Edward Feser's Blog, page 9

Immortal Souls now available for pre-order

My new book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Natureis nowavailable for pre-order in the U.S. at Amazon.com.  Here again are the back cover copy,endorsements, and table of contents:

Immortal Souls provides as ambitious and complete adefense of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical anthropology as is currently inprint.  Among the many topics covered arethe reality and unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, thefreedom of the will, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificialintelligence, and the refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptionsof human nature.  Along the way, the mainrival positions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engagedwith and rebutted.

“EdwardFeser's book is a Summa of the nature of the human person: it is, therefore,both a rather long – but brilliant – monograph, and a valuable work forconsultation. Each of the human faculties discussed is treated comprehensively,with a broad range of theories considered for and against, and, althoughFeser's conclusions are firmly Thomistic, one can derive great benefit from hisdiscussions even if one is not a convinced hylomorphist. Every philosopher ofmind would benefit from having this book within easy reach.”

HowardRobinson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Central European University

“Feserdefends the Aristotelian and Thomistic system, effectively bringing it intodialogue with recent debates and drawing on some of the best of both analytic(Kripke, Searle, BonJour, Fodor) and phenomenological (Heidegger,Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus) philosophy. He deftly rebuts objections to Thomism,both ancient and modern. Anyone working today on personal identity, the unity ofthe self, the semantics of cognition, free will, or qualia will need to engagewith the analysis and arguments presented here.”

Robert C.Koons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin

CONTENTS

Preface                                                               

Part I: Whatis Mind?                                        

    1. The ShortAnswer                                 

    2. TheSelf                                                         

    3. TheIntellect                                              

    4. TheWill                                                       

Part II:What is Body?                                                           

    5. Matter                                                         

    6. Animality                                                   

Part III:What is a Human Being?                            

    7. AgainstCartesianism                                

    8. AgainstMaterialism                                   

    9. NeitherComputers nor Brains                 

Part IV:What is the Soul?                                          

    10.Immortality                                              

    11. The Formof the Body                             

Index               

Moreinformation about the book is available at thepublisher’s website.                                  

Postliberalism is not despotism

In anew article at Postliberal Order,I explain why, contrary to a common straw man, postliberalism does not entaildespotism.

Multiverses and falsifiability

AdamBecker’s 2018 book Whatis Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics is an excellent account of the longstanding and intractable controversy overhow to interpret quantum mechanics.  Oneof the main themes of the book is how much the direction of twentieth-centuryphysics was driven by personalities, political factors, career interests, and,not least, unexamined and woolly philosophical assumptions – something philosophersof science like Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend have shown has always been true of science historically.  The tendency of contemporary physicists,especially, to be both ignorant of and condescending toward philosophy comes infor special criticism.

In at leastone case, though, Becker himself is a bit too dismissive of a philosophicalline of argument.  Becker discusses howthe notion of a multiverse has beendefended by many physicists on the basis of several independent considerations,viz. Hugh Everett’s “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, inflationarycosmology, and string theory.  Oneobjection raised against the notion in any of these versions is that it is unfalsifiable – that is to say, that itgenerates no predictions that could in principle be proven false by observationand experiment, in which case it is empirically untestable. 

Beckerrightly notes that falsifiability, a theme made famous by Karl Popper, is notas straightforward a matter as popular presentations often suppose.  For one thing, a scientific theory is nevertested in isolation, because it never generates predictions in isolation.  Rather, its predictions follow from thetheory only together with variousfurther assumptions of a theoretical or empirical kind. 

For example,suppose researchers working for a soap company want to determine whether thechemical ingredients in a new product they are developing really will, as theysuppose, kill certain kinds of bacteria. They put samples of the bacteria on a slide, apply the soap, and seewhat happens.  If the bacteria are notdestroyed, has the theory been falsified? Not necessarily.  For in making andtesting the prediction that the soap will kill the bacteria, they are assumingthat dead bacteria will have such-and-such an appearance under a microscope, thatthe slide on which they are put has been cleaned properly (and thus doesn’t havesome residue of chemicals that might counteract the effect of the soap they aretesting), that the standard theory about how microscopes work is correct, thatthe particular microscope being used is not malfunctioning, and so on.  And if the test does not come out aspredicted, it could be that one ofthese background assumptions is false, rather than that the soap does notreally kill such bacteria.

