Edward Feser's Blog, page 38

Theology and the analytic a posteriori

Philosophers traditionally distinguish between analyticand synthetic propositions.  An analytic proposition is one that is true or false by virtue of the relations between its constituent concepts.  A stock example is “All bachelors are unmarried,” which is true because the concept of being unmarried is included in the concept of being a bachelor.  A synthetic proposition is true by virtue of something beyond the relations between its constituent concepts.  For example, the proposition “Some bachelors are lonely” is true by virtue of a contingent empirical relation between being a bachelor and being lonely, rather than a necessary conceptual relation between them. A second traditional distinction is that between propositions knowable a priori and those knowable a posteriori.  A priori propositions are those knowable independently of sensory experience.  A stock example would be an arithmetical proposition like 2 + 2 = 4.  An a posteriori proposition is one that is known through sensory experience.  An example would be “There are two cars in the parking lot.”
Kant noted that combining these notions yields four putative classes of proposition:
1. Analytic a priori
2. Analytic a posteriori
3. Synthetic a priori
4. Synthetic a posteriori
Classes 1 and 4 are relatively unremarkable.  The analytic proposition “All bachelors are unmarried” is knowable a priori precisely because we know that the concept of being unmarried is included in the concept of being a bachelor.  You don’t need to rely on observation in order to determine that it is true, but merely need to understand the concepts.  “Some bachelors are lonely” is known a posteriori precisely because it is only the observable facts that reveal to us its truth.  Understanding the concepts is not enough.
Class 3, the synthetic a priori, is of course the one that Kant was famously concerned about.  Such a proposition would be one which is not true merely by virtue of the relations between its constituent concepts, but nevertheless can be known without relying on experience.  Kant held both that it is difficult to see how there could be such propositions, but also that there must be if knowledge of the natural order is to be possible. 
The reasons had to do with the implications of Hume’s empiricism.  For example, Hume seemed to have shown that necessary causal connections between things could not be known a posteriori, since we have no impression (in Hume’s sense of the term) of any force or power in a cause that necessitates its effect.  But he also seemed to have shown that such causal connections are not analytic either, insofar as causes and effects are “loose and separate” and in principle any effect or none might follow upon any cause.  Hence to be knowable, causal connections would have to synthetic a priori.  Explaining how there could be such knowledge is the starting point of Kant’s system.
Naturally, as a Scholastic Aristotelian I don’t agree with the whole way Hume, Kant, and the other early moderns frame these issues, much less with their conclusions.  But that’s not my topic here.  My topic has to do with something else Kant says, which is that in fact there cannot be such a thing as class 2 or analytic a posteriori propositions.  For analytic propositions are necessary, and what is necessary, Kant thinks, is knowable a priori. 
But knowable to whom?  Consider the proposition “God exists” as understood by classical theists like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas.  Addressing the question whether this is a self-evident proposition, Aquinas writes:
A thing can be self-evident in either of two ways: on the one hand, self-evident in itself, though not to us; on the other, self-evident in itself, and to us.  A proposition is self-evident because the predicate is included in the essence of the subject, as “Man is an animal,” for animal is contained in the essence of man.  If, therefore the essence of the predicate and subject be known to all, the proposition will be self-evident to all… If, however, there are some to whom the essence of the predicate and subject is unknown, the proposition will be self-evident in itself, but not to those who do not know the meaning of the predicate and subject of the proposition… Therefore I say that this proposition, “God exists,” of itself is self-evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject, because God is His own existence... Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature – namely, by effects.  (Summa Theologiae I.2.1)
The demonstrations Aquinas refers to in the last sentence are arguments like the proof of a first cause in De Ente et Essentia, which argues that anything the essence of which is distinct from its existence must have a cause the essence of which is identical to its existence.  (This is “the Thomistic proof” that I defend in Five Proofs of the Existence of God .)  The proof shows that the ultimate cause of things cannot be something which merely has being in a derivative way, but must be something which just is subsistent being itself.
Now, because God just is being itself, to know the essence of God would entail knowing that God exists.  In that sense, the proposition “God exists” has in itself the self-evidence of an analytic proposition.  But we know this only because we’ve reasoned from the existence of the things of our experience to an ultimate cause having this essence.  So we’ve arrived at it in an a posteriori way.  And that’s the only way we can arrive at it.  Because of the limitations of our intellects, our conceptualization of God is too imperfect to enable us to “cut to the chase” and get to knowledge of his existence directly, merely from a grasp of the concept of God.  (You might say: The ontological argument works, but not for intellects as limited as ours.)
In the same article from which I just quoted, Aquinas cites the proposition “that incorporeal substances are not in space” as an example of something “self-evident only to the learned.”  You need a certain amount of sophistication to grasp the constituent concepts well enough to know it a priori.  Someone who is not learned could still know it on the basis of the authority of someone who is.  But the unlearned person could also at least in principle come to know it a priori himself, once he acquires sufficient knowledge.  That possibility might make Kant reluctant to concede that an example like this is a genuine case of an analytic a posteriori proposition. 
But the proposition “God exists” differs from this example, in Aquinas’s view, insofar as failing to know it a priori is not merely a consequence of lacking sufficient learning.  No amount of learning would make it knowable a priori for the human intellect left just to its natural capacities.  We human beings can reason a posteriori to the conclusion that God exists and that his essence must be such that to know it perfectly would suffice all by itself to afford us knowledge of his existence.  So we know that the proposition “God exists” must be analytically true and knowable a priori for anyone with a sufficiently penetrating grasp of the constituent concepts.  But we don’t have such a grasp, and so we don’t know the proposition in that manner.  Hence, we have in this case an example of a proposition that is in a clear sense analytic a posteriori, at least for us.
This particular example comes from natural theology, that body of knowledge about God’s existence and nature that is available to us via purely philosophical arguments and apart from special divine revelation.  But other examples would come from revealed theology, which includes propositions about the divine nature that could not in principle have been arrived at through purely philosophical means and are knowable only if specially revealed by God.  The doctrine of the Trinity is an example.  If we had a perfect grasp of the divine essence, we would see that the claim that God is three Persons in one divine nature is as necessary and self-evident as “All bachelors are unmarried.”  But in fact our grasp is so imperfect that we cannot arrive at knowledge of this claim even through indirect natural means, through philosophical arguments, as we can with “God exists.”  We need supernatural assistance.
This assistance comes via a divine revelation backed by miracles, and in particular via the teaching of Christ.  And that is something we know about only a posteriori.  So, once again we have an example of a proposition that is in a clear sense analytic a posteriori.

Pod people

With woke fanaticssuddenly overrunning The New York Times , the public health profession, peaceful protests, and even the knitting community (!), life in these United States is starting to look a little like the 1978 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers .  If you’re looking for something timely to watch this evening, I recommend it.  (It’s a great flick anyway.) 
The metaphor is near perfect.  People are transformed into robotic pod people only after first falling asleep and (get this) waking up.  One moment they’re polite fellow citizens, the next they are all gaping maws, shrieking at you so as to summon the rest of the mob over for reeducation or a beat down.  After their transformation, even longtime friends and loved ones suddenly turn on you.  And in a nice touch, much of the focus of the movie is on the pod people’s commandeering of… the local health department.
If you want to turn it into film festival, next rent The Last Emperor and check out its chilling portrayal of the Maoist Red Guard.  (Some of our wokesters have apparently seen it, and thought it a “How to” video.)
And then, to see where this mentality leads if unchecked, The Killing Fields . 

