2004

● 1-1-2004:   Does the notion of curved lines and surfaces (as in curved space) not presuppose the notion of straight lines? For curvature is defined in relation to straightness, as a deviation from the straight. (??)

[Later note (11-1-2023): You could also say that the notion of straight lines presupposes the notion of curved lines, because straight means not curved. To say that either element presupposes the other is to imply that one element is somehow more fundamental. But no analytic truth is more fundamental than another; they’re all on the same level: they all just are.]

● 1-2-2004:   Does the notion that Hell is downward, below the earth’s surface, and Heaven upward, spaceward, suggest that Hell is spatially finite, but Heaven is spatially infinite??

● 1-3-2004:   Most of the time, sufficient condition for your death is within your hands, but not sufficient condition for your life. In other words, most of the time during your life, you can end your life simply by choosing to do so; but you can’t necessarily continue living simply by choosing to do so, inasmuch as life depends on the existence of many factors, not all of which factors are within your control. Destruction is easier than creation, and continued existence is creation of a sort. (??)

● A detail of everyday life. When putting on a heavier garment with long sleeves over a lighter one with long sleeves, I grip the end of the lighter garment’s sleeve between my fingers and palm to prevent the inner sleeve from being pushed back as I put my arm through the sleeve of the outer piece.

● In doing philosophy, the development and expression of ideas is as important as the germinal ideas themselves. In a sense, the idea’s expression is the idea. Which, further, means that it’s difficult to be a good philosopher without also being a good writer.

● 1-4-2004:   The notion of the value of life itself, irrespective of quality of life, contradicts the very idea of overpopulation, and is ultimately a bankrupt philosophy.

● Sometimes it’s hard to tell that you have enough until you have too much, or to get the right amount without getting too much. For example, when inflating a car tire to a specific pressure, you sometimes have to go over the point you’re aiming for, let some air out, then put a bit more in, et cetera, until you hit the mark exactly. A more problematic situation is that wherein you can’t reduce the amount of the ingredient in question, such as putting sugar in coffee to sweeten it (you can’t take sugar out . . . and it may be difficult or inconvenient to add [unsweetened] coffee).

● Was Carl Marx a Marxist? If so, at what point did he become a Marxist?

● 1-6-2004:   Today I heard that “President” George W. Bush commented that he was selected as President by God. Which I think is a rather interesting departure from God’s usual, more subtle means of selecting leaders: causing them to be elected by the people. On the other hand, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that, since the people failed to do the right thing in that election, God had to step in . . ..

[Later note (7-21-2024): That’s a quibble. One could say that, if God selects leaders, He does so by causing the people to vote accordingly.]

● Mystical experience, religious experience . . . is experience.

● 1-7-2004:   The idea of a person’s inherent or absolute personality is problematic, in that your personality varies with the situation; it’s inseparable from its context. For example, when you’re on a job interview or a first date, you’re on your “best behavior.”

● 1-8-2004:   A Parable: Imagine six people shipwrecked on an island who are continually hungry because of a shortage of food there. One day, a member of the group finds a large chest filled with food rations, apparently jetsam from another ship. There’s enough food in the chest to more than fully satisfy the man who found it, for the rest of his life. Feeling that he has a right to the food because he found it, he refuses to share any of it with the others in the group, who remain chronically hungry. If we were to learn that none of the other survivors ever attempted forcibly to take any of the food, we would probably wonder why. Did the man with the food-stock have a weapon? Were the others so weakened by hunger that they couldn’t act effectively? Did they all speak different languages, so that they couldn’t undertake cooperative action? Or were they just stupid?

● 1-9-2004:   One common argument, such as it is, for the existence of God is that an orderly and wonderful universe, like ours, must have had an intelligent creator. To this, atheists typically reply that the supposition of a god-creator does not solve the mystery of creation, but merely substitutes a different problem of equal perplexity: namely, how God came to be. But it occurs to me that the new difficulty which the aforesaid argument for God produces constitutes a greater problem than the original one, in that the proposed solution posits and leaves unexplained the existence of an entity (God) that’s yet more complicated and complex than the entity (the universe) whose existence is purportedly explained, as intelligent creators are even more complicated and complex than their creations.

● Ultimately, all you truly own is your experience itself.

● 1-11-2004:   Having now finished mapping the genetic structure of the chimpanzee, our nearest relative, with whom we share over 98 percent of our genes, at least one scientist has commented that, as soon as we finish mapping the human genome, we’ll know “what makes us human.” In accord with the existential doctrine of epistemological phenomenology, however, I think the quoted statement could be true in only the most narrow, superficial sense—that it’s outrageous to believe that a few molecules could capsulize the significance, for example, of a Mozart symphony or a Shakespeare play.

● I agree with Sartre that it’s important to enlarge human freedom. My version of the doctrine, however, is to favor the redistribution of society’s wealth, and hence of comfort and leisure, so as to afford all men opportunity (freedom) to pursue their interests and realize their potential in life.

● Some leftists have criticized George W. Bush’s stated conviction that God selected him as President and that God speaks to him and guides him in his governance, the criticism being that this belief somehow makes Bush (even more) dangerous, presumably by making him volatile. But I’m a cynic here. Preliminarily, I don’t necessarily object to a leader’s belief that he’s following God, for it seems to me that, in most sane religious people, obedience to God is simply the equivalent of obedience to conscience. As long as God’s perceived directives are in the people’s best interest, there’s no harm. I think Bush’s religiosity, though, is, in essence, another (very clever) lie, made in order, first, to suggest that he, George Bush, is actually in charge; second, to imply that his actions are motivated by conscience and principle, by something better than plain greed; and, third, generally to confuse the matter. Alas, the Bush administration is all too predictable; and leftists’ accusation that Bush’s purported religious ardor is a threat, evidences their having been in this regard successfully taken in.

● Some on the Left have asserted that genuine right-wingers, being conservative, are at heart allies of the Left in the struggle to protect (conserve) the environment. I believe this view is dangerously naive. The only thing the Right are interested in “conserving” is the maldistribution of wealth and power in their favor, to preserve which they’re perfectly willing to radically change anything else in society, including liberally consuming and fouling the environment.

● In a just and egalitarian world, the Right and the Left would trade positions, with the Left wishing to preserve the existing social order, and the Right wishing to radically change it.

● 1-14-2004:   The dictionary basically defines those on the Left as disposed to changing the social order, to achieve the equality, freedom, and well-being of the common citizen; the Right as indisposed to changing the social order. There seems a rather conspicuous omission from the definition of the latter of these two opposing words, in that the Left is defined with both a means and an ends component, whereas the Right is described solely in terms of means. And it’s not because the Right are utterly neutral regarding outcomes. Surely, a Rightist being held for ransom by kidnappers would favor a change in that social order. Rather, I think, the deficit is euphemistic, like calling people opposed to abortion “pro-life” instead of “anti-abortion,” since, while the goal of the Left, equality, is positive, that of the Right would not sound positive. To put it bluntly, what the Right chiefly wish to conserve is the maldistribution of wealth and privilege in their favor; to preserve or enhance which, they have no qualms about radical change otherwise.

● The dictionary definition of the Left implies or assumes that the prevailing state of society is one of significant maldistribution of wealth and other desiderata.

● 1-15-2004:   My father read my new essay, “Opportunity and Capitalism,” and he said he didn’t understand it. I replied that the piece was written in a condensed style. In any event, his response has prompted me to set about writing another version of the work that will both clarify and expand the ideas. (. . . I write this now on 1-21-2004, and I’ve just completed a fourth version of the essay, which I’m very glad I rewrote, as I think it’s infinitely better than the original version.)

● One possible solution to the problem of man’s deliberate alteration of his genetics is this. Many people, including me, oppose the genetic modification of plants, on the grounds that if the process went awry, any harm could be irreversible, since we would have forever polluted the plant’s gene pool, so that we could never fully return to the original version of the organism. By analogy, if we begin to alter human genes and something goes terribly wrong, the harm may be permanent, and we may thus destroy the human race, meaning that the downside is too great to warrant taking the risk.

● 1-16-2004:   Of course, when we talk about a just war, we don’t mean the war as a whole, for the war encompasses all parties’ actions, some of which are impliedly unjust. What we mean instead is that, in a given situation, one side’s going to war, or participating in war, is justifiable.

● 1-18-2004:   I wish they’d renumber those first two Beethoven piano concertos.

● I bought a candy bar, whose wrapper advertised in bright, conspicuous lettering, Now with More Peanuts than Ever! Of course, I know that the peanuts are the least expensive, and probably for most people the least desirable, ingredient. I also happen to know that the product’s net weight is exactly the same as before the peanuts were increased. The bloody liars ought to be shot!

● 1-30-2004:   That which exists is to nothingness as a painting is to the surrounding wall on which it hangs.

● People vote for George Bush for President out of either (in the case of the rich) selfishness or (for the rest) stupidity.

● The difference between not having to catheterize at all versus having to catheterize but being able to catheterize is considerably less than the difference between having to catheterize and being able to catheterize versus needing to catheterize but being unable to.

● 2-1-2004:   We sometimes refer to certain countries or regions or people as the cradle of civilization, apparently in an effort to flatter such people, and to counteract the feelings of inferiority inculcated by racism. While I agree that racism is invalid and that no race has a monopoly on intelligence or creativity, and I laud the attempt to help enable the victims of racism to (rightly) feel good about themselves; I wonder about the logic of doing so by citing the people in question as the cradle of civilization, in that what counts in terms of superiority is not so much the origin as the pinnacle. (Bach’s and Mozart’s music is far superior to the earliest music.)

● 2-3-2004:   There are basically two groups of people who favor capitalism: the rich, who do so out of selfishness; and the rest, who do so out of stupidity.

[Later note (11-9-2024): That’s true by and large. But some non-rich persons, too, may favor capitalism out of selfishness—because they hope to get rich.]

● 2-4-2004:   Sometimes when driving in traffic, an obscene gesture is the only adequate means of communication to another driver. This is especially true when you’re in front of the other driver. A driver has several non-obscene ways of expressing anger toward a driver in front of him, including sounding the horn, and flashing the headlights. But these methods are forward-projecting ones; you can’t use them to communicate to a motorist behind you. When someone in the rear abusively vents anger toward you by horn and/or headlights (or tailgating), the only available means of reply (short of causing a crash) is an obscene hand gesture (which, however problematic, is surely better than a crash).

● As to which is the more real or important: this perceptible world, or the other, unseen world; whatever may affect our experience, it’s just experience itself that counts, and experience is a matter of this world, the one populated by sentient beings, not of the “other world” (whatever that is).

● “Rap music,” whatever its artistic merits may be, is surely not music . . . in my opinion.

● 2-7-2004:   Well! After six versions and almost a month and a half, the little essay (“Opportunity and Capitalism”) I started on 27 December 2003 is finally finished. [Later note (8- 6-2020): I just now radically rewrote that essay!]