Of course,there may be very good reasons for judging that none of these assumptions isfalse, so that the reasonable conclusion to draw is that the soap is not infact effective against the bacteria.  Thepoint, though (famously emphasized by Pierre Duhem and W. V. Quine), is that testinga scientific claim is not a matter of carrying out a “crucial experiment” thatmight all by itself either falsify or vindicate the claim.  There is often a certain amount of wiggleroom by which a theory might inprinciple be upheld in the face of apparent counterevidence, even if actually continuingto uphold it is not necessarily reasonable all things considered.

Beckerdiscusses a famous pair of examples from the history of science that illustratehow complicated the matter of falsification actually is.  Newtonian physics was in generalspectacularly successful in describing and predicting the observed motions ofbodies, but there were exceptions.  Themotions of Uranus and Mercury did not conform to the predictions of Newton’slaws, but for a very long time, this did not lead scientists to judge that Newtonhad been refuted.  After all, the theoryworked for most observations, and there was at first nothing better to put inits place.  So, they looked foralternative explanations of the divergence between observation and theory.  In the case of Uranus, it turned out that itsmotion was being affected by the gravitational pull of another, heretoforeunknown planet, Neptune.  That particularproblem for Newton’s theory was thus solved. But the conflict with the observed motion of Mercury resisted anysimilar solution, and it wasn’t until Einstein’s general theory of relativityappeared – and explained the motion of Mercury along with all the observationalevidence that Newton could explain – that Newton’s theory was judged to havebeen falsified, and Einstein’s adopted in its place.

So far sogood.  But Becker then fallaciously drawsfrom these considerations the conclusion that “scientific theories don’t needto be falsifiable” (p. 264) so that:

Claiming, then, that multiversetheories are unscientific because they are unfalsifiable is to reject them simplybecause they do not live up to an arbitrary standard that no scientific theoryof any kind has ever met.  Claiming thatno data could ever force the rejection of a multiverse theory is merely statingthat a multiverse theory is just like any other theory. (p. 263)

This is nottrue, and it certainly doesn’t follow. To understand what is wrong with Becker’s position, we need to draw somedistinctions.  First, Popper argued thatfalsifiability comes in degrees.  Some statements might have empiricalconsequences independently of any others, other statements might have empiricalconsequences only in conjunction with further statements, and yet otherstatements might have no empirical consequences at all.  The first sort of statement would be strongly falsifiable, the second weakly falsifiable, and the thirdutterly unfalsifiable. 

Now, even ifthe considerations raised by Becker show that a scientific theory need not be strongly falsifiable, it doesn’t followthat it can be altogether unfalsifiable.  It may, for all Becker has shown, still needto be at least weakly falsifiable.  Now, the critic of multiverse theories mightargue that whereas Newton’s physics was weaklyfalsifiable, multiverse theories are altogether unfalsifiable, so that theparallel Becker wants to draw is bogus. And in that case, Becker’s response does not suffice to save multiversetheories from the objection in question. He would have to show, either that multiverse theories are at leastweakly falsifiable, or that a scientific theory need not be even weaklyfalsifiable.  And he does not establisheither of these claims.

But even ifhe were to take the second route and argue that scientific theories needn’t beeven weakly falsifiable, there is a further problem, as can be seen by drawingsome further distinctions.  For there aredifferent ways in which a statementmight be empirically unfalsifiable, some of them unproblematic but some of themproblematic.

First, thereare statements that are unfalsifiable inthe way that mathematical and metaphysical truths can be.  For example, that 2 + 2 = 4 and that thefundamental constituents of reality are substances (as opposed to attributes, say,or events) are, I would argue, not empirically falsifiable.  That is not because they are less certain than empirical claims, butbecause (as I would also argue) they are morecertain.  They are bedrock truths thatpertain to any possible reality, to non-empiricalimmaterial reality no less than to the empirical, material world. 

Second,there are statements that are unfalsifiable inthe way that truths of the philosophy of nature can be.  These are claims that, unlike those of the firstcategory, do apply only to empirical reality yet are nevertheless certain.  For example, take the claim that change occurs.  We know this statement empirically, but it isnot empirically falsifiable for thesimple reason that to falsify something requires having a sequence ofexperiences (as happens when we set up an experiment, carry it out, and thenrecord the results).  And having asequence of experiences itself involveschange.  To try empirically to falsifythe claim that change occurs would thus be self-defeating.  That does not entail that the reality ofchange is less certain than other empirical truths, but rather that it too ismore certain.