What “the science” is saying this week (Updated)

Andrew Sullivan calls our attention to epidemiologist Tara C. Smith, who moves with that curious herd of “experts” suddenly not terribly concerned about social distancing when the protesters filling the streets are left-wing rather than right-wing.  Writes Sullivan: “The message to normies: going outside is killing grandma. The message to woke kids: never mind!”
So which is it?  Were people like Smith lying before about the danger of spreading the virus, in order to promote a political agenda?  Or being honest about it but now willing to endanger countless lives, in order to promote a political agenda?Adding smug cluelessness to her dishonesty and/or recklessness, Smith also sniffs that the difference is that those who rallied to end the lockdown were merely “protesting for their ability to get a haircut.” 
Yes, of course, haircuts.  It had nothing to do with wanting to get back to work in order to support their families, salvage businesses it took a lifetime to build, avoid depleting their life savings, get their kids back in the classroom, etc.  It was all about haircuts.
As I have argued, though a reasonable initial response to an imminent emergency, the lockdown was in the nature of the case harder to justify with each passing week, and has by now long passed the point of moral justifiability.  Indeed, if people like Smith aren’t urging this week’s protesters to get back indoors lest they endanger lives, they can hardly blame anyone but themselves if non-experts start to wonder whether the whole thing has been exaggerated.
The hypocrisy extends beyond Smith and underlines the danger of falling into fallacious thinking when appealing to authority, including the authority of “the science” we’re constantly told is being followed.  “The science” doesn’t tell us anything.  People who happen to be scientists tell us things.  And these are people who alsohappen to have egos, political views, moral opinions, career interests, peer influences, personal idiosyncrasies, and so on, all of which inevitably color what they think and say.  That doesn’t mean that what they say should be dismissed.  It means that what they say should not be taken as a revelation from some oracle, but rather as the fallible advice of paid professionals whose word should be taken with the same grain of salt as that of any other paid professional (your auto mechanic, your financial advisor, your doctor, your electrician, etc.).  Two grains, actually, since theseprofessionals have tenure and captive classroom audiences, and thus never have to pay a price for giving bad advice.
As last month’s crisis goes on the backburner (if only because it has been pushed aside by another crisis), it may be possible to get some perspective on it.  I would suggest that now is the time to get your Paul Feyerabend on and dust off those copies of Science in a Free Society and The Tyranny of Science (which, as I noted in a review, would have been better titled The Tyranny of Scientism). Yes, he sometimes says things that are intentionally provocative and indeed over the top.  But Feyerabend provides a much needed corrective at a time when we’re shrilly told to shut up, sit back, and suck it up while the “experts” drive 40 million people out of work.  More on that soon.

UPDATE 6/4: Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic reports that:
This week, hundreds of people in the public-health community signed an open letter, first drafted by infectious-disease experts at the University of Washington, that explicitly counsels an ideological double standard on protests…
[T]he signatories declared [that] “Infectious disease and public health narratives adjacent to demonstrations against racism must be consciously anti-racist, and infectious disease experts must be clear and consistent in prioritizing an anti-racist message…”
“[A]s public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission”…
Notice the weaselly construction. The signatories “do not condemn these gatherings as risky” not because the potential risk for disease transmission is lower than at the Michigan protests, but because they are unwilling to criticize an anti-racist gathering, no matter how risky it might be…
NPR writer Bill Chappell quotes an elected official, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, as saying, “I’m so concerned about [the risk] that I’m urging everybody to consider their exposure…”
In other words, the politician is emphasizing the epidemiological risk, while disease experts stress the potential political gains.
End quote.  If you respond to all this with “But it’s for a good cause!” you are completely missing the point.  The point has nothing to do with whether the cause is good.  The point is that it is politics, and not merely “the science,” that partially determines the advice that “the experts” give.  And that was as true when anti-lockdown protesters were told to stay home as it is now that other protesters are not being told to stay home.
Whatever you think about it, the judgment that protesting police brutality is a good enough reason to relax the lockdown, but protesting the loss of 40 million jobs is not a good enough reason to relax it, is not a scientific judgment.  It is a moral and political judgment, and scientists have no greater expertise on such things than anyone else.
Friedersdorf correctly judges that “to frame today’s protests not only as a defensible choice but as a choice validated by experts – as if their expertise somehow encompassed all the trade-offs implicit in the judgment – is to pass politics off as public health.”  He worries that the fallout will be that “more Americans will decline to heed any public-health advice or journalism, seeing it as ideological and hypocritical.”  He sees what “the experts” do not, viz. the obvious.

What “the science” is saying this week

Andrew Sullivan calls our attention to epidemiologist Tara C. Smith, who moves with that curious herd of “experts” suddenly not terribly concerned about social distancing when the protesters filling the streets are left-wing rather than right-wing.  Writes Sullivan: “The message to normies: going outside is killing grandma. The message to woke kids: never mind!”
So which is it?  Were people like Smith lying before about the danger of spreading the virus, in order to promote a political agenda?  Or being honest about it but now willing to endanger countless lives, in order to promote a political agenda? Adding smug cluelessness to her dishonesty and/or recklessness, Smith also sniffs that the difference is that those who rallied to end the lockdown were merely “protesting for their ability to get a haircut.” 
Yes, of course, haircuts.  It had nothing to do with wanting to get back to work in order to support their families, salvage businesses it took a lifetime to build, avoid depleting their life savings, get their kids back in the classroom, etc.  It was all about haircuts.
As I have argued, though a reasonable initial response to an imminent emergency, the lockdown was in the nature of the case harder to justify with each passing week, and has by now long passed the point of moral justifiability.  Indeed, if people like Smith aren’t urging this week’s protesters to get back indoors lest they endanger lives, they can hardly blame anyone but themselves if non-experts start to wonder whether the whole thing has been exaggerated.
The hypocrisy extends beyond Smith and underlines the danger of falling into fallacious thinking when appealing to authority, including the authority of “the science” we’re constantly told is being followed.  “The science” doesn’t tell us anything.  People who happen to be scientists tell us things.  And these are people who alsohappen to have egos, political views, moral opinions, career interests, peer influences, personal idiosyncrasies, and so on, all of which inevitably color what they think and say.  That doesn’t mean that what they say should be dismissed.  It means that what they say should not be taken as a revelation from some oracle, but rather as the fallible advice of paid professionals whose word should be taken with the same grain of salt as that of any other paid professional (your auto mechanic, your financial advisor, your doctor, your electrician, etc.).  Two grains, actually, since theseprofessionals have tenure and captive classroom audiences, and thus never have to pay a price for giving bad advice.
As last month’s crisis goes on the backburner (if only because it has been pushed aside by another crisis), it may be possible to get some perspective on it.  I would suggest that now is the time to get your Paul Feyerabend on and dust off those copies of Science in a Free Society and The Tyranny of Science (which, as I noted in a review, would have been better titled The Tyranny of Scientism). Yes, he sometimes says things that are intentionally provocative and indeed over the top.  But Feyerabend provides a much needed corrective at a time when we’re shrilly told to shut up, sit back, and suck it up while the “experts” drive 40 million people out of work.  More on that soon.