● 2-8-2004:   Does relative size presuppose absolute size?

● 2-9-2004:   Politicians, when they mean that a certain policy will benefit the country as a whole, often instead say that the policy will benefit “everyone.” Of course, the two descriptions are different, and rarely will an act that benefits the country as a whole benefit everyone. Politicians use the inaccurate description (“benefit everyone”) to avoid raising the troublesome but fundamental subject of conflicting interests, and, specifically, the truth that the interests of the rich are often opposed to those of the commonweal (that what benefits the wealthy often hurts the public at large, and vice versa).

● 2-12-2004:   Overthrow the government: Vote!

● 2-13-2004:   I would like my work to be considered by posterity, not simply as having been ahead of its time, but as transcending its time—not merely as important elements in the evolution of ideas, but as works of art of enduring value: not just as steppingstones, but also as precious stones.

● Goose! . . . I started out to say “good”; but by the time I got past the second O, the word just flew away from me!

● 2-15-2004:   Same-sex marriage is currently very controversial. I favor it, simply because gay men and lesbians desire it, and it hurts no one. As to the effect on society at large; since gay men and lesbians are part of the community, to the extent that it benefits them, it benefits the community. If this analysis is oversimplified, it’s not much so; the complaints about the practice are largely specious, arising less from genuine concern than from simple bigotry.

● 2-16-2004:   An history would include information about an head of state.

● 2-17-2004:   Tonight, I attended a book signing by philosophical writer Christopher Phillips. Here are a few quick thoughts on part of his subject, “What is virtue . . . goodness . . . moderation, etc.?”

○ If we’re interested in a universal definition of, say, good, why not simply consult a dictionary? What do we mean by a definition of good? (. . . A possible answer is to clarify that such questions ask, not what good is, but rather what is good . . .)

○ Could it be that, once we define virtue, we’ll decide that it’s not something we desire? Or would that supposition be a sort of contradiction in terms?

○ Is virtue relative to our goals? An author might strive to be a good, or virtuous, writer, the best writer he can be; in which event, the relevant question for him in this regard is, what makes a piece of writing virtuous, or good. (I believe that many people don’t care to be good or virtuous. Many businessmen instead wish to be wealthy, even though they know that their amassing wealth is counter-virtuous, or bad. Similarly, a person might wish simply to be happy, rather than good or virtuous.) Perhaps, then, simply to wish to be virtuous is itself virtue.

● 2-18-2004:   I envision my life’s purpose as measured by a weighing scale, on which I place all of my (surviving) writings. Every time I add a new (worthwhile) work or enhance an existing one, the scale’s reading increases. (A bad work does not diminish the weight; it just doesn’t add any.) My degree of success in life is exactly commensurate with the weight on the scale.

[Later note (2021): That image is not original with me. I seem to recall having heard it attributed to an ancient Greek writer.]

● 2-19-2004:   One often has a right to do what’s not right to do.

● 2-22-2004:   A word to the depressed (including me) . . . A man sits at the bottom of a hole in the ground. He wishes he were away, but, telling himself that he’s demoralized by being in the hole, he fails to muster the will to climb out.

● I’m beginning to suspect that my “depression” may be less an energy problem than a discipline problem, but that I’ve chosen to characterize the difficulty in the former terms because I’d prefer to think of my failure to act as a matter of can not, rather than will not.

[Later note (7-28-2022): When I was depressed, it didn’t feel that way. That comment now strikes me as glib.]

● Would the answer to the question, “What is the purpose of life?” vary according to the form of life? (That is, is the purpose of life different depending on whether we’re talking about human, monkey, pig, horse, fish, or insect life, etcetera? If so, at what point in human evolution did the purpose of human life become the present one? . . . as to the latter question, avoid the flippant answer, “When humans began.”)

● If a tree falls in the forest but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? I used to think I knew the answer, but now I’m not sure I do. My original answer was this: No. What it makes are vibrations in the air. Sound is a conscious being’s sensation, or experience, of those vibrations, via the sense organ of hearing. The sound is the tree’s falling being heard. But the following further thoughts make me wonder if that answer is entirely true:

One. Even if someone is there to hear the tree falling, and hears it, the tree does not “make the sound”: that is, cause the perception. The characterization of the perception’s cause is rather more complicated than that.

Two. If you hallucinate that a tree falls, including the sound, but no such corresponding external tree falls, and no sound waves are generated, was there a (tree-falling) sound?

Three. If the tree’s falling is capable of being heard, does it not make a sound, even if no one actually hears it? Wouldn’t a “no” answer (that it doesn’t make a sound) imply (problematically) that a falling tree makes twice as much sound if two people are there to hear it as it makes if just one person is there to hear it?

● 2-23-2004:   To clarify it for the record; in my essay “Morality,” when I say I prefer balance over increase, what I oppose is the endless increase of population, land development, and pollution. I favor the increase of man’s well-being, quality of life, his understanding, and the products of his art and intellect, et cetera.

● 2-25-2004:   According to those who believe in the power of prayer, exactly how is prayer supposed to accomplish its results—what’s its mechanism? Is it that God hears the prayer, is moved by it, and is thus caused to intervene to produce a result which He would not otherwise have done? And, if so, exactly what is the element in prayer which prompts God to act in response to it? Why does God so act?; what’s His rationale?, His rule of action?

● Does God prioritize to optimize His use of His time?

[Later note (2021): He doesn’t have to prioritize—his capability is infinite. . . . That’s not what I believe—it’s what I imagine a religious person would say.]

● 2-28-2004:   An interviewer recently asked a political-book author why most poor and middle-class people voted for George Bush for president, against their economic interest. The author replied to the effect that such people voted based, not on economics, but rather on their values, such as the value of rewarding those who create the wealth (not heavily taxing the rich) . . . In response to which comment, I would say simply that these are wonderful euphemisms for stupidity.

[Later note (8-27-2023): A possible other reason occurs to me for poor and working people voting Republican. It may be that they try to vote in their economic interest, but they get it wrong because they misunderstand the world, as follows: The Democrats are probably better for poor and working people than are the Republicans (hence the question why would they vote Republican). But they (the Democrats) are only marginally better. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are capitalist parties. Under insufficiently regulated capitalism, the rich get richer and the poor (those who are not rich) get poorer (if somewhat faster under the Republicans). Lacking a sophisticated understanding of economics and politics, poor and working people notice only whether their own economic situation has improved or worsened. It continues to worsen, and they blame the worsening on the party currently in office, and so in the next election they vote for the other party. Thus we continue to oscillate between the two political parties.

For the Democrats to win elections consistently, they must actually make poor and working people’s lives better, not merely make them worse more slowly than the Republicans do.]

[Later note (1-8-2024): Poor and working people’s own explanations of how they vote suggest a different reason. How does one account for that? Well, people’s explanations of what they don’t understand, tend not to make sense.]

● My writings focus, not on explaining phenomena, but rather on reaching various conclusions and setting forth perspectives on things (though I explain when appropriate, and when I have an explanation, to support my conclusions). For example, I wouldn’t propose a theory of how the mind works. It’s as if I’m a composer; I don’t care how the instruments of the orchestra produce sound, or how our ear (or our brain) perceives it. All I care about is composing music. Besides, wouldn’t explaining phenomena be the province of science, rather than of philosophy? (But I suppose philosophers should be free to speculate about science, and scientists to philosophize.) Moreover, all the explanations of the mind, awareness, and reasoning seem never really to explain these phenomena, which are always far more than the sum of the parts to which the explanations propose to reduce them. Of course, just because past attempts have failed doesn’t mean it’s impossible; it always seems impossible until someone does it. For now, however, I’m satisfied with William James’s summary of the matter, to paraphrase which: The mind is like a candle’s flame. The flame would not exist without the candle; yet the flame is not the candle, and the light is not reducible to or explainable in terms of the wax. (. . . If consciousness is simply a function of chemistry, could that chemistry be changed in such a way as to alter our conclusion that two plus two is four?)

[Later note (2021): My answer to that last question is this: It probably could, theoretically. But such a creature probably wouldn’t survive long.]

[Still later note (2021): And yet, in a larger sense, I think explaining permeates the fabric of all my writing, much of which is argumentative. For arguing is explaining your thinking. To convince a reader of the truth of your perspective, you must educate him so as to be able to see your view.]

● 3-2-2004:   Does it make sense to label a soldier who fought on the wrong side of a war, the side that started the conflict, and whose involvement therein is considered unjust and immoral—does it make sense to label him a war hero (however bravely he may have fought)? I think not. I suppose Germany does not, at least publicly, acknowledge German war heroes of World War II. Why, then, do Americans talk of war heroes of the war against Viet Nam, like current presidential candidate John Kerry?

● 3-4-2004:   How can anyone be to blame for Christ’s death? First, if he died to benefit mankind, then he, or God, must have purposely caused his death. Second, people are blamed for bad things and credited for good things; if his death benefitted humanity, his death was a good thing. (Besides, if Christ was resurrected, he didn’t truly die, because the essence of death is the permanent end of awareness. And, to boot, if he thence went to Heaven, his “death” benefitted even Christ himself.)

● 3-5-2004:   Some philosopher, perhaps Plato, asked how can we love other people, since they’re merely temporal, mortal, as opposed to ideas, which are eternal? Perhaps it’s because we, too, are mortal. More important, perhaps, love is a phenomenon, not of rationality, but of nature: evolution selects for survival those beings that fall in love with other members of their own species, and so procreate.

● Does it make sense that you should continue to love someone no matter what happens to her? Could she not change in such a way that what you uniquely love about her no longer exists?

● There’s a view that all beings affect all other beings, expressed in the eastern philosophy image of the jewel net, in which each jewel reflects all the other jewels. But the effects are not equal; the strength of a person’s effect on another is proportional to the distance between them, and to his significance: the closer and the more significant he is, the greater his effect . . . and, beyond a certain distance, the effect is nil.

● 3-6-2004:   What would be the point of a second coming of Christ? If he came again, would he “die” again for our salvation? Also, to wish for a second coming of Christ implies that he didn’t completely solve mankind’s problems the first time. If Christ bungled his first coming, why would he not bungle the second one as well?

[Later note (2-9-2022): And isn’t he already benefitting us now? Why would he need to be physically present on the ground in order to help us?]

● 3-7-2004:   The question has been asked, What is the end, or purpose, of philosophy? But the query assumes, wrongly, I believe, that all activity is done ultimately for the same purpose. In reality, there are many gestalt-urges, as it were. We feel a sexual urge, and we satisfy it, by having sex. We feel thirsty, and we drink a cold beverage. We feel a curiosity about a certain fact or issue, and we want to learn the truth of the matter. We feel an urge for music, and we listen to (or play, or compose) music. We’re in the mood for philosophy, and we study philosophy and philosophize.