Third, thereare statements that are unfalsifiable inthe way that the most fundamental theses of modern empirical science arguablyare.  For example, some have heldthat the principle of the conservation of energy and the second law ofthermodynamics are unfalsifiable.  Thisis debatable, but it is certainly plausible to maintain that these ideas are socentral to modern science’s picture of the universe that they are treated in practice as unfalsifiable, even ifthey are falsifiable in principle.  Theidea is that giving them up would so radically undermine the rest of the modernscientific edifice that, if there ever appeared to be evidence that conflictedwith them, scientists would judge that there must be something wrong with theevidence or with other parts of science, rather than that these fundamental principlesthemselves are false.

Fourth,there are statements that are unfalsifiable inthe way that Popper famously took astrology, Marxism, and Freudianism to be.  These are statements that purport to beempirical rather than metaphysical, but are neither parts of the philosophy ofnature nor central to the modern scientific picture of the world.  Because they do not fall into the first threecategories I’ve just described, the reason they are unfalsifiable is not thatthey are necessary truths (the way mathematical and metaphysical truths are),or because denying them would be self-defeating (the way denying my example ofa truth in the philosophy of nature would be), or because to deny them wouldtake down the whole edifice of science (as the examples in the third categorywould).  So, they do not have the certainty that truths in these othercategories have.  The reason they areunfalsifiable is instead that they make predictions that are too vague oropen-ended to be crisply testable.

Now, it is unfalsifiabilityof this fourth kind that is the mostproblematic, and that Popper took to be paradigmatic of pseudo-science.  The first two kinds of unfalsifiablestatement are, I would argue, unproblematic, and the third kind is at leastarguably defensible.  Suppose multiversetheories are indeed unfalsifiable.  Whichof these four classes would they fall in?

They don’tfall into the first category, because their description of the world is not trueof metaphysical or arithmetical necessity.  That is why even defenders of multiversetheories typically allow that they mightbe wrong, and at least try to come upwith ways of testing such theories empirically. This would make no sense if the theories had the bedrock status thattruths of mathematics and metaphysics are traditionally claimed to have.

They alsodon’t fall into the second category, because they aren’t fundamental truthsabout what any possible empirical world must be like, which it would beself-defeating to deny.  Again, evendefenders of multiverse theories allow that they might be wrong, and certainly one can doubt such theories withoutbeing led into incoherence (by contrast with the attempt to deny the reality ofchange, which, I would argue, wouldbe incoherent).

Nor do multiversetheories fall into the third category, because they are hardly fundamental to the modern scientific pictureof the world in the way that the conservation of energy and the second law ofthermodynamics are.  This is obvious justfrom the fact that they are highly controversial in a way that the fundamentalscientific principles mentioned are not.

So, ifmultiverse theories really are not even weakly falsifiable, but altogetherunfalsifiable, it looks like they will fall into the fourth and most problematicclass of unfalsifiable theories, alongside astrology, Marxism, andFreudianism.   And in that case, Beckerwill not have succeeded in defending multiverse theories from the objection inquestion. 

Successfullyto defend them against that objection would require either (a) showing thatunfalsifiable statements even of the fourth category are scientificallyrespectable, (b) showing that multiverse theories are, appearances notwithstanding,unfalsifiable in the way that statements in one of the other three categoriesare, or (c) showing that multiverse theories are in fact falsifiable and opento empirical testing.  I don’t think thatany of these routes is promising, but route (c) would certainly be the way togo if the defender of a multiverse theory wants to convince anyone that suchtheories are “scientific” in just thesame sense that what Newton, Einstein, and the founders of quantummechanics were up to was scientific.  Todo that, however, would not be to sidestepthe objection from falsifiability (as Becker wants to do), but precisely tomeet the objection head on.

Update on Immortal Souls

Immortal Souls has at last been reduced frompotency to act.  The official publicationdates are in June for Europe and July in the United States.  Pre-order is now possible at Amazon’s websitesinthe U.K. and inGermany.  It should be available forpre-order soon at Amazon’s U.S. website, and I’ll let you know when it is.  You can find the table of contents andendorsements here,and other details at the publisher’sweb page.

New video course at Word on Fire

Recently Irecorded a six-part video course titled SixArguments for the Existence of God for the Word on Fire Institute.  You can find an interview about the courseand further information here.