Metaphysical taxidermy

I’ve often emphasized that the reason consciousness poses such a persistent problem for materialism has less to do with consciousness itself than it has to do with the desiccated conception of matter that we’ve inherited from early modern philosophy and science.  Barry Dainton makes the same point a couple of times in his book Self .  For example, he writes: Descartes’ conviction that consciousness could not be physical is rooted in the austere conception of the basic nature of material things which he and the other scientific revolutionaries endorsed.  One of the key advances of the Scientific Revolution was the adoption of the atomistic and mechanistic conception of the physical world.  Animating Scholastic forms were excluded from the physical realm as part of this move, but so too were all the phenomenal properties, the properties we encounter in our ordinary experience.  According to the new scientific worldview, physical things themselves possess only ‘primary’ properties, such as mass, motion, charge, shape, and so forth.  Material things don’t possess experiential properties such as colour, sound, warmth, or pain.
As Descartes was perhaps the first to appreciate clearly, if the physical world is as the new science says, experiences and conscious subjects are banished from it.  In which case, dualism – in some form – seems to be unavoidable.  (p. 153)
Dainton goes on to note that while contemporary physics does not attribute to matter exactly the same list of properties that Descartes and other early moderns did, it nevertheless still leaves off of its list anything experiential.  Hence, contemporary materialism faces the same difficulty vis-à-vis consciousness that materialists of Descartes’ day did.  Dainton concludes:
So the relationship between the physical world and consciousness remains deeply puzzling; indeed, it has often been said that this is the biggest remaining mystery of them all (though those working at the frontiers of cosmology and particle physics might want to disagree). (pp. 158-9)
That catches the eye, or my eye, anyway.  Dainton locates the three biggest mysteries facing science at:
1. The relationship between the physical world and consciousness
2. The frontiers of cosmology
3. The frontiers of particle physics
I’d expand the list, but let’s stick with Dainton’s for now.  I would say that all threemysteries are a consequence of the turn from Scholastic Aristotelianism to the mechanical conception of nature.  How so?
The conquest of abundance
The Scholastic Aristotelian conception of matter is much richer and more pluralistic than that of the mechanical world picture.  And it is in harmony with common sense, even though it systematizes common sense and adds to it notions of which the man on the street never dreamed.  It takes the natural world to consist in innumerable distinct physical substances, just as common sense does.  It takes qualitative features like color to exist in those substances, just as common sense does.  And it holds that there are irreducibly different kinds of physical substance, just as common sense does.  In particular, it takes inanimate objects, non-sentient living things, and sentient living things to be irreducibly different, even if all of them are material.
To make sense of all this, Scholastic Aristotelian philosophy deploys notions like actuality and potentiality, substantial form and prime matter, efficient and final causality, substance and attributes, essence and proper accidents, immanent versus transeunt causation, and so on.  It argues that we simply cannot do justice to the actual physical world of everyday experience, in all its richness and diversity, without recognizing this conceptual framework as giving the skeletal structure of the natural order. 
What the mechanical world picture did was to drain out all of this richness, flatten out all the diversity, and replace the organic skeleton with a cold steel frame, like a taxidermist.  It denied the distinctness and diversity of physical things.  All material objects are, on the mechanical view, really just variations on the same one kind of thing, viz. colorless, soundless, odorless, tasteless particles in motion, their nature and interactions to be described in purely mathematical terms.  And their numerical differences are as superficial or even illusory as their differences in kind.  The whole physical world can be seen as a single vast lump, and the apparently diverse objects in it as modes of this one substance.  Or, alternatively, it is like a vast sea of particles, with apparently diverse objects like mere waves on its surface.  A stone, a tree, a dog all seem to common sense to be sharply distinct objects of sharply distinct kinds.  For the mechanical world picture, they are really all just local variations in a single system of a single kind – different eddies in the same sea of atoms, different geometrical structures in the same Cartesian coordinate space, or what have you.
Philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend has aptly characterized this as modern science’s “conquest of abundance,” its replacement of the “richness of being” with an “abstraction.”  The abstraction is a mathematical framework, and anything that cannot be fitted into it is re-defined, explained away, or frankly eliminated.  Color, sound, taste, odor, heat, cold, pain, pleasure are all removed from nature and relocated in the conscious subject.  And if this subject is in turn identified with something material, the reality of these qualities is effectively denied, either implicitly (in reductionist versions of materialism) or explicitly (in eliminativist versions).  The abstraction also reduces all change to local motion, and local motion in turn to a succession of points in an abstract coordinate space.  Real change disappears, and real time (which, for the Aristotelian, is the measure of change) vanishes along with it.
New metaphysics, same as the old metaphysics
Feyerabend traces the tendency to try to replace the richness of the natural world with a static abstraction back to Parmenides, and for those with eyes to see, Parmenides lives today in every physicist who seriously believes that the natural world can be entirely captured in the notion of a four-dimensional block universe, or in the idea of a universal wave function.  Such constructs are no less fantastic and untrue to actual concrete reality than Parmenides’ monism. 
That is not to say that they are untrue full stop.  They docapture reality, but only in the partial and distorted way that any abstraction does.  And that they are not quite as abstract as Parmenides’ own monism is the source of the technological and predictive successes that give rhetorical(even if not logical) strength to the arguments of those who take these abstractions to afford us a complete metaphysical picture of nature.
Now, back to Dainton’s list.  By “the frontiers of cosmology,” he means the cutting edge of a science that has in modern times been defined by general relativity.  And by “the frontiers of particle physics,” he means the cutting edge of a science that has in modern times been defined by quantum mechanics. 
The picture of nature afforded us by general relativity is, I would suggest, essentially an approximation to a description of a world that is purely actualized and devoid of potentiality.  It is not quite that, but it is an approximation to it.  It is a highly Parmenidean model of nature.  Meanwhile, the picture of nature afforded us by quantum mechanics is an approximation to a description of the world that is purely potential and in no way actualized.  It is not quite that, but it is an approximation to it.  It is a highly Heraclitean model of nature.  (Or rather, some interpretations of quantum mechanics are like that.  Interpretations like Everett’s “many worlds” interpretation effectively actualize all the potentiality and transform quantum mechanics into another riff on Parmenideanism.)