Perhaps the question about philosophy’s purpose is asked by people who don’t particularly like philosophy, and who therefore can’t imagine anyone doing it just because he’s in the mood for it; and so they assume that there must be some extraneous reason for doing it, though they can’t imagine what that reason might be (which they can’t imagine because it doesn’t exist).

On the other hand, philosophy may, in some instances, also help us (even those who don’t enjoy philosophy) to live better. Because we possess an innate tendency to seek comprehensive answers to questions about the nature, value, and purpose of things, and about our moral duty; clarification of such matters may enable us to make more enlightened choices about how to live. For example, if we believe in self-sacrifice for the sake of God, but then an able philosopher demonstrates to our satisfaction that this belief is unwarranted; we may thus—through philosophy—realize that we were sacrificing unnecessarily, and come to live more happily. (I like to think that my own work could thus actually aid humanity, in addition to providing intellectually satisfying literature and philosophy . . . ironically, perhaps, in that my sole aim was to achieve the latter.)

Similar questions about life, such as Why do we live?, may yield parallel answers. First, just as with the special urge to do philosophy, each person has his own unique gestalt-reasons or purposes for living. One man may live to be succeeded by his descendants. Another may live for personal fame. Which suggests that, in some situations, attempting to talk someone out of killing himself may be of limited efficacy, because, if circumstances have defeated a man’s distinct reasons to live, his continued existence may seem irremediably pointless and painful. On the other hand; to a certain extent, our sense of purpose is flexible. We’re social creatures, subject to other people’s influence, and might find new purpose in relation to our fellow beings and in response to their encouragement. And, no matter what purpose we each may have in life, everyone appreciates happiness, which we may be able to experience, or again experience, even if our former object has been destroyed; and so simple happiness, or the prospect of it, may also help motivate us to go on.

● “Spiritual” is not necessarily the same as “religious.” The former may be (or be used as) a synonym for the latter, as in the Twelve-Steps addiction recovery program, wherein spiritual is a cover or euphemism for religious. But spiritual, a broader concept than religious, has other meanings as well, one of which is our higher mental and emotional aspects, as opposed to our lower emotions, and our materialism. Thus, a great work of art (or of philosophy) appeals to our spirituality; a piece of pornography, to our lower emotions; an advertisement for a new car, to our materialism. Those who deny their spirituality are the anti-intellectual. Only the very stupid (and perhaps not even they) are without spirituality.

● The following question was recently proposed for discussion by the Philosophy Club:

“ARE WE CONTRADICTING OUR OWN VALUES BY PROTECTING AMERICAN JOBS? Is favoring American workers and jobs over foreign workers and jobs consistent with Liberal Values, especially the values of Egalitarianism, and the Welfare or Utility Principle (‘give resources to the needy, thereby giving greater happiness to more people, instead of giving resources to those who are already wealthier’)?

“For example, say a local factory closes and the jobs get shipped out to India. As a result, a bunch of local union members who were previously making decent middle-class incomes are now unemployed. Most or all of them can find alternative employment but at lower wages. However, as a result, a new factory is built in India. The employees there get paid less than the American workers were, but far more than the subsistence income (if even that) which they were getting before. In fact, some avoid starvation as a result. Furthermore, more people are in fact employed, and in sum the factory is far more economically beneficial to the Indian community in which it exists than the now closed American factory was to its community.

“In short, American jobs were lost, but the economic benefit to an Indian community was far greater than the loss to the American community. By and large, was it a good thing for the jobs to leave America and go to India, or not?

“If you say it was bad, then does that mean you value the lives and livelihoods of Americans more than those of Indians? If so, then how is that consistent with the idea that people shouldn’t be valued greater or lesser by virtue of their national origin, and that we shouldn’t value foreign people less than we value Americans?”

In response, I mostly agree with the utilitarian doctrine; and, therefore, if the resulting gain to foreigners outweighed the loss to our compatriots, I would favor the transfer of American jobs abroad. For several reasons, though, I doubt that this policy would achieve such a net gain.

To start with, many of the replacement jobs created overseas are not merely lower paying; they’re much lower paying, frequently involving sweatshop conditions, wherein workers are terribly abused, even enslaved. The business owners can get away with this because the other countries generally have weaker labor laws, or none, and it’s not at all clear that such employment benefits those workers. Further, since many of the foreign countries also have inadequate environmental laws, many of the relocated factories also pollute more.

It might help to see the matter more clearly if we imagine the same situation taking place within the United States: A business owner shuts down a factory and builds another one nearby which is less technologically efficient and more polluting. Simultaneously, he cuts the salaries of the laborers, some of whom quit and are replaced by people who are so poor that even the new paltry wage seems an advancement. While one could argue that utility is served by improving the lot of the poorest members of the community; it could also be argued that the overall effect is a (counter-utilitarian) increase in pollution and a transfer of resources from the working class to the wealthy—it’s a troublesome kind of welfare that makes the rich richer.

Of course, it’s difficult to draw conclusions here without specific information. Moreover, we should define the alternatives. There’s no reason why granting permission to U.S. corporations to move jobs overseas could not be made subject to those businesses’ meeting certain requirements, including labor and environmental standards. Hence, perhaps the question should be, not simply whether we should permit jobs to be transferred abroad, but rather under what conditions we should allow it.

In conclusion, however, the foregoing discussion suggests even larger political and economic issues. Is it proper for a country to assist its own citizens—in any respect—without first helping others who are still worse off? May the United States, for example, legitimately spend money to educate Americans while some foreigners are starving? And can we justify capitalism itself, with its inherent substantial inequality of wealth? It seems to me that, ultimately, the principle of global utilitarianism (with which I agree) is inconsistent with both capitalism and the nation-state, and indicates world socialism.

[Later note (6-5-2024): I read what I thought was a good argument on this point: Overpopulation of Third World countries, like India, is a major cause of world poverty. Sharing our wealth with those countries now would disincentivise their solving their overpopulation problem. So we should not share our wealth with them until they do so.]

● 3-10-2004:   I’ve just today begun listening to a new audiotape course: The Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, and the Modern Experience, by Professor Robert H. Kane.

● As I understand it; according to the Bible, Man originally and fatally sinned when Eve disobeyed God by eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, this implies that Eve knew the difference between good and evil after (because) she ate of the fruit—and not before. But how can someone justly be held morally responsible for her action (in this instance, disobeying God) when she does not know the difference between good and evil, and therefore cannot know that her act is evil (or bad, or wrong)? It seems to me that, if anything in this Biblical story is evil, or wrong, it’s God’s meting out harsh punishment—collective punishment, at that—to Eve (humanity) for an act which God knew she could not, at the time she performed it, have known was wrong. The God there portrayed is a mean, contemptible God!

● 3-11-2004:   President George W. Bush’s tax cuts have helped the economy . . . for the rich.

● Earth is not the center of the universe, not because something else is, but because nothing is. In an important non-physical respect, however, the world, as our exclusive home, is the center of the universe.

● Ultimately, it’s not that our values are valid, or true, or superior, but simply that they’re ours.

● 3-12-2004:   Purpose is a psychological state, and therefore can be possessed solely by individual sentient beings.

[Later note (2021): We may, however, sometimes unite in collective purposes.]

● 3-13-2004:   Most of my writing is at once an expression of my desire to create literature and a piece of the mosaic of my philosophy.

● Is a man’s opinion as to whether unicorns exist objective or subjective? What about his opinion whether unicorns are red or blue?

[Later note (2021): Everyone knows, they’re blue.]

● Bertrand Russell said, “Science has nothing to say about values.” To this, I would reply, “Perhaps not, but logic and mathematics do.” On the other hand, if Russell meant to include logic and mathematics in “science,” my response would be, “ —until someone finds a connection.”

According to Professor Robert Kane’s lectures, Russell “claimed that all his philosophical efforts were but attempts to synthesize four sciences—physics, physiology, psychology, and mathematical logic.” I believe my philosophy (especially, in “Ethics” . . . and “Morality”) accomplishes that goal. I think Russell would have liked (or appreciated) my work.

● In a sense, I have finally found the certainty in values and ethics for which philosophers have searched for millennia . . . though the truth is perhaps not as many philosophers would have hoped or expected it would turn out to be.

● When I argue for my values (that which I value), I’m not attempting to convince people that my values are correct (I believe the concept of correct or true values is nonsensical). Rather, I’m attempting to write about those issues in such a way that men will come to feel the same as I do about them. And sometimes it’s not even that: instead, I’m simply explaining or describing my preferences, in the same spirit in which I might relate a dream I had, or write an autobiographical note. I’m writing, not so much about those values, as just about me.

● What separates one bowel movement from the next one?; what signals or demarcates its end? What determines that this bowel movement should stop or be complete with the evacuation of, say, the last twelve inches of the intestine, rather than the last eighteen inches, or twenty, or twenty-four? What signals the body, “We’re done for the moment”?

● Philosophy need not be based on science, but it must be consistent with (true, correct) science. (Which means that philosophy must periodically be revised, in accordance with changing scientific understanding.)

[Later note (7-22-2023): Not all philosophy—just that philosophy which incorporates elements of science.]

● 3-18-2004:   Because I’m constantly probing my ideas and my writings for potential flaws and for ways to correct, clarify, polish, expand, and enhance them, I consider my oeuvre as essentially a work in progress, which will be complete only by default by my eventual death or incapacity.

● Fire and ice don’t mix? What about frozen gasoline? (Is it inflammable?)

● I often use the recent-memory test to schedule cleaning and routine maintenance: I figure that, if I seem to be able to recall having done it sometime recently, it’s probably too soon to do it again. At times I’m just amazed how good my memory is! (In my house, though, things get pretty dirty!)

● Sunday, 3-28-2004:   Philosophy Club meeting tonight.

● I wonder, Is evil simply a perception by those who feel aggrieved, regarding their aggrievement?

● 3-31-2004:   Most ethical theories contain true and useful elements. I think that where we err is to adhere to any given one of them to the exclusion of all the others, and that the most helpful procedure would be to apply a mix of elements of various moral doctrines as seems appropriate to the particular situation, which is the approach most people actually use in everyday life.

An example of the partial truth of any single ethical doctrine is the Hobbesian social contract, on which Professor Robert H. Kane writes that “there is no right or wrong in the state of nature, just self-interest. Rules of right and wrong are created by the contract itself. We define right or wrong by the promises and mutual commitments we make.” While there’s considerable truth in the statement that right and wrong are matters of what we agree upon, we still must decide on that agreement’s content, as to which the social contract theory provides no guidance.

[Later note (2021): I think the second of the foregoing two paragraphs is another error on my part: the social contract theory is not an example of what I meant in the first paragraph by a partially true ethical doctrine (which may work well in some situations, but not in others). Rather, it says how all such ethical doctrines come to be . . . and it may well be true of all of them. In fact, that second paragraph doesn’t make sense even on its own: the social contract theory doesn’t purport to determine or predict the agreement’s content.]

