David B. Calhoun’s Blog

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said
The chances the changes are all yours to make
The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

The greatest adventure is there if you are bold
Let go of the moment that life makes you hold
To measure the meaning can make you delay
It’s time you stop thinking and wasting the day.

A man whose a dreamer and never takes leave
Who thinks of a world that is make believe
Will never know passion
Will never know pain
Who sits by the window
Will one day see rain.

The greatest adventure is what lies ahead
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said
The chances the changes are all yours to make
The mold of your life is in your hands to break.

For most people, life isn’t easy. If it was, it would probably be boring anyhow. Life has its ups and downs, some more bearable than others. Some “downs” leave scars that last through life, even though the “ups”.

I think most people think early in life that they will be rich and famous. Then as life progresses they realize they will never be either of these things. There are some who will even be rich but not famous, and will still not be content. There are many who are rich and famous and are still not content with their lives. We should strive hard, but let’s not be disappointed when we don’t reach these extravagant goals.

Life is a learning process. As we grow, we experience many letdowns. This comes with the territory. But we must move on. If we don’t move on, we might as well give up on life altogether.

It’s time you stop thinking and wasting the day.

“Behind the world in which we live, far in the background, lies another world, and the two have about the same relation to each other as do the stage proper and the stage one sometimes sees behind it in the theater. Through a hanging of fine gauze in seems as it were, a world if gauze, lighter, more ethereal, with a quality different from that if the actual world, Many people who appear physically in the actual world are not at home in it but are at home in that other world.”

-Kierkegaard, The Seducer’s Diary

I already quoted this before, but it’s such a good summary of the way I’ve really felt my whole life. I have never felt a part of this world. I have never really fit in.

There was a time I was really optimistic and sure of myself, and I thought I would use this to my advantage. All my pains of utter loneliness - perhaps they could be used for the good. This is the time when people really shine - this is the time the best books are written, the best poetry is written..

I only wish I could shine like this. I know I have it in me, if I put my mind to it. But it’s so maddening staying here in the world and being disappointed so bad. I pray for inner peace.. for release from anxiety.. but this has been happening so long, that maybe it’s something I’m doing to myself, or maybe God has truly cursed me. I am worthy of nothing, but I pray that God is merciful. God has no obligation to act for my benefit, but I pray for it, now more than ever. I’m either going insane or I am really at the end of my rope.. if God doesn’t help me now, then there will be no other time for Him to help me.

One of the biggest objections leveled against the existence of God has been the “problem of suffering”. This is a derivative of the more general “problem of evil” objection. It goes something roughly like this: if God is truly all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, then why does he allow people to suffer (or why does he allow evil in the world)? After all, since he is all-powerful, he could completely eliminate evil and suffering, and we could live in a practical paradise.

First I want to say that there are good arguments for the existence of God that are independent of the problem of suffering, so this one objection alone shouldn’t suffice for us not to believe in the existence of God. At this point I think we should take up the course of study that posits that if God really exists, then he must have good reasons for allowing evil and suffering in the world. There is a lot of fruitful discussion that comes out of this philosophically, but ultimately there is no trump card explanation of why there is suffering in the world.

However, there are some very good explanations that account for some cases of suffering. For instance, there is one argument that goes something like this: if Person A hadn’t suffered through that experience, he would never have developed to be so strong-willed and driven as he is today. That is, there are some cases where a person ultimately benefits from the suffering, because it allows them to build a character trait that they otherwise wouldn’t have developed. Certainly this is true in many cases.

I’ve been thinking about this - and I really can’t think of cases where people develop character “for fun”, i.e. where there is no necessity for it. If I encountered someone like this I would be suspicious of them being crazy or of developing their character for some undisclosed purpose (maybe they have a big ego, and they want to build what are genuinely good character traits, for the wrong reason - to build up their ego, for instance). I’ve come to the general conclusion that most humans do things out of necessity. It’s only those brief brilliant flashes of insight or those spontaneous actions that are perhaps not driven out of necessity - and we praise these types of actions for their ingeniousness.

I’ve always been suspicious of terms like “character development”. These things were taught to me in school as if I could grow in character with the flip of the switch, on my own will. Another similar term was “self esteem” - this was taught to me and my peers with the hope that somehow someone suffering from low self-esteem could, after being taught about self-esteem, flip a switch and all the sudden be all better. In recent years some educators have given up on this entirely. Let’s give them drugs, a la Brave New World. Depressed? Low self-esteem? Your answer: prozac. Hyperactive? Unable to restrain yourself? Your answer: ritalin.