Now, actual concrete material reality is in fact a mixture of actuality and potentiality.  Hence, if you try to represent it entirely in terms of actuality and strip it of potentiality, or entirely in terms of potentiality and strip it of actuality, you are bound to end up with various puzzles and paradoxes (especially of the sort into which Parmenidean and Heraclitean views are traditionally led).  And a picture of nature which largely collapses all reality into actuality is naturally going to be very hard to marry to a picture which largely collapses all reality into potentiality.
This, in my view, is the deep metaphysical reason why the frontiers of cosmology and particle physics remain mysterious, as Dainton says, and why relativity and quantum mechanics remain difficult to reconcile with one another.  Were Aristotle to rise from his grave and see all these neo-Parmenideans and neo-Heracliteans wringing their hands, he’d say: “Well, duh.  What did you expect?” 
Stuffing a corpse
It is the first mystery, the relationship between consciousness and the physical world, that Dainton focuses on.  And he discusses two possible non-materialist ways of dealing with it that have gotten increasing attention in recent philosophy: naturalistic dualism and Russellian monism (named for Bertrand Russell).  Both of these views accept the mechanical conception of nature but try in different ways to reincorporate phenomenal or qualitative features like color, sound, etc. into it.  These days, philosophers generally refer to these features as the “qualia” of conscious experience, so that the issue is usually framed as the question of how to fit qualia into the material world.
Naturalistic dualism holds that qualia are non-physical (that’s the dualism part) but that they are correlated with certain physical features of the brain by virtue of as yet unknown laws of nature (that’s the naturalistic part). 
Russellian monism holds that physics gives us only a description of the mathematical structure of nature, but not of the intrinsic nature of the entities that have that structure (that’s the Russellian part of the view).  It then suggests that the qualia we know from introspection of our conscious experiences not only give us knowledge of the intrinsic nature of the matter that makes up our brains, but also afford a model for the intrinsic nature of all matter (that’s the monism part).  Russellian monism is sometimes claimed to lead to a kind of panpsychism.  The reason is that since qualia are mental, and Russellian monism takes qualia to be the model for the intrinsic nature of all material entities, it entails that all material entities have mental properties – that mind is everywhere.
Now, though both of these views are superior to materialism in frankly acknowledging the reality and irreducibility of consciousness, they are nevertheless ultimately little more than further riffs on the same mechanistic error rather than corrections of it.  They merely dress up the corpse that the mechanical conception makes of nature, rather than restoring it to life. 
Again, common sense and Scholastic Aristotelianism take matter to be more or less the way it seems.  (Note very carefully that this is not to deny that science reveals that there is more to matter than common sense or Aristotelian philosophy knows.  It is merely to insist that science does not show that there is less to matter than common sense and Aristotelian philosophy says there is.) 
One implication of this is that consciousness really is in non-human animals in just the way that common sense supposes.  This is not because non-human animals have any non-physical properties.  They don’t.  It is because non-human animals are simply of a different kind of matter than inanimate things.  Not all matter is the same.  The mechanical world picture assumes otherwise.  That is why Descartes held, notoriously, that animals are devoid of consciousness.  Since he was committed to the desiccated mechanistic conception of matter, and took animals to be made of nothing more than that kind of matter, he concluded – quite reasonably, if you accept that conception of matter – that they lack consciousness.  The only other place for consciousness to be, on Descartes’ picture of reality, is in the res cogitans or thinking substance.  And since animals lack intellects, they lack res cogitans. 
This is also why, in contemporary non-materialist philosophy of mind, it is commonly supposed that to attribute qualia to non-human animals (like bats, in Thomas Nagel’s famous example) is to attribute non-physical properties to them.  That will seem to follow only for those operating with an essentially mechanistic model of matter.  If instead you think of matter the way common sense and Aristotelianism do, this won’t seem to follow at all.  Non-human animals have qualia and they are therefore conscious, but this does not entail that there is anything non-material in them.  It simply entails that matter isn’t as desiccated as the purely quantitative, mathematical conception of the mechanical philosophy supposes.
But neither does it give any reason whatsoever to believe (contra Russellian monism) that all matter has qualia.  Animal matter does, but the matter that makes up stones and copper and water does not.  You would only suppose otherwise if you were starting with a mechanistic conception of matter, come to realize that its deletion of qualia from nature is a problem, and then start shoving qualia back into matter willy-nilly, including into places they don’t belong.  It’s analogous to killing an animal, gutting the corpse, and then coming to regret it and sticking the organs back in in bizarre ways – putting the kidneys in the eye sockets, the intestines in the throat, the leg muscles where the arm muscles should go, etc.  The right approach when what you want is a properly functioning animal is not to kill it in the first place.  And the right approach when what you want is a conception of nature that is safe for qualia and consciousness is not to start with a mechanistic conception of matter in the first place. 
If Russellian monism is like re-stuffing a corpse, naturalistic dualism is like strapping the gutted organs onto the outside of the corpse, Ed Gein-style.  Naturalistic dualism essentially accepts the mechanical conception of matter, regrets that it leaves qualia out, and then simply attaches qualia to this desiccated matter, from outside as it were, rather than seeing that qualia should never have been taken out in the first place.
The mechanical conception of matter was simply a mistake, at least as a metaphysics or philosophy of nature.  Like other abstractions, it certainly has its utility a method.  But it is merely a methodological abstraction rather than a true representation of the concrete natural world in all its richness and diversity.  To pretend otherwise is like mistaking a corpse for a real living thing.  And to try to patch it up in the way that naturalistic dualism and Russellian monism do is an exercise in taxidermy, or even corpse desecration.  The true solution to the problem of how to relate consciousness to the physical world is to resurrect the commonsense Aristotelian conception of nature.
Note that I am only talking here about the kind of consciousness we share with non-human animals.  The intellectual capacities that are distinctive of human animals are a different story.  They are incorporeal.  But that’s another issue for another time.  Readers interested in pursuing the issues discussed in this post in greater depth are urged to consult Aristotle’s Revenge . 
Related posts:
Materialism subverts itself
Concretizing the abstract
Chomsky on the mind-body problem
Zombies: A Shopper’s Guide
Nagel and his critics, Part VIII
Reading Rosenberg, Part X
When Frank jilted Mary