● Sartre argues that existence precedes essence, and therefore our actions are not causally predetermined, and we have free will. Whether or not Sartre’s conclusion is true (I believe it’s not), the premise is false, in that existence and essence arise together. An organism comes into existence in, or with, some form (an essence), else we could not say what has come into being. That is, an organism does not come into existence merely as a placeholder, a blank, to be filled in later. It comes into being as something. A man does not wake up one day and think to himself, “Ah, I see that I exist. Now, am I going to be a dog, a cat, a pig, a horse, a rock, a tree, or a human being?” He does not have such a choice. Like it or not, he’s a man. And whatever choice he does have is conditioned upon the inclinations and needs, and capacities and limitations, inherent in the human properties with which he’s born.

● 4-1-2004:   Appointment with David Walker, M.D., psychiatrist at Kaiser.

● 4-2-2004:   Regarding John Rawls’s social contract theory, wherein, among other ideas, he argues that social principles should be determined by contractors placed in an “original position,” behind a “veil of ignorance”; it’s perhaps inelegant in mixing outcome and procedure. Plus, the specification of the procedure does not tell us what the outcome should be, as different people might choose different arrangements. We would need to know the description, not so much of the process by which a societal arrangement is to be decided on, but of the social arrangement’s content, so we can judge the soundness of whatever the contractors come up with in that respect. In other words, if the contractors decided upon a set of conditions which Rawls found unsatisfactory, he might say, “That’s not what I had in mind.” Why, then, does he not simply reveal to us exactly what he does have in mind here.

I wrote the foregoing comments after reading the synopsis of the lecture on that topic. Having now listened to the lecture itself (though, alas, not to Rawls’s work itself), I must revise my remarks. Rawls does indeed propose a substantive societal structure: namely, an arrangement of inequalities such as conduces to society’s greatest overall well-being, as opposed to simple equality. Rawls’s idea is a good one, for the most part consistent with my own.

I think the weakness in Rawls’s theory is the recommended process, the gathering of the contractors to decide upon society’s arrangement. As a procedure, it’s of little worth, because it’s too ideal, too abstract, and too vague, to ever be actually used. While the hypothetical process could be interpreted as a supplemental description of the structure that Rawls argues for, it’s unnecessary therefor, and it seems to me that his main purpose in writing it is instead to bolster his (substantive) thesis. He’s reaching for a more basic premise on which to ground it. I believe he searches in vain. In the last analysis, there’s no objective basis on which to judge or choose among different visions for society, and hence no way to conclusively prove that your vision is the right or the best one. Given this approach’s failure, Rawls’s attempt amounts merely to his vouching for his own theory, assuring us that it’s so eminently reasonable that genuinely unbiased, fair-minded men would not only agree with it, but would actually come up with it spontaneously. But the latter exercise (vouching for his theory) is as unbecoming as the former effort (proving it) is flawed. Ultimately, all a philosopher can do is describe his vision, explain why it appeals to him, and put it before the world. Some men will like it; others will dislike it. (Or, if he’s very unlucky, they’ll simply find it of no interest, or never see it.)

● In his fifth lecture on ethics, Professor Robert H. Kane proposes a values hierarchy: feelings constituting the first level; purposes, the second; and self-concept and meaningfulness, the third. I find this set of distinctions arbitrary and useless. The important dichotomy is between the existence or nonexistence of intrinsic (actual) worth; and the essential point is that, since nothing (not anything) is of intrinsic value, nothing we do matters absolutely, and so we act merely from a mix of (personal, subjective) motivations, purposes, interests, extrinsic values, and the like. We may of course discuss the matter, so as to attempt to determine more satisfactory and productive ways of living. But, at least from a philosophical standpoint, any such discussions ought to be based on the above understanding.

(On second thought, perhaps I’m assuming, incorrectly, that most people would agree with me on this topic. Meanwhile, in any event, I suppose I should be more patient with other philosophers. I can’t reasonably expect them to know of my thesis, since it hasn’t been published . . . no one, it seems, will publish it.)

[Later note (2021): On third thought, so to speak; even if everyone knew of my thesis, it, too, seems a little arbitrary. It’s an important idea, but as a proposed hierarchy of human values, it’s not comprehensive enough to be of much use or interest. Proposing it as the basis of a hierarchy of human values seems merely to manifest my pride of authorship. A far better hierarchy, than either mine or Professor Kane’s, is Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.]

● 4-3-2004:   If someone were to criticize my philosophy as abstract and idealistic, I would say of course it is: after all, it’s not politics or legislation, but rather philosophy, which is supposed to be ideal and abstract.

● 4-6-2004:   It occurs to me that I’d probably get far more done if I did less explaining and rationalizing and worrying, and simply more doing.

● My father recently mentioned to me that he was going to order some new clothes because the ones he then had were starting to fit him too tightly. I told him that, when that happens to me, I simply start eating less. He replied that he didn’t think he was eating that much. To which I commented that the alternative was that his clothes were getting smaller. He said he didn’t believe his clothes were getting smaller; and I figured he’d gotten my point.

● 4-8-2004:   One way, perhaps, to explain the Bush administration’s failure to anticipate and guard against the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 is that they (the Bush people) were too busy pursuing what they wanted to do, to spend time on what they needed to do.

● 4-10-2004:   People (especially, religious people) often speak of light as if it were itself good. But, just as life is worthwhile only if it’s percipient life; so, too, it’s only the experience of light, not light itself, that’s worthwhile.

● 4-11-2004:   Though I wholeheartedly agree with those who oppose the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, certain anti-war slogans are inane. For example, “No blood for oil.” One problem with it is that, under certain circumstances, it might make sense to sacrifice blood for oil. Surely, it would be worth one person’s death to gain enough oil to supply the whole world for a century. Also, the motto suggests that, if we could steal Iraq’s oil without spilling blood, it might be all right. Similarly, the catchphrase “War is not the answer” is far too charitable, suggesting that the United States government’s invasion of Iraq was a response to a real offense committed by Iraq, or to a genuine dispute, rather than an unprovoked attack, merely from greed, or some other ulterior, bad motive. In response to the question that confronted the Bush administration: How can we dominate the Iraqis and plunder their resources?, war was the answer.

● Regarding the maxim that, in taking a true-false or multiple-choice quiz, your first impression is usually correct . . . I’ve found that it’s far more effective simply to know the answer.

[Later note (2-20-2022): Of course, that advice is intended for when you don’t know the answer. But the advice may cause a harmful confusion for writers, as writers. The advice perhaps makes sense when you have to choose quickly from several answers on a multiple-choice quiz, and the only thing differentiating one of them is a sense of recognition. The fact that one answer rings a bell in your mind, however vaguely, doesn’t mean the answer is right, or even probably right. It means only that, statistically, the odds of it being right are better, even if only very slightly better, than a random choice. But in writing, often the writer is trying to solve an intellectual problem. Typically, the solution doesn’t come instantly. You work toward it in stages. This is what revising is about. Each successive draft is a little closer, a little clearer, a little better than the previous one. And the freer the writer feels to redo his work, the better his results. But that process may be impeded by confusing the advice in favor of your first impression on a quiz with that in favor of your first idea or draft in writing, where the advice is just the reverse.]

● The description of a work as its creator’s masterpiece implies that it’s both his best single work . . . and a masterpiece. (In other words, you wouldn’t call even the best work of a painter who produced only mediocre paintings the man’s “masterpiece.”)

● 4-15-2004:   U.S. “President” George W. Bush declares that the Iraqis who’ve taken up arms against the United States’ occupation of Iraq are “trying to shake our will,” trying to get us to leave, but that they will not succeed. . . . As if Iraqis opposing the United States’ presence is a reason, even a sufficient reason, to remain there. It seems to me that most normal, sane people don’t take their being unwelcome in a certain place as a reason to stay . . . especially if your professed reason for being there is the welfare of those other people.

● Ever since writing (or finishing) it in 1978, I’ve considered “Ethics” my masterpiece. The placement of the comma in the title is not an oversight, but a deliberate choice, to indicate the structure of the work. [Later note (2020): The full title of the piece is longer than “Ethics”; but I don’t give it here, because it’s not ready for viewing—my webmaster has been unable to get the graphic elements right, or to my satisfaction.]

● 4-16-2004:   I wonder how the distance between the rails of a railroad (the gauge) was originally determined. Sometimes it looks to me as if it’s too narrow: making it too easy for trains to tip over.

● When I hear people rejoice at their good fortune and attribute it to God, I think I’d like to ask them why they believe God would, or should, favor them over others.

● 4-17-2004:   When you love another person, just what aspect of him or her, generally, do you love?

[Later note (2022): That question implies that love is a rational phenomenon. It’s not: it’s a nonrational, natural phenomenon.]

● 4-20-2004:   We profess to be dismayed when we hear of people committing suicide. Why are we not equally appalled to contemplate the multitude who are enduring the alternative—living in misery?

● We pay lip service to risk-taking, yet we arrange our socioeconomic system such that those who take a risk and lose are severely punished, economically, physically, and in society’s estimation. In truth, we don’t value risk-taking; we despise failure, and revere success, with little care about how the success is achieved.

● 4-21-2004:   It seems to me that, by comparison, it’s as if I do formal ethics, whereas other moral philosophers do mere informal ethics.

● I take the Real Estate Examination today, to get my Real Estate Broker’s license.

● I took the Real Estate Exam today.

[Later note (6-5-2024): I passed the Exam and got my Real Estate Broker’s license. But I never used it, and I let the license expire.]

● Being dead saves a lot of energy.

● 4-22-2004:   Might does not make right. It simply means that the mighty have their way.

● The notion of genocide conflicts with the scientific view that there are no separate “races,” and prompts the question: Is mass murder worse when all the victims are of the same “race” than of different “races”?

● 4-24-2004:   Sometimes I come up with good material for my writing by listening to speech that I find ridiculous, because I arrive at useful clarifications and even discoveries in the process of analyzing the error and explaining to myself why or how the utterance is fallacious.

● 4-25-2004:   Those who lead political rallies often boast that their events are the largest such gatherings in history. In most cases, however, this probably isn’t saying much, since, as population increases, an increase in absolute numbers may reflect the rise in population rather than a rise of interest in the particular cause.

● Adam Smith theorized that excesses of the free market would be restrained by people’s benevolent, charitable sentiments, a perhaps not unreasonable conjecture at the time Smith proposed it. But now the experiment to confirm or refute the theory has been performed, and the results are in: the experiment did not merely fail—it failed spectacularly. It’s evident that people do not voluntarily relinquish further amassment of personal wealth once they have enough, or at any point, and that, for society’s greater good, capitalism must be radically modified, or replaced.