But I have hope that there is really a thing such as “character development” - although it might look much different from what we’ve been taught. Getting back to my main thought - it seems to me that most of genuine character development is initiated by involuntary events. For instance, social relationships gone bad, great physical or emotional trauma, great losses, etc. These are the types of things we wouldn’t wish for even our worst enemies - these are the places in life where people hit rock bottom. But they’re involuntary, and they have no control over them. It’s not the tragedy itself that defines a person - it’s living and coping with the tragedy that defines a person. And it’s the actual character development that results from this that changes lives for the better, and as it turns out, often times this cannot occur first without a tragedy. It cannot occur without suffering and evil.

1. To be infinite is not to be limited by anything.
2. Either space is all that exists, or there exists something else X.
3. If space is all that exists, then necessary it is not limited by anything else and 3b. therefore space is infinite (from 1).
4. If space is not all that exists, then it might possibly be limited by something else X.

Frankfurt wrote this as a fairly short essay, and as such it’s not really worth it to buy it on its own (for the price). I would recommend getting “The Importance of What We Care About”, which is a collection of Frankfurt’s essays, including “On Bullshit”. Get it especially if you think you’ll be reading more Frankfurt. His style is very readable compared to other academic analytic philosophers, so I’d recommend it.

I’ve read a couple of user reviews and some people come off disappointed, either thinking this essay to be an academic joke or itself bullshit. I don’t think it’s either. If the main focus of philosophy is to love truth, then this book seriously contributes to that cause. If you’re interested in truth, you can’t ignore this book. And just Frankfurt’s name alone means, if you’re interested in contemporary philosophical discussions, you can’t ignore this book. Frankfurt is one of the leading academic philosophers today, and is famously known for his “Frankfurt counterexamples” to a particular theory of free will.

The main motivation for Frankfurt writing this essay is what he sees to be “the prevalence of bullshit” in the world today (this alone should make you think it’s a serious study, not a joke.. since why would he want to contribute to the problem of the prevalence of bullshit with more bullshit?). But what exactly is bullshit? He admits there has been no serious study of the meaning of the word. So it’s clear from the beginning this is very much an analytic essay, the focus of which will be on breaking down the meaning of bullshit and distinguishing it from what it is not.

So what is bullshit? To answer this question, the essay starts with an examination of an earlier essay by Max Black, “The Prevalence of Humbug??�, and assumes for the sake of the paper that humbug and BS are similar. Black describes two features of humbug are that 1) “it is short of lying??� and 2) “those who perpetrate it misrepresent themselves in a certain way??�. Frankfurt thinks both features to be also true of bullshit, but finds Black’s description of both to be “significantly off the mark??�. The remainder of his paper offers, along with examples of bullshit, an improved account of mainly the first of these two features.

Frankfurt’s improved account of bullshit as being “short of lying??� is that while the lier knows the truth but deceives in telling a falsity, the bullshitter has no concern for either truth or falsity – the concern of the bullshitter is just to bluff their way through, resulting in something that is not false but phony. So bullshit is not the same as lying.

Frankfurt ends the paper concluding that the increase of bullshit today is due to the increase in communication, which results in more people being required to speak on subjects they know little to nothing about. Thus these people must bluff or bullshit their way through (some user reviews here on Amazon.com support this). Frankfurt ends the paper with a short paragraph accusing skepticism in its various forms as one of the reasons there is an increase in bullshit in the world today.

I like the essay - it is something very much concerned with Truth. If I taught an introduction course in philosophy, this might even be one of the first essays I would assign. This essay on its own gives a reason to study philosophy, which is concerned with the truth, rather than simply go through life bullshitting and not being concerned with the truth at all.

What in the essay do I disagree with? As it turns out, very little. It’s hard to disagree with much in this essay (maybe others would find this easier to do than me), but I do have issues with one of the last paragraphs, where Frankfurt claims that skepticism is one of the reasons for the increase in bullshit today. I know this isn’t supposed to be a fully worked out argument, just a passing thought, but I really can’t think of any bullshit that has as its (even distant) cause skepticism. So I’m a bit suspicious of this argument.

In closing, I do recommend that anyone living in the world today who is concerned with Truth read this book. And if you think you might be interested in reading more, then instead of this $10 single essay, pick up Frankfurt’s “The Important of What We Care About”, a collection of Frankfurt’s essays, including “On Bullshit”.