Immortal Souls

My book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Naturewill be published this summer by Editiones Scholasticae.  At well over 500 pages, it's my longest book yet.  Here are the back cover copy, endorsements,and table of contents:

ImmortalSouls provides as ambitious and complete a defense of Aristotelian-Thomisticphilosophical anthropology as is currently in print.  Among the many topics covered are the realityand unity of the self, the immateriality of the intellect, the freedom of thewill, the immortality of the soul, the critique of artificial intelligence, andthe refutation of both Cartesian and materialist conceptions of humannature.  Along the way, the main rivalpositions in contemporary philosophy and science are thoroughly engaged withand rebutted.

"EdwardFeser's book is a Summa of the nature of the human person: it is, therefore,both a rather long – but brilliant – monograph, and a valuable work forconsultation. Each of the human faculties discussed is treated comprehensively,with a broad range of theories considered for and against, and, althoughFeser's conclusions are firmly Thomistic, one can derive great benefit from hisdiscussions even if one is not a convinced hylomorphist. Every philosopher ofmind would benefit from having this book within easy reach."

HowardRobinson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Central European University

“Feserdefends the Aristotelian and Thomistic system, effectively bringing it intodialogue with recent debates and drawing on some of the best of both analytic(Kripke, Searle, BonJour, Fodor) and phenomenological (Heidegger,Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus) philosophy. He deftly rebuts objections to Thomism,both ancient and modern. Anyone working today on personal identity, the unity ofthe self, the semantics of cognition, free will, or qualia will need to engagewith the analysis and arguments presented here.”

Robert C.Koons, Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin

CONTENTS

Preface                                                               

Part I: Whatis Mind?                                        

1. The Short Answer                                 

2.The Self                                                          

3. The Intellect                                              

4.The Will                                                       

Part II:What is Body?                                                            

5.Matter                                                         

6. Animality                                                   

Part III:What is a Human Being?                             

7. Against Cartesianism                                

8. Against Materialism                                   

9. Neither Computers nor Brains                  

Part IV: Whatis the Soul?                                          

10. Immortality                                              

11. The Form of the Body                             

Index                                                                           

Let’s open it up

If we had anew open thread post, what would you talk about?  Current events?  That off-topic philosophical or theological questionyou vainly keep trying to bring up in other threads? Or perhaps one of the Postliberal Order articles of mine that you were unableto access before, but are now out from behind the paywall?  Let’s find out.  From vocalese to Daniel Keyes, from temporaryintrinsics to temporary insanity, from Eisenhower to Einstein to Eisenstein – here, everything is open for discussion.  Just keep it civil and classy.  Previous open threads archived here.

Dignitas Infinita at The Catholic Thing

At The Catholic Thing, Diane Montagna interviewsme about the Vatican’s recent Declaration Dignitas Infinita.

Plato and Aristotle on youth and politics

As faculty,including even philosophy professors, aid and abet student bad behavior oncampus, it is worth considering what the most serious thinkers of the Westerntradition would have thought about the political opinions and activities of theyoung.  What follows are some relevantpassages from Plato and Aristotle in particular.  For purposes of the present article, I put toone side the specific subject matter of the recent protests, because it is notrelevant to the present point.  What isrelevant is that the manner in which the protesters’ opinions are formed andexpressed is contrary to reason.  Thatwould remain true whatever they were protesting.  Part of this is because mobsare always irrational.  Butthey are bound to be even more irrational when they are composed of youngpeople.

Don’t trust anyone under thirty

Plato heldthat even the guardians in his ideal city should not be permitted to studyphilosophy, and in particular the critical back-and-form of philosophical debate,before the age of thirty.  And even then,they could do so only after acquiring practical experience in military service,the acquisition of a large body of general knowledge, and the intellectual disciplineafforded by mathematical reasoning.  Ashe says in The Republic, “dialectic”(as he referred to this back-and-forth), when studied prematurely, “doesappalling harm” and “fills people with indiscipline” (Book VII, at p. 271 ofthe DesmondLee translation).  For young andinexperienced people tend to make a game of argument and criticism, a means oftearing down traditional ideas without seriously considering what might be saidin favor of them or putting anything better in their place.  Describing the young person who pursues suchsuperficial philosophizing, Plato writes:

He is driven to think that there’s nodifference between honourable and disgraceful, and so on with all the othervalues, like right and good, that he used to revere… Then when he’s lost anyrespect or feeling for his former beliefs but not yet found the truth, where ishe likely to turn?  Won’t it be to a lifewhich flatters his desires? … And so we shall see him become a rebel instead ofa conformer…