● I’ve just now completed a major revision of my essay “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory,” this edition involving deletion of a considerable amount of material that I now find to have been over-complicated. . . . Perhaps whether verbal stuff is over-complicated is in part a matter of taste and style, a judgment whether in a particular case elaboration is sufficiently enlightening or interesting to warrant the additional verbiage.

● 4-26-2004:   Immanuel Kant, in his categorical imperative, submits that we should act such that we would have the rule governing our action be followed by everyone, and that in so doing we should disregard our own personal desires and purposes. One difficulty with Kant’s dictum is this: If we would guide our own behavior by considering its generalization to others; and if (as seems reasonable) we would wish that others be happy; would we not then (in contravention of the second part of Kant’s maxim) pursue also our own happiness? Disregarding our own happiness would be counter-utilitarian, because, by and large, the greatest happiness the average person can positively effect is his own, one reason for which being simply that he knows best what he wants. In practice, if everyone focused just on others’ well-being, few people would much enjoy their own lives, thus vastly reducing collective well-being. Which perhaps is simply to criticize another of Kant’s moral postulates, that we should ignore actual consequences. As far as Kant is concerned, a world wherein everyone is miserable is no less desirable than a world in which everyone is ecstatic, just as long as no rules are broken.

Perhaps attempting to avoid the problems with his categorical imperative, Kant offers what he describes as an alternative formulation of it: “Treat all people, not as means, but as ends in themselves.” But the notion of ends (especially in connection, or juxtaposition, with means) implies consequences, which infringes his aforesaid admonition to dismiss consequences. Similarly, Kant remarks that the reason why we should treat people as ends is that doing so makes us truly free, thus setting us above the lower animals, who act merely by instinct. So, our goal (the desired consequence) is freedom, which we should act to effect. The foregoing elicits three further points. First, in considering human behavior, the idea of consequences is so fundamental that it inescapably creeps into even Kant’s own pronouncements. Second, Kant’s principle that we should treat others as ends, taken together with his expressed rationale for it, is contradictory. The principle of treating other people as ends implies that we should so act for their sake, while Kant’s rationale suggests that we should act for our own sake (so that we may be free). Third, Kant’s insistence to the contrary notwithstanding, his treat-people-as-ends directive cannot be merely an alternate phrasing of his (universal-rule) categorical imperative, because the latter (the categorical imperative) may be interpreted as functioning independent of consequences; whereas, the former (the people-as-ends doctrine) implicitly involves consequences. And the categorical imperative expressly forbids exceptions, while the ends rule may indicate exceptions to certain particular rules. For example, in Nazi Germany, a man hiding a Jewish family, in order to continue to treat them as ends, may be required to lie to an inquiring member of the Gestapo (an exception to the rule against lying).

Still more broadly, though, the above problems reveal that, like the use of only a single diagnostic or treatment method in medicine, the exclusive use of a single ethical doctrine in life is unworkable. Kant’s ends doctrine, for example, which on first hearing sounds quite broad, tells us merely that others’ welfare and interests are to be considered (not disregarded). But, even when we convert all interests—including our own—to description as “ends,” we still have the problem of deciding how to resolve competing, or alternative sets of, ends. My ends (or well-being or goals) clash with yours. The simple directive to treat everyone as an end, which step we’ve thus already taken, provides no guidance how to resolve that conflict. The ends rule is uncertain even in its application to a given individual: Do we do what we perceive to be in a man’s best interest (“the ends justify the means”), or, alternatively, allow him to do as he pleases (perhaps enhancing his freedom), even if we think he would act contrary to his own best interest?

Another problem with Kant’s categorical imperative is this. When we contemplate it, we may imagine a dramatic situation in which we have to make a momentous decision. But what if you’re deciding simply whether to eat dinner at the Chinese restaurant or the Italian restaurant? Presumably, you wouldn’t have to consult the categorical imperative for that. But how do you distinguish between decisions that warrant invoking the rule and ones that don’t? The categorical imperative doesn’t tell us.

Likewise, the categorical imperative does not tell us what universal rule a particular act stands for. Imagine a man steals candy. One general rule is that a person cannot steal candy. But an alternate principle might be that, if you’re poor and hungry, you can steal food or candy if the person from whom you take it is wealthy and won’t be significantly hurt by it.

● 4-27-2004:   If pressed to come up with a universal moral principle, I would say that it’s, not a theory of what constitutes a good life, but instead simply the conviction that everyone should have the (real) opportunity to pursue one (a good life, that is)—provided only that it doesn’t unduly interfere with others’ ability to do the same.

● 4-28-2004:   If we allow ethics to be concerned with actual consequences, our moral reasoning may, of course, utilize hypothetical imperatives; for example, “If I want to maximize the community’s happiness, I should do this or that.” In fact, even absolute moral standards may be implemented by hypothetical imperatives. For instance, “I always and exclusively wish to maximize happiness. To do so, I should do such and such.”

● 4-29-2004:   Kant’s categorical imperative very simply takes no account of purpose. Do we live, do we follow rules—just in order to follow rules?!

[Later note (2021): The point could be put even more strongly: Following rules might be tantamount merely to not breaking rules. Which we could do just as well—indeed, better—if we’re dead.]

● The idea of a quest for wisdom presupposes the possibility of attaining it.

● 5-1-2004:   Having proven that Jews can be as cruel and unjust and brutal as any other people, modern Israel is a stain on Jewish history. And Israel’s acting like Nazi Germany hardly discourages antisemitism. Indeed, how could the Jewish State’s committing crimes against humanity not provoke antisemitism? It’s not reasonable, but it’s understandable. (We might expect it not to have that effect, if everyone were a highly educated philosopher. But that’s not the world we live in.)

[Later note (11-9-2023): Jews’ speaking out when the Israeli government acts badly is necessary in order to prevent antisemitism. All Jews’ at least tacitly supporting Israel, even when it acts badly, would serve to identify Israel with the Jewish people, so that to be against Israel would entail being against Jews (antisemitism).]

[Later note (11-12-2023): I understand Germany’s desire to support Jews, to compensate for its crimes against Jews in the Second World War. But it troubles me that, in accordance with that desire, it invariably sides with Israel. A more enlightened approach would be to say that there are Jews on both sides of the issue, and we support those Jews who are for peace, because they’re right. We’re not going to support the Israeli government even when it’s wrong.]

● 5-2-2004:   How much “horsepower” does a horse have? One horsepower?

● 5-6-2004:   Middle Easterners often claim that the United States aggresses against Islamic states because America is anti-Islamic. They’re wrong. If the Islamic nations had nothing of value that the United States wanted, the U.S. would leave them alone; and, conversely, if those same countries were inhabited by poor Christians, say, instead of Muslims, America’s conduct would be identical. Motivated by greed, not religion, the United States is an equal opportunity aggressor. Similarly, I heard that some Iraqis were asking representatives of the United States whether the Americans were in Iraq to help Iraqis or to hurt Iraqis. The answer is neither. When a thief comes into your home to steal your goods, he’s there, not to hurt you, but merely to help himself. On the other hand, the theft inevitably damages you, as the thief well knows; and the mere fact that your harm is not the thief’s purpose doesn’t invalidate your anger toward the thief. Much, perhaps most, of what men call evil is a matter less of malice than of selfishness.

An important reason, I think, why “President” George W. Bush continually speaks of terrorism, denouncing it as evil, and terrorists as evildoers, is subtly to cause the American people to associate evil with malice, and dissociate it from its other form, selfishness, the form of evil which Bush and his administration practice on a grand scale (specifically, further impoverishing the masses to further enrich the wealthy), which sort of evil does far more harm to the people than terrorism, and to which terrorism is largely a response. (More simply, but no less cleverly, Bush’s constant fulmination about “evil” gives the impression that he’s concerned with morality.) . . . The United States, being the sole superpower, has refused to submit to the jurisdiction of the World Court or the United Nations. When victims of injustice are deprived of legal means of redress, they resort to extrajudicial means.

● If you strike a madman, his offering an irrational explanation of his hitting you back neither excuses your attack on him nor invalidates his retaliation.

● One reason why the recent revelations about American military personnel’s torturing Iraqi prisoners is so devastating for the United State government is that it gives the lie to the American facade of beneficence, and exposes them, even to the naive, as the evildoers they are. In other words, the torture does not make the United States evil, it merely exposes their evil.

[Later note (4-9-2022): It also adds to their evil.]

● Some of our countrymen have bemoaned the recent news about Americans torturing Iraqi prisoners, on the grounds that it will give Iraqis a bad impression of the United States military, and cause America’s mission in Iraq to fail. Do such people think that, absent the revelations of torture, Iraqis would feel favorably toward the Americans, as the friendly, benevolent invader-occupiers? Censuring the United States in that way is like criticizing Hitler’s treatment of the Jews on the grounds that its publicity could hurt the German war effort. What’s overlooked is that the entire undertaking is evil, and it damn well should be hurt!

● 5-8-2004:   A fallback position of the Bush supporters regarding the Iraq prison torture scandal is that, once a problem emerges, our system of justice gets to the bottom of it and punishes the guilty. But if the torture by American soldiers had not been filmed, or the film not gotten out to the public, the torture would still be happening, and the U. S. government would still be denying its existence. Having been caught, they’re now scurrying to contain the public relations damage. The Bush administration is anguished over, not the torture’s occurrence, but its exposure. It’s perhaps significant that the first soldier to be court-martialed for the Iraq prison scandal was convicted of photographing the acts of torture.

● 5-9-2004:   Some say the American torture of Iraqi prisoners is the doing of a few bad soldiers. I say it’s the doing of one bad government (the Bush administration).

● Would you wish that Earth and humanity survive even if you had not been born (or if you knew that all effect or trace of your existence would soon be erased)? An individual’s own existence gives him a sense of having a stake in his species’ continuance. It’s for this reason that humans desire the perpetuation of humankind, and not necessarily that of other species. Great artists and other contributors to culture have the greatest personal stake in posterity, since, through their work, they’ll enjoy a permanent place of honor in it. Thus, certain people’s, especially young people’s, nihilism, irresponsibility, or criminality, perhaps results from their feeling that they have no respected, honored place in society; they feel that society does not value or respect them, so why should they value or respect society (or, for that matter, themselves).

● If a tree falls but no one hears it, does it make a sound? If a man creates (what would be) great art but the world never sees it, is it great art?

● 5-10-2004:   Some have said that dehumanization of torture victims in the minds of their torturers is an essential prerequisite to the torturers’ conduct. But I wonder if this is true. Probably most torturers have had animal pets, for which they’ve felt affection; and they (the torturers) would have felt shock and anguish over the mistreatment of those animals . . ..

[Later note (5-28-2022): That leaves open the possibility that torture-victim dehumanization is necessary (if not essential). I think not that either.]