I’ve been reading Coppleston’s History of Philosophy, specifically the first volume detailing some of the Pre-Socratics. I’ve just read the section on Parmenides and Melissus and came across the concept of “the infinite” again.

Melissus takes issue with Parmenides’s concept of being. Parmenides said that Being is finite (spacially, according to Coppleston), but Melissus argues that Being is infinite, for to be finite is to be limited by something else. But outside of Being, this “something else”, there is nothing at all. So how can nothing limit Being? We must say that Being is, literally, limited by nothing. Therefore Being must be infinite, contrary to Parmenides’s opinion.

This same sort of concept of the infinite comes up again in Modern Philosophy with Spinoza, who argues that substance is not only independent (by definition), but infinite (Ethics, Proposition VIII). Roughly, this is because if it were not infinite, it would be finite, which is to be limited by something. Not only limited by something, but something of its own kind, which is to say this “limiting thing” must share an attribute with the thing it’s limiting. But this is absurd, since in Spinoza’s philosophy no two substances can share the same attribute (Ethics, Proposition V). Therefore, he says, substance must be not only =def independent, but also infinite.

These seem to be the same definitions of “the infinite”, namely:
Something is infinite =def when it is not limited by anything.

This is a rough definition, but in each argument something more specifically like the following is posited:
Something is infinite =def when it is not limited by any second thing.

On first glance this appears to be the same as the first definition. If it appears that way to you, then good, I am just at the point where I can reveal my question: Is it possible for something to limit itself? Put another way, is it possible, without any second thing, for something to limit itself?

It seems that we would have to answer in the affirmative. Otherwise we might be lead to saying some pretty absurd things. For instance, when I say the table in front of me is finite, on this classic Melissus/Spinoza account I would have to be saying something like “This table is finite because it’s limited by some second thing”. Since we’re talking about a physical object, I look to what is closest to the table. The majority of the table is surrounded by air. So then am I saying something like this?:

“The table is finite because it’s limited by a second thing, namely, air”

But this seems not only strange, but wrong. The air isn’t really interacting with the table all that much. And it would also seem that by removing the air, or all other physical things around it, the table could somehow become infinite! This also seems ridiculous. I only can imagine a table free-floating out in space. And if some distant galaxy is all that is left to exist besides the table, then we would say the table is limited?

Maybe I’m not understanding these terms quite right, which is certainly possible. But if so, then I wish for a better definition of what it means to be infinite. And I would like an answer to my question, “is it possible for something, without any second thing, to be finite?”.

Saturation means “thoroughly full”, and I tend to think of it whenever I think of the enormous amount of literature now available to every person on earth. And now there is the internet and blogs.. we are saturated with information. So I sort of despair over having a blog here or trying to publish things at all. Both for the fact that what I write here will not be read or will not be useful (judging by the lack of comments) and the fact that what I have to say here has likely already been said better elsewhere.

For instance, my current point is likely buried in Thoreau’s Walden, where he says the true philosopher hates the news.. that basically the world has become so saturated and complicated that we should go back to basics. And that’s what he did. So not only did he say what I want to say here, and say it better, but he actually LIVED it, and this was now over 100 years ago.

There is nothing new under the sun.

In the abortion debate, supporters of choice often cite an argument such as the following in defense of abortion: “The fetus is in my body, which I ought to have complete control over.” So the argument goes that the woman is fully within her rights to remove the fetus.. after all, it’s HER body. Here’s the argument clearly logically stated:

1. When we do things within our rights, (=df) we aren’t violating any moral standard.
2. We are within our rights to anything we have full moral authority or control over.
3. We have complete moral authority or control over things that occur inside our own body.
4. Therefore, we are within our rights to do things that occur inside our own body (by 2 and 3).
5. Abortion is a thing that occurs inside our own body.
C: Therefore, we are within our rights to decide to have an abortion (by 4 and 5).
(C2: Therefore, we aren’t violating any moral standard when we decide to have an abortion [by 1 and C, since "within our rights" just means we aren't violating any moral standard])

The focus of my post today is premise 3: “We have complete moral authority or control over things that occur inside our own body.” I don’t think I’d be mistaken if I were to say this is THE main argument in favor of abortion. Keep in mind this is ignoring cases of rape, etc., that usually appear in abortion debates as red herrings, at least from what I’ve seen.

I want to offer two simple counter-examples that show where it seems intuitive we DO NOT have complete moral authority over things that occur inside our own body.