You must have noticed how young men,after their first taste of argument, are always contradicting people just forthe fun of it; they imitate those whom they hear cross-examining each other,and themselves cross-examine other people like puppies who love to pull andtear at anyone within reach… So when they’ve proved a lot of people wrong andbeen proved wrong often themselves, they soon slip into the belief that nothingthey believed before was true…

But someone who’s a bit older… willrefuse to have anything to do with this sort of idiocy; he won’t copy those whocontradict just for the fun of the thing, but will be more likely to follow thelead of someone whose arguments are aimed at finding the truth.  He’s a more reasonable person and will getphilosophy a better reputation. (Book VII, at pp. 272-273)

Similarly,in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotlesays that political science (by which he meant, not primarily what is todaycalled by that name, but rather what we would today call political philosophy)is not a suitable area of study for the young. He writes:

A young man is not a fit person toattend lectures on political science, because he is not versed in the practicalbusiness of life from which politics draws its premises and subjectmatter.  Besides, he tends to follow hisfeelings, with the result that he will make no headway and derive no benefitfrom his course… It makes no difference whether he is young in age or youthfulin character; the defect is due not to lack of years but to living, andpursuing one’s various aims, under the sway of feelings. (Book I, pp. 65-66 of the Thomsonand Tredennick translation)

This lack ofexperience and domination by feelings is commented on by Aristotle elsewhere inthe Ethics.  For example, he observes that “the lives ofthe young are regulated by their feelings, and their chief interest is in theirown pleasure and the opportunity of the moment” (Book VIII, at p. 262).  And he notes:

Although the young develop ability ingeometry and mathematics and become wise in such matters, they are not thoughtto develop prudence.  The reason for thisis that prudence also involves knowledge of particular facts, which becomeknown from experience; and a young man is not experienced, because experiencetakes some time to acquire. (Book VI, at p. 215)

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle develops thesethemes in greater detail, writing:

The young are by character appetitiveand of a kind to do whatever they should desire.  And of the bodily appetites they areespecially attentive to that connected with sex and have no control over it…They are irate and hot-tempered and of a kind to harken to anger.  And they are inferior to their passions; forthrough their ambition they do not tolerate disregard but are vexed if theythink they are being wronged.

And they are ambitious, but even morekeen to win (for youth craves excess and victory is a kind of excess), and theyare both of these things rather than money-loving (they are least money-lovingof all through never having yet experienced shortage…) and they are notsour-natured but sweet-natured through their not having yet observed muchwickedness, and credulous through their not yet having been many timesdeceived, and optimistic… because they have not frequently met with failure…

And in all things they err rathertowards the excessively great or intense… (for they do everything in excess:they love and hate excessively and do all other things in the same way), andthey think they know everything and are obstinate (this is also the reason fortheir doing everything in excess), and they commit their crimes from arrogance ratherthan mischievousness. (Book II, Part 12, at pp. 173-74 of the Lawson-Tancredtranslation)

To summarizethe points made by Plato and Aristotle, then, young people: are excessivelydriven by emotion and appetite; lack the experience that is required forprudence or wisdom in practical matters; in particular, are prone to naïve idealismand an exaggerated sense of injustice coupled with arrogant self-confidence; andtend, in their intellectual efforts, toward sophistry and unreasonable skepticismtoward established ways.  For thesereasons, their opinions about matters of ethics and politics are liable to befoolish.

Democracy dumbs down

This shouldsound like common sense, because it is.  Andnotice that so far, Plato and Aristotle are describing the tendencies of theyoung as such, even in the best kinds of social and politicalarrangements.  But things are even worsewhen those arrangements are bad.  In The Laws, Plato warns that the youngbecome soft when pampered and affluent.  “Luxury,”he says, “makes a child bad-tempered, irritable and apt to react violently totrivial things” (Book VII, at p. 231 of the Saunderstranslation).  And again: “Supposeyou do your level best during these years to shelter him from distress andfright and any kind of pain at all… That’s the best way to ruin a child,because the corruption invariably sets in at the very earliest stages of hiseducation” (ibid.). 