● 5-11-2004:   On her first day at a new job in an abortion clinic, a nurse-assistant took an aborted fetus and, instead of discarding it, mistakenly placed it in a bathtub containing a rather valuable experimental mixture of chemicals that one of the physicians had developed. When the doctor in charge discovered the error, he instructed the nurse to properly dispose of the fetus, but cautioned, “Don’t throw the bathwater out with the baby!”

● 5-12-2004:   I’m a little confused as to the post-modernists’ contention that there can be no meta-narrative, no grand theory of life or absolute value. Do they mean that no theory thereof is true; or that it’s impossible to know which such theory is true (if any is true); or merely that, even if there were a truth of the matter, and even if someone could discover it and know it, not everyone would understand it or agree with it?

● Both Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush are evil, but at least bin Laden is honest.

● 5-13-2004:   A Modest Proposal: Taxes should be eliminated altogether for the wealthy, and a sur-tax should be imposed on the poor for the benefit of the wealthy. This would enhance the overall well-being of society, because a dollar in the hands of a poor man benefits only him; whereas a rich man would use that same dollar to employ others, thus benefitting many people, including the poor, who are the most in need of jobs.

● The Bush administration has decided that the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war does not apply to military combatants that the administration deems “terrorists,” reasoning that such fighters are “unlawful combatants,” not fighting for a state, and that the Geneva Convention applies only to prisoners of inter-state conflicts. There are at least two problems with this position. Most basically, the Geneva Convention’s purpose, simply to prevent inhumane treatment, is defeated when any prisoner is tortured, and so it’s difficult to see a justification for George Bush’s position (which therefore seems to be a distinction without a rationale, a distinction of convenience). Moreover, if the Geneva Convention does not apply to our treatment of certain captured enemy soldiers, then neither does it apply to their treatment of our soldiers, so that Bush is practically inviting our own soldiers’ mistreatment.

● 5-16-2004:   Meeting of the Philosophy Club.

● If one day a human managed to build a computer which possessed consciousness, should that computer love, worship, and praise the man, because he is its Creator?

● Often, I think I would like to be a bird, to be able to fly. But, really, I think if I were any animal, even a bird, I would be envious of humans, with their minds, their hands and fingers, and their art.

● Environmental destruction and depletion caused by man himself is potentially as deadly to him, and warrants just as great a sense of urgency, as the planet’s immanent collision with a huge meteor. Perhaps the difference in our response has something to do with the old frog-in-hot-water syndrome, or myth (if the frog is exposed initially to very hot water, it will jump out; but if the water is heated only gradually, the frog will stay and be boiled alive).

[Later note (2021): That phenomenon may not be literally true of frogs, but it’s metaphorically true of human psychology.]

● 5-18-2004:   For me, the content of a work of mine is merely an excuse for the composition, a convenient medium for propagation of a compositional wave. . . . On second thought, that’s not entirely true of my work. As philosophy, however artfully it may at times be expressed (I like to think), the substance has an import separate from its manner of composition, which perhaps means that philosophy is not a pure art. In a pure art, like music, the content has no significance, or importance, distinct from its mode of expression—form and content are one. Thus, you can summarize an essay, but not a symphony.

● A person may not know what he feels about a given person, event, situation, or issue. I suppose he may be similarly fuddled as to his thoughts and beliefs as well.

● 5-19-2004:   Unicorns, if they existed, would probably be quite dangerous.

● A man may be insane in believing in unicorns, and yet rational in believing that twice as many unicorns as two is four.

● 5-21-2004:   One way to eat less (to resist overeating) is to realize that most of our impulse to overeat is not so much hunger as a desire for pleasure. Similarly, it may help to be aware that tiredness can sometimes result less from physiological need for sleep or rest than from emotional needs.

● An easy way to feel ten years younger is to recognize that ten years from now you’ll wish you were ten years younger (just as you are now).

● George W. Bush’s constant railing about good versus evil and his religious talk is a bit of legerdemain designed to give the impression that he’s motivated by morality and religion rather than by naked greed, to create so much commotion over his possibly being a theocrat that we fail to notice that he’s a kleptocrat.

● 5-23-2004:   In a recent job interview, the attorney-employer asked me if I’m an aggressive lawyer. I replied that I aim, not at aggressiveness, but rather at effectiveness, and that optimal effectiveness indicates different degrees of aggressivity in different situations, and in fact sometimes aggression is counterproductive; but I am aggressive when it is called for. (Unfortunately, I didn’t answer all of her questions as well as I answered that one.)

● “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5.9)

This seems to imply that peacemaking is merely a means to the end of being called a son of God. I would prefer the reverse pronouncement: “Blessed are those called sons of God, for they are peacemakers.” Or, in the original, simply delete “for.”

[Later note (4-9-2022): . . . and replace the comma with a semicolon.]

● The government’s equation of support for its war policy with support for our troops is extremely ironic. If indeed the war is unnecessary and unjust (as its opponents assert), our soldiers do not benefit from it. Unlike mercenaries, it’s not as if their jobs depend on the war (they don’t). On the contrary; in war, soldiers die. How does maiming and killing our soldiers support them?!

● The most peaceful, most just, and most perfect state of affairs is total nonexistence: the most peaceful, in its complete lack of conflict; the most just, in its utter lack of injustice (even a world in which everyone is equally [and very] happy, would involve an inequality: between existent beings, and nonexistent ones); and the most perfect, in its complete lack of defect. Which is to say that peace, justice, and perfection should not be the exclusive measures of desirability; and that nonexistence and evil should not be confounded.

[Later note (4-23-2023): Apropos, the “ultimate punishment” is not death (nonexistence), but, rather, unhappy life, as in prison.]

● Not infrequently I have a thought, but I decide it’s not worth writing down. Later, I change my mind and decide to write it down, but can’t remember it.

● 5-24-2004:
Question: What did the blockheaded pilot say to the co-pilot as the plane headed straight for a mountainside?
Answer: “We must stay the course.”

[Later note (4-3-2024): I’ll add this bit of background information while I still remember it: Around that time, the U.S. government defended its Iraq war policy by saying “We must stay the course.” Though the supposed logic of that retort now escapes me.]

[Later note (7-22-2024): The logic, the point, of the retort is, obviously, simply that “staying the course” is not necessarily good. Sometimes it is; but other times it may be counterproductive, even disastrous. . . . If the point escaped me three months ago, I suppose I should write this, while I again remember it!]

[Later note (11-10-2024): I think the retort I meant in my first later note was probably, not my retort, but the original one, about staying the course. . . .]

● 5-27-2004:   A master painter does not necessarily know how to make paint or paintbrushes.

● The distinction in philosophy between appearance and reality is problematic. Appearance is reality, in one sense—namely, happiness or unhappiness: If we feel (appear to ourselves) happy, we are (in reality) happy. And our happiness, in turn, is centrally important in our well-being.

● Plato criticizes democracy on the ground, among others, that, in it, public debate on governmental issues is dominated by image rather than by substance. The weakness here is that, in the form of government which Plato advocates (monarchy), public debate on governmental matters involves neither image nor substance—it just doesn’t exist. People there have no say whatsoever in societal decisions that affect their lives, which decisions are simply made for them by the monarch. One could reply, then, that a flawed public debate is better than none at all. More generally, in arguing for a certain position, it’s insufficient simply to criticize the alternative; you must, instead, show why the one is better than the other. Merely that one alternative is bad leaves open the possibility that the other is even worse. (As Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government . . . except for all the others.”)

● Just as a proposition cannot be both true and false, so, too, a proposition cannot be both conclusively proved and conclusively disproved.

● 5-28-2004:   Professor Robert H. Kane, in his course The Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, & the Modern Experience, writes of the quest for knowledge of objective reality and the quest for knowledge of objective value. It seems to me that the latter is subsumed in the former, because objective value would be an aspect or element of reality.

[Later note (2021): Unless he’s thinking of objective reality as fact, but objective value as fact(?)]

[Still later note (2-9-2022): What?!]

[Later note (4-9-2022): Did I mean to say objective reality as fact, but objective value as truth?]

● 5-30-2004:   I wouldn’t mind do-gooders if they actually did some good.

● I heard a representative of the Christian faith criticizing the Bush administration’s use of the good-versus-evil analysis of world politics, apparently the criticism being that his religion is more rational than Bush’s religion . . . or, one religion calling another religion irrational.

● I write for posterity (both by purpose and, unfortunately, by default, since I can’t get published).

● If I owned a nightclub that featured liquor and blues music, I’d call it the Blest Booze (with the subtitle, “. . . and the best blues.”)

● 6-2-2004:   To know a given fact or truth, it’s not enough that our perception actually correspond to reality; in addition, we must have some way to absolutely check or confirm the correspondence. I believe that probably the former condition is often met (that our perceptions are correct), but also that we have no ultimately foolproof way to check or verify the connection, and therefore that (absolute) knowledge is impossible.

● 6-3-2004:   A conclusive argument is sufficient argument for its conclusion. (. . . Almost sounds as if that’s not saying anything. With an obvious, simple-sounding statement, sometimes it’s hard at first blush to tell whether it’s profound or trivial. So you err on the side of caution and write it down; you can review it later and determine whether it should be dilated on, or deleted . . ..)

● 6-4-2004:   Professor Robert Kane, in the 22^nd lecture in his course The Quest for Meaning: Values, Ethics, & the Modern Experience, posits two alternative hypothetical situations; in both of which, a painter has the identical happy life experience, believing that his paintings are great works of art, but in one world his paintings really are great; whereas, in the other world, he’s deceived about the quality of his work, which is, really, mediocre. Professor Kane argues that the painter’s preference, if given a choice, for the former over the latter, even though his actual subjective experience would be the same in both, proves the existence of objective value. But the argument is a muddle. At most, it proves that we would prefer that objective value exist; it does not prove that objective value does exist, or even that it’s possible. I might prefer that circles have four right angles . . ..

● Christ said that, in the world to come, “The last shall be first and the first last.” So the next world won’t be a utopia, but merely a place of revenge: Heaven and Hell in one: Heaven for those who suffered Hell on Earth, Hell for those who enjoyed Heaven. . . . Even in the next world there will be revenge, inequality, injustice, and strife. When will we finally have a world that’s peaceful, fair, and happy for all, the sort of world we should have had all along?

● 6-5-2004:   I think I would have had a problem earning a living as a painter, because I think I would find it difficult to part with my works.

● It’s interesting and revealing that, in every modern U.S. presidential election, the candidate of the party that’s been out of power asks the electorate to consider whether they’re better off than they were four (or eight) years ago (when the opposing party’s candidate took office). More relevant, if also more speculative, than the comparison between the present situation and the one that existed four or eight years ago, is that between the present situation and the situation that would (now) exist had the incumbent president’s opponent, instead, been in office (or had his policies, instead, been implemented). There’s a reason why the question is asked the way it’s asked: which is that, for most voters, life continually gets worse, since, in capitalism, the rich get richer and the poor (or everyone who’s not rich, the great majority) get poorer.