The lockdown is no longer morally justifiable

As I have said before, I think that the lockdown that was put in place in the United States two months ago was morally justifiable given the circumstances at the time.  In my opinion, under current circumstances, it is no longer morally justifiable.  To be sure, I am not denying that some social distancing measures are still justifiable and even necessary.  I am also not denying that a more modest lockdown may still be defensible in some localities.  But the draconian total lockdown that was put in place across most of the country is at this point no longer defensible, and state and local authorities who are relaxing it are right to do so.The natural right to earn a living
The basic natural law grounds for this judgment are straightforward.  Breadwinners have a natural right to labor in order to provide for themselves and their families.  Hence, governing authorities may not prevent them from doing so unless strictly necessary for preserving the common good.  Now, a strong case could be made at the beginning of the lockdown that preventing such labor was indeed strictly necessary.  But such a case cannot be made now.  Hence, while a total lockdown was justifiable at the beginning, it is no longer justifiable, and governing authorities have a strict duty in justice to relax it.  The details of how this might be done in this or that locality are debatable, but the general principle is clear.
One reason this is not more widely recognized is because of the seriously misleading way in which the issue is routinely framed, viz. as a matter of balancing “the economy” against “saving lives.”  First of all, what is in jeopardy is not some abstraction called “the economy.”  What is in jeopardy is the basic natural human right to earn a living.  To talk about how the lockdown affects “the economy” tends to disguise the true moral situation, because it makes it sound as if public authorities are merely tinkering with the operation of some impersonal mechanism.
What they are actually doing is preventing millions of human beings from exercising their fundamental right to support themselves and their families.  And the vast majority of them are people who live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to have their life savings depleted.  Chatter about the effects of the lockdown on “the economy” can give the false impression that government officials may decide what to do about the situation at their leisure.  Keeping in mind that what we are really talking about is interference with a basic human right reminds us of the situation’s true urgency.
There are important further considerations, such as the ill effects the lockdown is having on the education of children and on the psychological well-being of young and old alike.  By no means the least of the lockdown’s harms is its interference with the practice of religion, such as the deprivation of the sacraments in the case of Catholics.  All of these too are harms that follow from governmental actions that violate natural rights unless they are strictly necessary for protecting the common good.
“Saving lives”
Again, the response will be that such actions are necessary in order to “save lives.”  But talk of “saving lives,” when kept vague, is demagogic and papers over crucial moral distinctions.  “Saving lives” could mean:
(a) refraining from directly and intentionally causing people to die,
(b) refraining from acts that have a strong likelihood of resulting in unintended deaths, or
(c) refraining from acts that have only a remote chance of resulting in unintended deaths.
Now, everyone in the debate over the lockdown favors (a) and (b) and no one in the debate favors (c).  For example, no one believes that we have a general duty to avoid driving, or construction work, or going out of doors when one has the flu, or other common actions that have a remote chance of resulting in unintended deaths.  No one believes that public authorities have a right or duty to forbid such acts, even though doing so would “save lives.”  And everyone agrees that driving at 100 mph down residential streets, setting off fireworks near dry brush, going out of doors when one has the Ebola virus, and other acts that have a strong likelihood of resulting in unintended deaths ought to beforbidden by public authorities.
What people disagree about is simply whether certain acts forbidden under the lockdown (like operating a barbershop or a clothing store) more plausibly fall into category (b) rather than (c), especially when safety measures are taken (wearing masks, letting only a certain number of customers in at a time, etc.).  Even if a compelling case could be made for thinking that they fall into (b) rather than (c), it would be an outrageous calumny to accuse people who in good faith believe otherwise of being “murderers” or a “party of death.”  Such inflammatory rhetoric evidences a lack of the objectivity and charity required to deal with the crisis and promote the common good.
Mission accomplished
But in fact there is no compelling case.  Certainly there is at least as strong a case to be made for the other side.  And that is sufficient reason to relax the lockdown, because it is those who do notwant to relax it who have the burden of proof.
The original rationale for the lockdown was to “flatten the curve” so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed and crucial medical equipment such as ventilators would not become scarce.  Ordinary work like running a clothing store or cutting hair was said to be dangerous because in the aggregate such activities threatened to increase the number of Covid-19 infections to the point that the medical system could not deal with them, let alone all the other ailments that bring people to the hospital every day.
But that aim has for some time now been accomplished.  The curve has been flattened and, more to the point, hospitals are in general not in danger of being overwhelmed and ventilators are not scarce.  Not to relax the lockdown under such circumstances is prime facie unjust.  When politicians and pundits move the goalposts in order to maintain it anyway, it is not unreasonable for workers whose lives and livelihoods have been upended to complain that they’ve been sold a “bait and switch.”  
Ever-receding goalposts
The response will be that lifting the lockdown will result in an increase in deaths.  But once again, such a claim is too vague to prove anything.  After all, even if the novel coronavirus was annihilated tomorrow, lifting the lockdown would still result in an increase in deaths – from the traffic accidents, construction accidents, deaths from ordinary flu, etc. that would result just from people returning to ordinary life, with its ordinary risks. 
What the lockdown defender needs to show is that the increase in deaths would be dramatic enough to override the strong presumption against interfering with the natural right to earn a living.  That’s a very tough burden to meet, and I submit that it has not been met.  What the original “flattening the curve” rationale had going for it is that an imminent and completely general breakdown in the medical system would clearly be contrary to the common good, which gave a plausible rationale for overriding the right to work.  But the alternative rationales being offered by the lockdown’s defenders are nowhere near as clear and compelling as that.
In particular, there is no compelling argument for preserving a total lockdown as a method of fighting the virus (as opposed to using it as a method to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed).  Totallockdowns of vast populations (as opposed to more limited quarantines) are not a time-tested way of dealing with pandemics, but a very recent novelty.  Not only is there is no evidence that they are more effective than less extreme measures, but there is now evidence that they are notmore effective.  Some experts argue that the virus has likely already worked its way through the population anyway and is on its way out regardless of the lockdown.
It is also clear at this point that the virus is not equally dangerous to all.  It is primarily the elderly and those with certain medical conditions who are at risk, and they can be protected by way of more modest measures than a general lockdown.  Then there is the argument that while relaxing the lockdown might result in more deaths in the short run, it will yield relatively fewer deaths in the long run, since it will facilitate achieving herd immunity.  And there is the further consideration that the lockdown itself threatens livesinsofar as ailments other than Covid-19 are not being treated as frequently or effectively, medical workers are being laid off, and so forth.
Yes, much of this is controversial.  But again, it isn’t those who favor relaxing the lockdown who have the burden of proof.  The burden is on those who want to preserve it.  Two months ago, they could make a strong case for having met it.  Not any longer. 