In The Republic, Plato argues that musicand entertainments that celebrate what is ignoble and encourage the indulgenceof desire corrupt the moral character of the young in a way that cannot fail tohave social and political repercussions:

The music and literature of a countrycannot be altered without major political and social changes… The amusements inwhich our children take part must be better regulated; because once they andthe children become disorderly, it becomes impossible to produce seriouscitizens with a respect for order. (Book IV, at pp. 125-26)

Similarly,in the Politics, Aristotle cautions:

Unseemly talk… results in conduct ofa like kind.  Especially, therefore, mustit be kept away from youth… And since we exclude all unseemly talk, we mustalso forbid gazing at debased paintings or stories… It should be laid down thatyounger persons shall not be spectators at comedies or recitals of iambics,not, that is to say, until they have reached the age at which they come torecline at banquets with others and share in the drinking; by this time theireducation will have rendered them completely immune to any harm that might comefrom such spectacles… We must keep all that is of inferior quality unfamiliarto the young, particularly things with an ingredient of wickedness or hostility. (Book VII, at pp. 446-47 of the Sinclairand Saunders translation)

Plato’s Republic also famously argues thatoligarchies, or societies dominated by the desire for wealth, are disordered,and tend to degenerate into egalitarian democracies, which are even moredisordered.  Ihave discussed elsewhere Plato’s account of the decay of oligarchy intodemocracy, and of democracy, in turn, into tyranny.  Among the passages relevant to the subject athand are the following, from Book VIII:

The oligarchs reduce their subjectsto the state we have described, while as for themselves and their dependents –their young men live in luxury and idleness, physical and mental, become idle,and lose their ability to resist pain or pleasure. (p. 291)

The young man’s mind is filledinstead by an invasion of pretentious fallacies and opinions…  [He] call[s] insolence good breeding, licenseliberty, extravagance generosity, and shamelessness courage… [He] comes tothrow off all inhibitions and indulge[s] desires that are unnecessary anduseless...

If anyone tells him that somepleasures, because they spring from good desires, are to be encouraged andapproved and others, springing from evil desires, to be disciplined andrepressed, he won’t listen or open his citadel’s doors to the truth, but shakeshis head and says all pleasures are equal and should have equal rights. (pp. 297-98)

A democratic society… goes on toabuse as servile and contemptible those who obey the authorities and reservesits approval, in private life as well as public, for rulers who behave likesubjects and subjects who behave like rulers…

It becomes the thing for father andson to change places, the father standing in awe of his son, and the sonneither respecting nor fearing his parents, in order to assert what he callshis independence…

The teacher fears and panders to hispupils… and the young as a whole imitate their elders, argue with them and setthemselves up against them, while their elders try to avoid the reputation ofbeing disagreeable or strict by aping the young and mixing with them on termsof easy good fellowship. (pp. 299-300)

In short,the affluence and egalitarian spirit of a wealth-oriented society that hasdecayed into a democracy (in Plato’s sense of that term, which has more to dowith ethos than the mechanics of governance) greatly exacerbate the failings towhich the young are already prone.  Inparticular, it makes them even softer and thus unable to deal maturely withchallenges and setbacks, even more prone to sophistry and excessive skepticism,even more contemptuous of authority and established customs, and more vulgarand addicted to vice.  Even worse, theegalitarian spirit of democracy makes adults more prone to acquiesce in this badbehavior, or even to ape it themselves. A general spirit of license and irrationality sets in and undermines thesocial order, greasing the skids for tyranny (in a way that, again, I describein the article linked to earlier).

What then,would Plato and Aristotle think of the mobs of shrieking student protesters wesee on campuses today (or for that matter, the student mobs of the 1960s and ofevery decade between then and now)?  To askthe question is to answer it.  Nor is ita mystery what they would think of the professors who egg on this foolishness.  They are the heirs, not of Plato andAristotle, but of the sophists to whom Plato and Aristotle sharply contrastedthe true philosopher.

Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)

Prominentphilosopher of mind, apostle of Darwinism, and New Atheist writer DanielDennett hasdied.  I have been very critical ofDennett over the years, but he had two great strengths.  First, he wrote with crystal clarity, nomatter how difficult the subject matter.  Second, as even we critics of materialism canhappily concede, he could be very insightful on the distinctive nature ofpsychological modes of description and explanation (even if he went wrong when addressinghow these relate metaphysically to physical modes of description andexplanation).  It is also only fair toacknowledge that of the four original New Atheist tomes (the others penned byDawkins, Harris, and Hitchens) his Breakingthe Spell, despite its faults, was the one that was actually intellectuallyinteresting.  RIP