David B. Calhoun’s Blog

“…while one kind of despair steers blindly in the infinite and loses itself, another kind of despair allows itself to be, so to speak, cheated of its self by ‘the others’. By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd.” (p. 63-64)

“A man in [finitude's despair] can very well live on in temporality; indeed he can do so all the more easily, be to all appearances a human being, praised by others, honoured and esteemed, occupied with all the goals of temporal life. Yes, what we call worldliness simply consists of such people who, if one may so express it, pawn themselves to the world. They use their abilities, amass wealth, carry out world enterprieses, make prudent calculations, etc., and perhaps are mentioned in history, but they are not themselves. In a spiritual sense they have no self, no self for whose sake they could venture everything, no self for God - however selfish they are otherwise.” (p. 65)

Page numbers from the Penguin Classics edition… two fantastic sections literally facing each other, one page after the other.

Music may be the closest thing to God’s love here on earth… you hear it and love it, and it doesn’t abandon you - it seems to be loving you back. It seems to love unconditionally - no matter what state you’re in, it will play exactly the way it should play, and isn’t affected by your failures.

Unfortunately, in reality it’s not really love. It’s just a bunch of sound waves bunched together, one after the other. It has no will, it has no responsibility to you or to anyone. It doesn’t care how you feel - it is totally ignorant of these things. No matter how much touches you, it will not touch back; no matter how much you love music, it will not love you back. Only God can show us this sort of unconditional love - he’s the one who creeated it! Music sometimes comes very close - but that it comes so close and yet is totally unlike God’s love is more than depressing.. it’s tragedy.

I’m becoming increasingly concerned that philosophy, at least as it goes on today in the analytical tradition, is simply a matter of definitions or language games, as Wittgenstein (W or Dubya) said in his Philosophical Investigations (PI).

A bit of background here - the main contribution of PI (in my opinion) was that it introduced the concept of a “language-game” (sprachspiel). As an example of such a game, W shows us a very basic language game involving two builders:

“Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words “block,” “pillar,” “slab,” “beam.” A calls them out;–B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call…” (§2)

So when A yells “Slab!”, this is a complete meaning in this language.. and B will be expected to respond by passing over a slab for A to work with. Words such as “hammer”, “shovel”, etc are meaningless in this language, as there is no usage of those words.

What’s the big deal? Why does it make so much trouble for philosophy itself? Well, what if someone (B) is presenting their moral theory to another person (A). Presumably B wants their theory to be successful. But here is where W comes back to haunt us - we now ask “what does it mean for a theory to be successful”? W would say that this depends on our meaning of “what it is to be successful,” and meaning is just the usage of the word in our language. On this view, the meaning of “what it is to be successful” is perfectly analogous to “Slab!” in the simple language. All B has to do is present a theory that succeeds at whatever “it is to be successful” by meeting the self-imposed criteria. What I mean by “self-imposed criteria” is the real problem of the matter here - in our much more sophisticated language-game, we have (consciously or unconsciously) created a criteria of what it is to be a successful theory, and a criteria of what it is to be a successful moral theory.

So we have:

1. A definition is the usage or meaning of a phrase in our language.
2. P is the definition of what it is to be a theory.
3. A theory S is successful iff it meets the criteria P.

And I suppose the criteria P would ordinarily be something like: 1) the theory sufficiently answers the counter-examples raised against it, if any; 2) the theory seems intuitive and most people would agree with it, etc etc.

So what does it mean to be a successful moral theory? Whatever criteria we’ve invented for a successful moral theory. (W makes philosophy into something that begins and ends by consulting Merriam-Webster’s…)

Does possibility require time in order to be conceived? And more specifically, can possibility be conceived of only in future occurances (and not in the past or present)?

Regarding the second question - though everyday use of possibility seems to be used in reference to future events, we do also seem to use language of possibility in discussion past events, such as “It is possible that the Germans might have won WWII?”. And we don’t mean this in the sense of our ignorance of WWII (if it was, we could say in the same way “It is possible that the Germans lost WWII”), but in the sense that those events, in actuality, might have taken place.

The past is an unusual thing, though.. events in the past have already occurred. It is a fairly commonsense notion that things in the past cannot be changed (err.. unless you’re Doc or Marty, which is a different story.. and a good one by the way). So in some sense, though it is admittedly strange to say so, it seems we can say that things in the past happened necessarily the way they did. Here’s what I’m saying:

1. Everything that can occur only one way is said to occur this way necessarily. (everything that can occur more than one way is said to have possible occurrances)
2. Things in the past have occurred only one way (i.e. Germany either won or lost WWII, not both).
3. Therefore, things in the past occur necessarily.

Premise 1 is suspect..

Some clarification - before the event takes place, it is not necessary that it happen some way. But after the event takes place, because it cannot be changed it must have necessarily occurred the way it did.

What this seems to imply, if correct, is that only future events can be said to occur possibly, for, presuming non-determinism (there’s probably a better word for that..) things in the future can occur more than one way (I have a choice to show up to class tomorrow or not show up to class tomorrow).

Anyhow, what say you?