues (but apparently not those at the border begging to be let through).

Yet I don't know how you can watch the videos of people desperately pleading to be let across the Egyptian border, or read the stories of people giving away their entire life savings just for the chance that their children alone might be smuggled across the border, and then say: "good job Egypt. Those soldiers need to be there to keep them in at gun point. Otherwise the claim on the land could be lost to the movements of history!"

I don't see how such a position could possibly stem from a concern from those families seeking to leave.