● 6-7-2004:   Beelzebubba.

● 6-11-2004:   I think Ronald Reagan was a better actor than president . . . and he was a pretty poor actor.

● 6-13-2004:   To counter-paraphrase John Donne; ultimately, every man is an island, a separate consciousness.

● Must a great man be good? Were Hitler and Stalin great men?

● I’ve just (last week) finished a new little essay, “Why the Left Should Vote.” I’m very proud of it, and think it’s one of my best pieces of writing to date, perhaps my most nearly perfect essay. I’m going to try to get it published. I’m now in the process of revising, yet again, another of my essays, “Morality.” This latest edition will be version (or revision) number five. For some time, I’d been accumulating notes for corrections, and new material with which to supplement it. I just reread it and I’m disappointed to find that it seems to need considerable work. Sometimes I have the impression that any given one of my works is not so much a finished piece as merely the latest version.

● 6-17-2004:   The spreading around the world of American franchise restaurants, like McDonald’s, is a form of cultural pollution.

● To paraphrase Nietzsche’s motto about “philosophizing with a hammer,” sometimes you must edit with a hammer. When you can’t make a piece of writing work by tinkering with it, you may have to break it to bits and radically restructure it. You notice that a paragraph doesn’t suit the composition. So you try to rewrite it to make it fit. Then you discover that the problem really involves an adjacent paragraph as well; and you continue this process until you find that the trouble is the entire last half of the essay . . . and eventually you realize you have to redo the whole work. To achieve his best possible creative results, a writer must be fearless (or at least brave) in taking the hammer to his work.

● 6-18-2004:   At least part of why the Right are politically better organized and more effective than the Left is that the Right are the relatively few rich; the Left, the many middle-class and poor. And the smaller the number of people, the easier it is logistically for them to cooperate together (the upper class are not at a disadvantage in collective resources, for their smaller number is compensated for by their greater capital); and the interests of the wealthy are more unified than those of the rest. The wealth gap grows (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer) in part because this trend increases the political-power gap, which in turn escalates the wealth gap, and so on.

● 6-20-2004:   I’ve just now finished the fifth revision of my essay “Morality,” with which I’m very pleased. (I wrote the 6-17-2004 Diary entry, above, regarding editing with a hammer as I was in the process of struggling with the rewriting.) I enter the following note in the event that anyone goes through my papers after my death. Each time that I significantly revise the essay, I write the new, most recent, date at the bottom of the list of revision dates at the head of the piece. The latest date so appearing indicates the version of the work. This one, whose date I give as “June 2004,” is, I think, a major leap beyond all previous versions. The computer file containing the essay is now titled, “morality.thoughts.revision.5.wpd” . . . (And see the 7-12-2004 Diary entry below.)

[Later note (6-5-2024): “A major leap beyond all previous versions” is redundant. What’s redundant is “all previous versions.” Presumably, any new version is better than the previous one, or there would be no reason for it. So it’s sufficient to say that it’s an improvement over the previous version. And you wouldn’t describe it as a major leap, unless it were a major leap beyond the previous version. You wouldn’t so describe it, for example, if it were a major leap beyond a much earlier version, but only a slight improvement over the previous one. And, since the previous version is better than all the ones before it, if the new version is a major leap beyond it, it’s a major leap beyond all of them.]

● 6-22-2004:   In the fourth movement of Mozart’s last (41^st) symphony, the passage wherein all the themes are combined at once is a sort of composer’s cadenza, in which, instead of a player, the composer himself shows off his virtuosity.

● Sunday 6-28-2004:   Philosophy Club meeting.

● 6-29-2004:   Low-wage labor is even cheaper than slave labor, because a slave owner must provide food, clothes, housing, medical care, and other basic necessities of life to his slaves, all of which costs more than low-paid workers get.

● 7-1-2004:   I dislike Saddam Hussein, but I despise George W. Bush.

● I sense that, in general, my body of work is enhanced more by the improvement of an existing important piece than by the creation of a new lesser one. But here, as in so many aspects of life, one must strive for the golden mean.

[Later note (2021): That entry, especially the last sentence, is pretentious. Because I rarely have a profusion of creative ideas, some for enhancing existing works, others for creating new ones, I rarely need a rule for selecting among them. Usually, creative ideas come to me one at a time. If the idea is for enhancing an existing work, I do that; if it’s for making a new work, I do that.]

● 7-3-2004:   Human nature, our common needs and desires, gives us a reservoir of mutual interests; an innate knowledge of what will please and displease others; and the potential to live together in either conflict or cooperation.

● Yesterday, radio journalist Ian Masters responded to my letter and offered to look at my essay “Why the Left Should Vote,” which I sent to him today.

● 7-7-2004:   The ice cream was cold, stonily.

● Not all of the people can be fooled all of the time. Unfortunately, enough of the people can be fooled enough of the time for the wealthy and the politicians they buy to get away with murder.

● 7-11-2004:   One time, in an election in Nazi Germany, a stupid Jew voted for the Nazi party candidate over the opposition candidate, on the grounds that, though the Nazi’s policies were not as good as those of his opponent, particularly on Jewish issues, yet the Nazi had more experience.

● 7-12-2004:   Just because something cannot be measured doesn’t mean that it is does not or cannot exist in definite amounts.

[Later note (5-29-2022): Another way to put it is this: Just because we can’t measure something doesn’t mean it can’t be measured.]

● Since noting in the 6-20-2004 Diary entry, above, that I had completed the current (June 2004) version of my essay “Morality,” I’ve been refining and polishing it. I just now truly finished the piece (at least for the time being); I read it through in one sitting without making a single change, and have deposited (two) printed copies with my other manuscripts. I feel a wonderful sense of accomplishment, because this was a major improvement of one of my most important works: indeed, second in importance only to “Ethics” itself. The current version is so great an advance over the previous versions that I feel as if I’ve added a whole new (very substantial) composition to my body of work.

● 7-13-2004:   I find Summer too hot, Winter too cold.

● In common perception, the morality of human conduct is a function of its effect and its intention.

● I’ve stumbled upon a tip for good use of time. When you’re unable to work on the task you had originally set out to do; instead of doing nothing, find a substitute activity that’s also productive, or at least semi-productive. In other words, don’t do nothing.

● 7-14-2004:   The difficulty of a task for a given person is a function of the task’s inherent difficulty, as it were, and the performer’s ability and energy. Or, perhaps more accurately, there’s no such thing as inherent difficulty; a task’s difficulty is strictly relative to the performer’s ability and energy. . . . But, for a given person, with a given level of ability and energy, a task’s difficulty (for him) varies with the degree of difficulty of the task itself (he finds a task more or less difficult depending on some quality of the task—however that quality is described).

● Sometimes you have to go through a long, complicated reasoning process in order to deduce, or to come to really understand, even seemingly simple truths.

● 7-15-2004:   When I have money, I have no time; when I have time, I have no money.

● 7-17-2004:   My argumentation generally is so effective that often it makes the opposing viewpoint seem, not merely unsound, but stupid. Several times, after I’ve refuted their arguments, opponents have insisted that they had not really advanced the now-discredited assertions or had not really believed them. In fact, I’ve occasionally wondered if perhaps my argumentation is too good, so convincing that my thesis seems obvious, the opposed view a straw man, thus making my writing seem trivial; whereas, of course, the position I attacked was indeed earnestly maintained.

● The cliche, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, reveals a profound truth, which is that the two trends are, not independent, but correlative. One man’s gain in wealth must come from somewhere; and, since resources are scarce, it mainly comes from other men. Abundance and poverty are largely matters of wealth distribution. In order for the rich to become richer, the poor must become poorer.

● 7-18-2004:   Ideally, I’d wish to be liked by a few, and respected by all.

● God works in mysterious ways, like a madman.

● 7-19-2004:   Though admittedly I’m not a scholar of philosophy, and I’m biased in the matter in my favor; in contrasting Aristotle’s work with my own, my impression (for what it may be worth to anyone, which I fear might be nothing) is that his work has a broader base, and perhaps even a greater mass, whereas mine has a higher pinnacle.

● People in the construction industry allege that they’re endlessly building merely to satisfy the need of a growing population. But to a certain extent, I believe, it’s the other way round: that further construction encourages population growth, which process is summed up by the cliche: “If you build it, they will come.”

● 7-23-2004:   Members of the United Nations are debating whether the killings in Darfur, Sudan, constitute genocide, in order to know whether there’s a legal duty to act. . . . So, whether mass murder is actionable depends on the victims’ genetic or national identity?

● I voted for Ralph Nader for president in 2000, because, here in California, it wouldn’t affect the election’s outcome. But I oppose Nader’s running for president this time, because of the risk of his drawing enough votes away from John Kerry to throw the election to Bush (Nader has no real chance of actually winning the election; a vote for him would be a mere protest vote). Nader is not dealing honestly with this issue of the risk of electing Bush, in that he (Nader) asserts that he’ll garner more otherwise-Republican than otherwise-Democratic votes, an idea absurd on its face.

● 7-25-2004 (Sunday):   Another meeting of the Philosophy Club.

● 7-26-2004:   My work (particularly, “Morality”) provides a metaphysical basis for socialism, a more fundamental basis than Carl Marx gives us. Indeed, Marx perhaps would not claim to provide a metaphysical basis, at all, in that he considered himself a sociologist, not a philosopher. It’s one thing to say, as I think Marx does, that socialism is inevitable, but quite another to say that it’s desirable. It seems to me that no economic system is inevitable; we get the system that we desire and that we work to bring about. So the real question is, what system should we have (or, more accurately, what system do we want).

● One of the most common arguments for God is that the universe had to have been created (the creator being God). The argument is inconsistent, however, as follows. From the proposition that the universe could not always have been (but must have been made), we derive the generalization that an entity cannot always have existed. But if something cannot always have been, then (since God, too, is something) neither could God always have existed. On the other hand, if God could always have been, then something could always have existed. But if something could always have existed, then the universe (which, too, is something) could likewise always have existed (thus not needing a creator).

The same reasoning applies to the argument that man’s moral sense is evidence of a God. That pro-God argument boils down to the assertion that an ethical (or ethically capable) being must have been created by another (intelligent and ethical) entity. But if that’s true, then God, who also is an ethical being, must likewise have been created by another entity (and so forth, ad infinitum). On the other hand, if (ethical) God was not created by another being, this means that an ethical being can exist without having been created by another entity, which in turn means that (ethical) man, as well, need not have been made by another being.

(To attempt to establish God’s existence by logical argument is an impermissible mixing of modes of thought. Belief in God is a matter of faith, not of reason.)

[Later note (7-23-2024): I wonder whether that’s true. There may be two distinct conceptions of God: one philosophical, the other religious. The philosophical God at least purports to be based on reason; it’s the religious conception that’s based on faith. Perhaps the impermissible, or problematic, mixing of modes of thought pertains to the mixing of these two conceptions of God. . . . On the other hand, just because a conclusion or an argument involves reason, doesn’t mean that it’s true, or sound. Some reasoning is bad.]