Oderberg on the hierarchy of being

In February, David Oderberg gave a lecture in Oxford on the theme “Recovering the Hierarchy of Being.”  You can now watch it on YouTube.  Be sure also to check out David’s new book The Metaphysics of Good and Evil (about which you can find information at the publisher’s website).

The lockdown and appeals to authority

Here are two things every serious student of logical fallacies understands.  First, if what is at issue is the soundness of an argument, then the motives and expertise of the person giving the argument are completely irrelevant.  To fail to see this is to commit an ad hominem fallacy of “poisoning the well.”  Second, if what is at issue is the credibility of expert testimony, then the motives and expertise of the person giving the testimony are highly relevant.  To fail to see this is to commit a fallacy of “appeal to authority.” Appealing to authority
For those who have forgotten or never knew, appealing to authority is not per se a fallacy.  If you believe that Caesar crossed the Rubicon on the basis of what your history professor told you, there is no fallacy there at all.  Your professor has expert knowledge of such things, and no reason to mislead you.  Rather, an appeal to authority is fallacious under one or both of two conditions: either the purported authority in question does not actually have relevant expertise, or you have reason to doubt his objectivity. 
The basic idea is clear enough, though not equally easy to apply in all cases.  Some cases are crystal clear.  If you believe that the MacBook Air is the best computer on the market simply because your favorite philosopher Ed Feser happens to own one, you would be committing the first kind of fallacy of appeal to authority.  I am no expert on computers.  If you believe the MacBook Air is the best computer on the market simply because the guy who works at the Apple store told you so, you are committing the second kind of fallacy of appeal to authority.  Though the guy who works at the Apple store has the relevant expertise, you have good reason to doubt that he is giving you an unbiased opinion.
But what about a case where, say, a history professor swears by Howard Zinn, and reacts with anger when you politely question the veracity of Zinn’s People’s History?  You would have good reason at least to wonder about his judgement and objectivity.  Though his education clearly does give him expertise in history, his political bias indicates that he might lack knowledge of or interest in aspects of the subject that do not support his opinions and/or that he is not likely to give you a dispassionate account of those aspects.  Hence, while you would not want entirely to dismiss what he tells you, it would be reasonable to have reservations about it.
The lockdown
Now, a problematic aspect of the lockdown is that most of what is said about the subject rests either directly or indirectly on the testimony of experts or purported experts.  Contrast that with a case of the sort with which readers of this blog are familiar.  Philosophical arguments can, for the most part, be evaluated entirely independently of any considerations about the knowledge or objectivity of the person giving them.  For example, you can evaluate Chalmers’ Zombie Argument, or Nozick’s Wilt Chamberlin Argument, or Searle’s Chinese Room Argument, without knowing anything about the expertise or biases of Chalmers, Nozick, or Searle. 
Of course, you might think that the fact that they gave these arguments reflects certain biases or expertise on their part.  But that is entirely irrelevant to how good or bad the arguments themselvesare.  There is no premise in any of these arguments that requires you to assume that Chalmers, Nozick, or Searle made a correct judgment call.  You don’t have to take their word for anything.  For purposes of evaluating the arguments (as opposed to the purposes of, say, doing intellectual history) you can treat them as if they fell from the sky and have no essential connection to their authors. 
Little of what is said by way of defending or criticizing the lockdown is like that.  Most people’s opinions depend crucially on what they have heard from political commentators, journalists, politicians, and scientists.  None of what any of these people say can be evaluated the way a philosophical argument can, viz. in a manner that entirely abstracts from considerations about the knowledge and biases of the people giving the arguments.  And that includes, to some extent, the scientists.  Moreover, the knowledge and biases of these experts give us grounds for having at least some reservations about what they say.  And that too includes, at least to some extent, the scientists. 
Before I proceed, and to forestall premature hyperventilating, please take careful note of what I am not saying.  I am notsaying that the epidemiological opinions of a Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow should be given the same weight as those of an Anthony Fauci.  I am notsaying that scientists qua scientists are in general as prone to political bias as opinion columnists and elected officials are.  I am notsaying that we are within our rights in dismissing whatever they have to say if we don’t like it, or that we should throw up our hands and conclude that we can’t trust anyone.
What I am saying is no more and no less than what I already wrote, with nothing hiding between the lines.  There are grounds for having some reservations.  Science, when done well, is much more immune to the problems of ignorance and bias than journalism and politics are, but it is not entirelyimmune.  And to pretend otherwise is, here too, to commit a fallacy of appeal to authority.
Politicians and journalists
Let’s start with the more obvious cases, though.  If you believe what you believe about the lockdown because of what Carlson or Maddow or Donald Trump or Andrew Cuomo has said, then your opinion is based not on abstract arguments but on the authority of someone you take to have the relevant expertise.  But of course, politicians, journalists, and opinion makers are in general not experts in epidemiology or public health, and they have strong political biases.  That doesn’t mean that you should entirely dismiss what is said by a commentator or public official you judge to be in general competent and honest, but you certainly should take the views of even the best of them with more than a grain of salt.
Let’s put aside for present purposes the more unhinged and blatantly partisan accusations, such as that conservatives don’t care about whether the elderly die or that liberals favor the lockdown only because they hope it will hurt Trump.  Even when these are factored out, there are some biases that do plausibly influence the way commentators and politicians approach the current crisis.
For example, conservatives are temperamentally bound to be suspicious of governmental measures that dramatically interfere with the everyday functioning of families, churches, and businesses.  This can reflect either the libertarian strain in modern American conservatism or the concern for subsidiarity among more traditionalist conservatives.  Naturally, since I am a traditionalist conservative, I regard this as a perfectly normal and healthy instinct.  But there is no doubt that, if one is not careful, this instinct can lead one too quickly to dismiss such measures even when they are necessary.
But liberals deceive themselves if they think the bias is all on the conservative side.  If the right-wing bias is in the direction of liberty and decentralization, the left-wing bias is in an egalitarian and “one size fits all” direction.  This is obvious from the way left-wingers tend to think about healthcare and poverty.
For example, take the premise (with which I agree) that government ought to do something to remedy the fact that some people don’t have adequate healthcare.  All that follows is that government should assist those specific people.  What does not follow is that we should have a single-payer system.  “Government should guarantee that everyone has healthcare” does not entail “Government should be the sole provider of healthcare to everyone.”  That some people need governmental assistance doesn’t entail that everyone needs it.  The left-wing tendency here is to make the exceptional case the rule for all.  Similarly with “universal basic income” schemes.  That some people don’t have sufficient income entails at most that government should assist those particular people.  It doesn’t follow that government should send everyonea check every month. 
Nevertheless, if you don’t favor single-payer healthcare or a universal basic income, some (not all, but some) left-wingers are quick to accuse you of not caring about the needy.  Their tendency is to suppose that if you don’t want far-reachinggovernment action in these areas, then you must want no government action.
There is a parallel with the divergence between conservative and liberal reactions to the lockdown situation.  It seems pretty clear by now that most people are not in danger of death or even serious illness from Covid-19.  It is primarily the elderly and those with certain medical conditions who are at risk, and even then the virus seems to be more of a problem in some parts of the country than others.  Nor, as it turns out, have U.S. hospitals been overwhelmed or medical supplies run short (which would affect everyone).  Hence, conservatives reasonably wonder why a completely general lockdown is still necessary.  Why shouldn’t the lockdown be relaxed, and confined only to the most vulnerable parts of the population? 
Some liberals respond with the accusation that conservatives don’t care whether grandma dies – which is as ridiculous as saying that unless you favor single-payer healthcare and a universal basic income, you must not care about the poor.  They seem reflexively to think that a policy that is needed for somepeople must be applied to all.  Accordingly, it is perfectly reasonable for conservatives to suspect that some left-wing public officials and journalists have let their bias toward statist and “one size fits all” policies unduly influence their thinking about the lockdown.