The first example is one in which Jones, our unwitting accomplice to help demonstrate this example, has a tumor in his brain that makes him predisposed to be quite violent. So violent that in fact he has been on a killing spree. Once he is captured by police, they find from reports from his family and neighbors that this behavior is quite unlike Jones. So Jones undergoes tests, and doctors find a large tumor in his skull. Though Jones refuses to have it removed, the court rules that it should be removed. So it’s removed and consequently Jones is cured - and no longer has the urge to go on killing sprees.

The second example is similar, but more outlandish. In fact, this is a wildly outlandish example, but it’s still quite important. A small device created by the government happens to be able to control the detonation of a test missile in the event of failure. This device is so small that it is barely the size of a fingernail, and was developed this small to show off the technical capabilities of the rocket. It just so happens that a government agent in posession of the device is eating at a local diner, when the missile is accidentally fired. If the device isn’t used to detonate the missile, it will crash into the densely-populated city and certainly kill many people. However, the government agent somehow manages to fling the fingernail-sized control across the room, and it lands in Bob’s drink. Before the government agent has a chance to say anything, Bob finishes his drink and ingests the control. And consequently, the device must be removed from Bob’s stomach by a stomach-pump before the missile lands.

It seems that Bob is not within his rights to refuse to have is stomach pumped. He refuses, even at the insistence of the government agent, and perhaps the rest of the cafe. If the missile lands and kills scores of people, and Bob is brought to court, it seems that he might be charged with at the very least not complying with the government agent.

In both cases we have examples of people who do not have full moral control over their bodies. In each case, though they may be opposed to the removal of something in their body, we would say that the right thing to do would be to have the object removed, even though this was against the person’s wishes. We might say, framing this in the language of the abortion debate, that the morally acceptable thing to do was to go against the person’s physical autonomy.

So it is with abortion, except in a slightly different way. Whereas the examples above showed the person not in their rights to keeping something in their body, in the abortion debate it’s a question of whether someone is in their rights to REMOVE something from their body.

This is no slam-dunk argument against abortion. All I have shown is that we have reason to be suspicious of premise 3, which presupposes in ALL CASES we have a right to physical autonomy - that we have an absolute rule over what goes on in our body. But it very well may be the case that in cases of abortion, we DO have absolute moral control over what goes on in our bodies.

So to fully advance an argument against abortion, it would have to be shown somehow that a person is not within their rights to wish for the removal of the fetus from their body. This involves questions about the basis of morality and about the requirements for personhood.

Morality has traditionally been the study of right/wrong or good/bad action in specifically PERSONS, but some such as Peter Singer have advocated for ethics that can be applied also to the treatment of animals or other living things. So if I were to further this issue I would sidestep the issue of personhood, which seems to stalemate the abortion argument, and argue for an ethics that protects living things. A fetus is a living thing, and thus it must be protected.. something along these lines.

Woo! I just got done converting my senior thesis paper into PDF form. You can view it by clicking here.

My Preface (included in the PDF):
This paper is a culmination of the undergraduate philosophy program at Biola University, which tests the student’s skills to rationally respond to academic philosophical material. The paper itself is the result of a semester’s worth of research work and is required for the undergraduate philosophy major.
At the time I wrote this, I had attended Biola for two years and had taken every class required for the Philosophy major except a class in Metaphysics, which I was to take the following semester. I really enjoyed working on this, as I learned much more about current studies in teleology, something that is by-and-large neglected in philosophy today. After I had completed writing, my material was presented at the 2006 Senior Colloquium on May 17, which is held each year for senior philosophy majors to present their work.
My presentation was a blend of reading straight from the following paper and an improvised talk based on the main points I wished to present. The result, if I remember correctly, was me reading the Introduction to the paper word-for-word, then an improvised discussion of the major points in the paper, then a return to a word-for-word read when I came to Larry Wright’s Unified Analysis of teleology and my modification to it. I wish I had recorded the talk I gave!
Anyhow, here’s a nice PDF version of my paper, something which represents much thoroughly enjoyable work. I’ve included lots of extra things to this PDF, from the original colloquium announcement to the response and grade I received on this paper. You can find all these things listed in the Table of Contents. Also, one final word: I would have preferred to have converted the endnotes to footnotes for the sake of readability, but the program I use (Open Office) doesn’t have this feature (although it does have the feature to convert footnotes to endnotes!). For this reason, my paper itself will be presented last, with even the Bibliography preceding it.
Enjoy!
David Calhoun (December 2, 2006)

“…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.