Another bias to which all politicians, left and right, are prone is the “sunk cost” fallacy.  They are unlikely to want to retreat from a risky or costly policy, precisely becauseit is risky and costly.  To do so would invite the accusation that they have made a colossal blunder.  Hence there is a temptation to move the goalposts and look for new rationalizations of such policies. 
Many today would say that this is what happened with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  But they seem not to consider that there is a danger of the same thing happening with the lockdown.  The original rationale was to “flatten the curve” so as to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed and medical supplies from being depleted.  And again, those things have not happened.  Mission accomplished.  So why is a general lockdown still necessary?  As I have argued before, it is not sufficient to reply by suggesting that these bad outcomes could still happen if the lockdown were relaxed.  What we need is solid evidence that that is likely. 
It is not unreasonable, then, to worry that “sunk cost” thinking and “goalpost moving” is also a factor in some politicians’ thinking about the lockdown.
Here is another potential source of bias.  Consider the sorts of people who have primary responsibility for shaping policy and opinion on the lockdown – politicians, journalists and other writers, scientists and other intellectuals, administrators, and the like.  For the most part, these are people whose livelihoods have not been affected by the lockdown.  Many of them work at home anyway, so that the lockdown is for them largely business as usual.  It is not unreasonable for people whose lives and livelihoods have been dramatically affected to believe that the policy- and opinion-makers don’t have “skin in the game,” and thus lack a sufficient grasp of the gravity of the lockdown’s effects.
Finally, though it is foolish to suppose that left-of-center journalists and politicians favor a lockdown merely for the purpose of hurting Trump politically, it cannot reasonably be denied that there is a political slant to much coverage of the crisis.  For example, though New York has the highest Covid-19 body count in the country and Governor Cuomo’s administration has made serious mistakes in dealing with the crisis, he has enjoyed hagiographic media attention.  Does anyone seriously believe that Trump or any other Republican would have gotten the same treatment under those circumstances? 
For reasons like these, it is not irrational for people to have reservations about media reports and statements from public officials concerning the lockdown.  They are not necessarily guilty of an ad hominem fallacy.  On the contrary, they would be guilty of a fallacy of appeal to authority if they didn’t have at least some reservations about what politicians and journalists say on the subject.
But the science!
Some will respond that what matters is what “the science” tells us, so that the biases of journalists and politicians wash out as irrelevant.  But one problem with this is that very few people are getting “the science” straight from the scientists.  Rather, most are getting it only as filtered through the testimony of… journalists and politicians.  This is true to some extent even when scientists are allowed to speak for themselves in interviews.  Interviewers, of both the right and the left, will often try to goad their subjects into saying something they can use as political fodder, or otherwise choose or formulate their questions in a way that reflects a certain bias.  Even if a scientist tries to correct for all this, much of what he says might still end up on the cutting room floor.
Then there is the fact that scientists themselves have their own biases, simply because they are human beings.  You shouldn’t have to have read writers like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend in order to realize this, but it helps.  Even when dealing with theoretical abstractions remote from everyday experience, even when the empirical evidence is rich and well understood, and even when they have the leisure to take years calmly to mull things over in relative privacy, scientists are influenced in their thinking by extra-scientific considerations of a philosophical and even political kind.  It would be absurd to think things are any different in a context where the evidence is poorly understood and changes daily, the media attention is intense, and the social, political, and economic implications of their advice are enormous. 
Scientists also have biases just by virtue of being scientists.  What I mean is that, if they are not careful, scientists are prone to look at an issue from a purely scientific perspective even when it has important extra-scientific aspects, or to look at it purely from the perspective of their own scientific sub-discipline even when it has aspects that fall outside the competence of that sub-discipline.  Everyone knows this is true of the social sciences, as is evidenced by the genre of “economist jokes.”  But it is no less true of the natural sciences.
Now, the question of how to deal with the Covid-19 situation is, of course, an epidemiological and medical question.  But it is not just that, because human life is multifaceted, and there are, accordingly, other crucial aspects of any policy implemented in order to deal with the virus.  For example, how much economic damage is likely to be done by a lockdown?  How will such damage ramify over time?  How does the gravity of such damage weigh against the damage the virus is likely to do?  At what point might a lockdown result in more sickness and death, given factors such as the lack of herd immunity, neglect of ailments other than Covid-19, the insolvency of medical institutions and their funding sources, etc.?  What sort of psychological toll is a lockdown likely to take on people?  What sort of social instability is it likely to produce over time?  What effects will it have on education?
Medical doctors and epidemiologists have no special expertise on such questions.  They fall instead under disciplines such as economics and social psychology.  But most importantly, weighing all of these considerations and determining how to balance them requires statesmanship, and the virtue of phronesis – practical wisdom or prudence – which you cannot acquire by reading a book or getting a degree. 
Scientists are no more likely to have this virtue than anyone else is.  And scientism– the view that science alone gives us knowledge – is one of the great enemies of phronesis.  It fits all of reality into an abstract procrustean bed, which rules out the grasp of nuance and concrete circumstances that phronesis requires.  And it is blind to what Michael Polanyi called the “tacit dimension” of knowledge that is embodied in habits and instincts acquired through experience rather than book-learning.  Yet this tacit knowledge is precisely the kind that phronesisrequires. 
By no means are all scientists guilty of scientism.  But the people who most loudly and obnoxiously claim to have “the science” on their side in any dispute are typically guilty of it, and the degree of self-confidence they possess stands, accordingly, in inverse proportion to their possession of phronesis. 
A scientist like Anthony Fauci, then, is not some Philosopher-King whose word should be law, though neither is he a sinister Dr. Strangelove of whom we should be suspect.  He’s just one important expert giving valuable advice to be weighed seriously, alongside other valuable advice from other important experts.  Nothing less, and also nothing more.
Then there is the fact that “the science” on Covid-19 is very far from clear or settled anyway.  “Trust the science” is good advice if we’re talking about the Periodic Table, but just demagoguery in a context where, at least where crucial details are concerned, no one even knows what “the science” is.  Certainly it would be dishonest to pretend that science has established that a draconian lockdown strategy is better than, say, Sweden’s approach.
You might say: Why not just go with what “the bestscience” is telling us?  But how do we know which of the “the science” is the “best”?  Should we rely on journalists, politicians, and other non-scientists to tell us?  But the whole point of appealing to the authority of scientists was to avoid having to rely on these non-specialists!   So this answer would just take us back where we started.  Should we let scientists themselves, then – well, the best ones anyway – tell us?   If you can’t see what’s wrong with that answer, I’ve got a T-shirt to sell you. 
What all of this entails is that even an appeal to the authority of scientists can in this context be fallacious, not only because scientists too can be biased, but also because there are two respects in which they can lack the relevant expertise.  First, their expertise qua scientists concerns only one aspectof public policy vis-à-vis Covid-19 (albeit a very important aspect) and not the whole of it; and second, the body of information of which they have specialized knowledge is, in the first place, highly incomplete and in flux.  
The bottom line
The bottom line is that a non-expert is not necessarily unreasonable if he doubts the experts who favor continuing the lockdown – and indeed, that it would be unreasonable not to have at least some reservations about their advice.   That is not to say that everyone who doubts this expert advice is reasonable.  There are, of course, cranks among lockdown skeptics.  But there are cranks in every area of controversy. 
Indeed, if the case ultimately rests on appeal to the authority of experts, it is not at all clear that the grounds for continuing the lockdown are really any stronger than the grounds for winding it down, or at least greatly relaxing it.  Yet as I have argued elsewhere (and as others have too), the burden of proof is on those who favor continuing the lockdown, not on those who want to relax it.  I trust you have sufficient expertise to do the math.

Presentism and analogical language

Terms are used univocally when they are used in the same sense, as the word “bat” is in both “The baseball player swung the bat” and “The cricket player swung the bat.”  Terms are used equivocallywhen why are used in completely unrelated senses, as the term “bat” is in “The baseball player swung the bat” and “A bat flew in through Bruce Wayne’s window.”  The analogical use of terms is a middle ground kind of usage.  I gave an example when discussing Aristotelian realism in my recent First Things review of William Lane Craig’s book God Over All: [There is] a common objection to the effect that it is mysterious what the Aristotelian means by saying that a pattern like triangularity is “in” particular things. But this usage is no more mysterious than other common usages of “in.” The way a person is in a club is very different from the way a spoon is in a drawer, and both are different still from the way a person might be in danger or the way World War II occurred in the twentieth century. Why is it any more mysterious to say that triangularity is in a billiards rack or a pyramid? As Aquinas would point out, the word “in” is one that is used analogically. There is something in the way a person is in a club or the way triangularity is in a pyramid that is analogous to the way a spoon is in a drawer, even if it is not exactly the same way. There is no reason to think that the spoon-in-a-drawer sort of case is the only one in which the word “in” has a legitimate use.
Notice that “in” is used literally in each case.  To say that a term is used analogically is not necessarily to say that it is being used metaphorically.  Note also that the usages in each case are not entirely unrelated, as the usages of “bat” in the case of baseball and in the case of Bruce Wayne’s window are entirely unrelated.  But neither are they univocal, since there is no common genus to which being located inside a drawer, having occurred during the twentieth century, belonging to a club, etc. all belong.  The first is a spatial relationship, the second a temporal one, the third a matter of certain conventions being observed, and so on.  (For a more detailed introduction to analogical language, see Scholastic Metaphysics , pp. 256-63.)
Presentism is the view that where time is concerned, only present things exist and past and future things do not.  A presentist could also hold (as I do) that in addition to what exists in time, there is also what exists in a strictly eternal way (God, and on some views Platonic Forms and other abstract objects) and what exists in an aeviternal way that is a middle ground between time and eternity (angels).  I defend presentism in Aristotle’s Revenge , and here at the blog I have said more in defense of presentism against the “truthmaker” objection and against objections grounded in the physics of relativity. 
The truthmaker objection holds that, since for every true statement there must be something that makes it true, it follows that there must be something that makes (for example) “Caesar was assassinated on the Ides of March” true.  But what makes this true is Caesar’s having been assassinated on the Ides of March.  And if this past event is to serve as a truthmaker, it must exist, no less than present objects and events exist.  As my regular readers know, I consider this objection overrated and indeed extremely weak, for reasons spelled out in the earlier posts just linked to.  But many philosophers are impressed by it, including the esteemed Bill Vallicella, who periodically posts about this topic at Maverick Philosopher. 
Now, the analogical use of terms is in my view crucial to understanding where the truthmaker objection goes wrong.  Thomists famously take “real,” “being,” and related terms to give us the paradigm cases of analogical usage.  Actuality and potentiality, substances and attributes, parts and wholes, etc. all have being or reality, but not in a univocal sense, and philosophical problems and paradoxes can arise when we overlook this. 
For example, if we think that “real” always has the sense it does when we apply it to what is actual, then we are liable to overlook the real distinction between actuality and potentiality, and be tempted to endorse Parmenides’ denial of change.  If we think that the parts of a thing are real in the same sense that the whole is, we are liable to be tempted by Zeno’s paradox of parts.  The Thomist argues that while potentiality is real and not nothing, it is not real in the same sense in which actuality is real, but rather has reality in an analogical sense.  Similarly, the parts of a whole are in it virtually (to use the Scholastic jargon), and while virtual parts are not nothing, neither do they have the same kind of reality that the whole does.  (See Scholastic Metaphysics for more on these particular issues.)
What I want to suggest is that past events are like this too.  There is a sense in which Caesar’s assassination is part of reality.  After all, it happened; it is not a fictional event.  But that does not entail that it is real in the same sense that your current reading of this sentence is real.  To suppose otherwise is simply to assume that the past and the present are “real” in a univocal way.  It is like assuming that triangularity must be in a billiards rack, or a club member must be in a club, in the same sense in which a spoon is in a drawer.  It simply overlooks the point that “real” is an analogical term.
Bill seems to me consistently to make this mistake in his discussions of this issue.  For example, in one recent post he points out that a person can be in a state of regretting some past event.  But you can’t regret something that never happened, so that “every such state has as its accusative an event that exists.”  Hence such past events exist.  This, he suggests, “blow[s] presentism clean out of the water.”
I’m amazed at Bill’s confidence in this argument, because the fallacy seems to me obvious.  Presentists simply would not (or at least should not) accept the premise that the past events in question exist in the same sense that present events do.  Yes, you can say if you like that some past event that you regret “exists” if all you mean by that is that it really did happen and wasn’t something you hallucinated, or part of a fictional story, or whatever.  But it simply doesn’t follow that it is real in the same sense that present events are real.  The critic of presentism is free to argue otherwise, but the argument Bill gives doesn’t make that case.  It simply assumes a univocal sense of “exists” and thus begs the question.
To be sure, Bill realizes that a critic might raise such a charge against him.  He imagines an exchange with such a critic going as follows:
"You're begging the question! You are using 'exist(s)' tenselessly.  But on presentism, the only legitimate uses of 'exist(s)' are present-tensed."
Reply:  Please note that you too must use 'exist(s)' tenselessly to formulate your presentist thesis on pain of your thesis collapsing into the miserable tautology, 'Whatever in time exists (present-tense) exists (present-tense).'  That's fake news. To advance a substantive claim you must say, 'Whatever in time exists simpliciter exists at present' where 'simpliciter' is cashed out by 'tenselessly.'
End quote.  There are several problems with this.  First, what does the claim that “the only legitimate uses of 'exist(s)' are present-tensed” amount to?  Is this a grammaticalclaim about the tenses of the English word “exists”?  Surely not, since no one denies that the past tense “existed” and the future tense “will exist” are grammatically legitimate uses.  Perhaps what Bill has in mind, then, is that the presentist makes a semanticclaim to the effect that to say that something exists means that it exists in the present; or a metaphysical claim to the effect that whatever exists in fact exists in the present.
But that is false.  The presentist does not make such claims, or at least presentists need not make them.  Again, I would say that eternal things and aeviternal things exist, but they do not in the relevant sense exist in the present, because they don’t exist in time, but outside of time.  I have also allowed that past events can be said to “exist” if all that that entails is that they really did happen and aren’t fictional.  They just don’t exist in the same sense in which present things do.  How could they?  They’re past– over and done with, no longer around, etc.
Second, for that reason, presentism does not collapse into a tautology, miserable or otherwise.  If a presentist were to claim that “exists” means “exists in the present,” then yes, it would be a tautology to say that only present things exist.  But again, that is not what the presentist says, or at least it is certainly not what he needs to say.
Third, there is no such thing as “’exists’ simpliciter” if “exists” is not a univocal term.  And if Bill thinks that terms like “exists,” “real,” and the like are univocal, he needs to argue for this claim if his criticisms of presentism are to have any force.  It cuts no ice simply to take it for granted.
In another recent post, Bill writes:
On presentism, the present alone exists, and not in the trivial sense that the present alone exists at present, but in the substantive sense that the present alone exists simpliciter.  But if so, then the past is nothing, a realm of sheer nonbeing. But surely the past is not nothing: it happened, and is in some sense 'there' to be investigated by historians and archeologists and paleontologists. 
End quote.  Now, of course no presentist need deny that “the past is not nothing: it happened.”  That is not what is at issue.  What is at issue is whether that entails that the past is real in the same sense in which the present is real.  The presentist would say that the past is real precisely insofar as it really happened, unlike purely fictional objects and events.  It just isn’t real in any sense beyond that.  Again, if you want, you can even say that past objects and events “exist” if all that means is that it they actually existed and happened, by contrast with fictional objects and events, which never existed or happened.  None of that entails that past objects and events “exist” in the same sense that present ones do.
This tendency to appeal to premises that seem to me to beg the question against presentism (certainly against my form of presentism) is one of the features of Bill’s approach to this subject that I find frustrating.  But perhaps I'm misunderstanding him; I'm happy to be corrected.  Another tendency that I find frustrating is Bill's predilection for assessing presentism independently of any assessment of rival views, such as eternalism and the growing block theory.  I maintain that that cannot fruitfully be done.  In the nature of the case, to claim that the past exists in the same sense in which the present does at least suggests either an eternalist or a growing block position.  Perhaps Bill can accept this and then go on to defend either eternalism or the growing block theory.  Or perhaps he could show that his claim does not in fact imply either eternalism or the growing block theory, which would entail saying at least enough about them to differentiate them from his own view.  Either way, it will not do to attack presentism without taking some stand on those other positions.  Otherwise, any problem you think you are solving by rejecting presentism is bound to give way to a no less serious problem elsewhere.
For example, one of the criticisms I have repeatedly raised against the claim that present events and past events are real in the same sense is that it appears to collapse time into eternity, effectively making the series of events an atemporal series, like a number series.  In a post from the other day, Bill seems to me to let this atemporalist cat leap right out of the bag alongside the univocalist one.  For though he stops short of endorsing it, he proposes for our consideration the following argument:
ARGUMENT FROM THE UNIVOCITY OF 'EXIST(S)'
a) Both temporal and atemporal items exist.
b) Whatever exists exists in the same sense and in the same way: there are no different modes of existence such that timeless items exist in one way and time-bound items in another. 'Exist(s)' is univocal across all applications.
c) Atemporal items exist tenselessly.  Therefore:
d) Temporal items exist tenselessly. Therefore:
e) Julius Caesar and all wholly past items exist tenselessly despite being wholly past.
End quote.  Now, why on earth should any presentist (especially an Aristotelian-Thomist presentist like myself) be impressed by an argument that simply assumes “the univocity of ‘exist(s)’”?  How on earth can this argument avoid the implication that present things and past things (like Julius Caesar) exist atemporally?  And why on earth should any presentist not regard an argument that appears to assimilate the temporal to the atemporal as a reductio ad absurdum? 
I’ve repeatedly urged readers of Aristotle’s Revenge not to read the remarks I make there about the truthmaker objection before reading the nearly 70 pages worth of material on the philosophy of time that lead up to them.  The reason is that, by the time I get to that objection, I have already argued that rivals to presentism like the ones mentioned above cannot be right.  Hence if the truthmaker objection would force us to accept one of those rivals, it needn’t delay us for any more than the couple of pages I devote to it.  Bill’s series of posts on this topic seem to me to illustrate the dangers of trying to press the truthmaker objection in isolation from consideration of these larger issues.  All the same, I thank him for forcing us presentists to articulate our position with greater precision and to defend it in greater depth.  I always enjoy and profit from reading Bill even on those occasions when I find myself disagreeing with him.

Joe Biden Superstar

For something lighter as you go into the weekend, have a listen to songstress Hannah Hoffman’s “You Know the Thing,” a setting to music of Joe Biden’s deep thoughts on the foundations of human rights.  This promises to become something of a new genre, given that we’ve already had The Gregory Brothers’ now-classic Biden-penned hit “Hairy Legs.”  Certainly you can take it to the bank that Biden will keep providing us with interesting lyrics.
While you’re at it, you should check out also the jazzy Ms. Hoffman’s philosophical tunes “Euthyphro,”  “Fallacy Funk,” and “The Trolley Problem.”