● In a related vein, if someone were to propose that man was created by a being with an IQ of 1,000; we would find this unconvincing. We would have the same reaction if it were suggested that the creator’s intelligence is 1,000,000; or 1,000,000,000. Why do we suddenly become convinced when the proposition concerns a creator with an infinite IQ? (though such a being is far more fantastical and improbable, if not impossible). (. . . Perhaps, to answer my own question, because, though it’s more improbable, it’s at least a qualitatively better answer to the original problem, even if it, too, ultimately fails.)

[Later note (2021): What?! I don’t understand that last parenthetical statement. How can it be a qualitatively better answer if it, too, fails? And what “original problem” is it supposed to answer? But I won’t delete it: perhaps the next time I read through this Journal I’ll understand what I meant.]

● 7-27-2004:   The difference between U.S. presidential candidates John Kerry and Ralph Nader is a fifty percent chance at a ten percent improvement versus a zero percent chance at a ninety percent improvement.

● 7-30-2004:   Neither logical axioms, and the like, nor religious doctrines, can be proven; yet they’re supported by different mental standards or qualities: reason and faith, respectively. A reasonable man could not disbelieve that A = A, for example, but he could disbelieve in God.

● 8-1-2004:   We’re less likely to be annoyed by (or even to notice) bad reasoning when it’s used to support positions with which we agree than positions with which we disagree. This is largely because we have greater motivation to discredit hostile arguments than friendly ones. More benignly, or neutrally, however, it’s also because an argument’s conclusion’s disagreement with our own opinion immediately and automatically alerts us that something is wrong, whether it be the argument’s assumptions, its reasoning, or our own existing belief, and prompts us to attempt to diagnose (so as to be able to resolve) the resulting conflict. Superior thinkers tend to be as alert to inconsistencies among their own ideas as they are to inconsistencies between their own opinions and those of other men (in other words, who have acquired the invaluable habit of self-criticism).

● “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword” is often used as an argument not to live by the sword. But this seems an appeal less to morality than to self-interest, implying that, if you’re willing to risk dying by the sword, it’s all right to live by it; that the reason not to kill or maim is to avoid being killed or maimed yourself.

● Various persons for various purposes (most commonly, politicians in arguing for American capitalism) are fond of proclaiming the United States the world’s richest country. But just what is meant by richest country? It cannot refer to total abundance; if it did, the mere joinder of two poor countries might create a rich one, instead of merely a larger poor one, surely not the idea intended. It more likely means per capita wealth. But consider a group of ten people, one with ten million dollars, the others with practically nothing. An instance of the law of diminishing returns, once a man has enough money (say, one million dollars) to live in luxury without having to work, his acquisition of additional money does not substantially increase his quality of life; and so, in our hypothetical example, although mathematically everyone is a millionaire, yet, in terms of real well-being, there’s one rich man and nine paupers: overall, misery. Wherefore, the maldistribution of American wealth makes a mockery of the notion of the richest country, which actually (in people’s real well-being) is perhaps one of the poorest.

[Later note (2021): That answers the question: If we’re the richest country, why do we need to borrow money from other countries? It’s because we define ourselves as the richest country based on combined public and private wealth, but the public portion is not rich. We, the public, the government, borrow money from other countries for public needs. Rich persons won’t share their money, and we don’t take it from them, to pay for public needs.]

● 8-4-2004:   It has been argued that President George W. Bush deserves credit for appointing Black Americans to positions in his administration. I think not. If a white man hires a Black man, instead of a white one, to lynch a Black man, does the white man therein deserve credit for patronizing the Black community?

● I’m at once self-centered and other-oriented. I value my own well-being more highly than, even exclusive of, others’ well-being; yet I perceive my well-being to consist in my glory, which essentially involves a relationship with others—their appreciation of my work. Paradoxical though it is, this is an accurate description of the state of my psyche. Human nature, after all, is a-logical. And, like God, it works in mysterious ways.

● God is a metaphor, most broadly for a man-valuing, man-supporting, man-centric, man-friendly universe, which idea many find comforting.

● Religion is literalized myth.

● I am one.

[Later note (2021): If I didn’t insert this comment on that entry, readers might ponder, “What did he mean by that?” and assume that it had some cryptic but profound meaning. Well, I’m going to have pity on my readers, and confess that, I don’t know what the hell it means, either!]

[Still later note (2021): It just occurred to me . . . (I suppose that everything you write—at one time or another—just occurred to you) . . . that it would be very funny if someone ever writes my biography, and titles it Richard Eisner: I am One.]

● 8-6-2004:   It’s been said that, just as silence is the essential background for music; so, too, evil is the setting for good, evil being necessary for the appreciation, perhaps even the existence, of good. But the analogy is flawed. Good and evil, or happiness and unhappiness, are absolute; neither one is a required complement to the other; either may exist independently, undiminished by the lack of the other. A world in which all inhabitants are always happy is possible, as is a world in which all are chronically unhappy. Pleasure and pain are qualities of consciousness, and the great ground to consciousness is the simple absence of consciousness (death, or nonexistence). Mercifully so, for a ground of pain, rather than of mere neutral nonexistence, would render the universe hell.

● For America’s occupation of Iraq; there can be no success, only degrees of failure.

● 8-7-2004:   “Be true to yourself” is a fancy way of saying, Be honest.

[Later note (11-10-2024): It’s more than that. Being honest, with yourself, is part of it. But it also involves action: acting in ways (as one article on the Internet put it) “that align with your values and feelings.”]

● In my vote for president this year, I’ll follow George W. Bush. He says we should fight against evil; and I agree, so I’ll vote to remove him from office.

● 8-12-2004:   Just as weather doesn’t respect political boundaries; so, too, ideas for revision of a piece of writing don’t cease to occur to the writer simply because he puts the manuscript away, believing and wanting to believe that it’s finished.

● 8-14-2004:   The Bush administration’s criticism of opposition presidential candidate John Kerry as “inconsistent” is particularly ironic, considering that Bush has been consistently wrong.

● Job interview this afternoon with Attorney Ari Krell.

● 8-15-2004:   Another meeting of the Philosophy Club.

● If all the sane people died, would the ones who remained be normal, ipso facto? And, being normal, would they then not be insane (in virtue of being normal)?

● [Perhaps more clearly expressed:] If all the “sane” people died, would the remaining (“insane”) people then be normal, and, being normal, therefore sane?

[Later note (11-4-2023): No. They may be normal, but they wouldn’t be sane, though the situation might snap some of them out of their insanity. It’s like asking, If all the able-bodied people died, would the remaining ones, the disabled, because they’re now the norm, be able-bodied? No, they’d still be disabled. . . . I guess even I am not immune from asking stupid questions.]

● Just as a very rough start, I would propose this definition of mental illness: A non-physical personal abnormality that interferes with the individual’s functioning.

● Idea for a cartoon: Two American soldiers are standing together. One of them has just finished shooting (perhaps pictorially indicated by a smoking machine-gun) a group of scraggly Asian peasants, who lie dead or dying on the ground. That soldier turns to his fellow warrior and says, “These people don’t value life as much as we Americans do. To them, life is cheap.”

● 8-16-2004:   I overheard someone comment that most people don’t live long enough to make important discoveries. But I wonder: If it were a matter of living long enough, why is it that most men who make important discoveries do so when they’re young?

● I think I just got a job! . . . No: I just got a job!

● 8-17-2004:   Do identical twins have the same fingerprints?

● Started job, working as a lawyer for Attorneys Sef and Ari Krell (they’re brothers).

● 8-20-2004:   When George W. Bush tells the truth, it’s because he thinks a lie would not be of greater benefit to him and his rich friends, perhaps because he thinks it wouldn’t be believed.

● 8-22-2004:   We might define reality as all that is. This definition does not oblige us to say what is; we simply refer to everything that exists, whatever it may be.

● 8-28-2004:   If a person has an accident, he may say he was lucky because he was only slightly injured in it. In a larger context, however, he was unlucky, in that the vast majority of people had no mishap at all that day. Whether we consider ourselves fortunate or unfortunate in such circumstances depends on the starting point of consideration. If we take the starting position as the situation that existed before the accident, then we’re unfortunate to have sustained any injury. Whereas, if we take the accident as given, then we’re fortunate to the extent that we were less badly hurt than a person involved in such an event might expect to have been hurt. Which perspective we adopt in this regard is a function of our psychological propensities and needs, of our tendency and wish to think positively or negatively, and of time (we tend to grow more accepting of events as they become less recent).

● The net distress caused by a new injury is the new pain minus the resultant distraction from preexisting vexations. Sometimes I think I’m simply unhappy by nature, and all that changes is what I happen to focus on as the primary source of my misery . . . the misery of the moment.

● In a lecture on God, Alan Watts commented that the traditional conception of God had become implausible to most people, and explored the possibility of a religion without the notion of God, as follows: “It’s just for that reason that the traditional idea of God has become implausible to many people, and that modern Protestant theologians . . . have been talking recently about the death of God, and about the possibility of whether we could have a religionless religion; that is to say, a religion which does not involve belief in God. What, in other words, would become of the gospel of Jesus Christ if it were shown that Jesus’s own belief in God were unnecessary and invalid? What would remain of his teaching, of his ideas about caring for other human beings, about social responsibility, and so on and so forth, if the idea of God simply evaporated? I think that’s a pretty wishy-washy kind of religion. I mean, if you’re going to say that this life is fundamentally nothing but a pilgrimage from the maternity ward to the crematorium—and that’s it, baby; you’ve had it! . . . I think that indicates a singular lack of imagination. I would like to look at the death-of-God theology in an entirely different way. I would like to say that what is dead is not God, but a particular conception of God . . .”

My response is this. Belief that no afterlife exists may not be imaginative; but it’s true. Imaginativeness is an asset in creating art, but not in arriving at beliefs about reality, whose only proper standard is truth—the correspondence of idea with fact, however plain and ordinary it may be. With respect, for example, to the propositions “twice two is three hundred sixty” and “twice two is four”; the latter, though less imaginative, is surely preferable! . . . at least for mathematical purposes. Which raises the question, What is religion’s purpose: truth, or comfort?

● 8-29-2004:   George W. Bush’s presidency is a testament to the brilliance of Karl Rove and the stupidity of the American people; and to feel confident that Bush will lose the next election is probably to underestimate Karl Rove and overestimate the American people.

● 8-30-2004:   Ever since the age of eighteen, I’ve suffered from depersonalization / derealization (for many years, not knowing the diagnosis, I called it my “perceptual impairment”). It began suddenly. I was standing up in the backyard, smoking marijuana; I passed out (the first time I’d ever passed out). The next thing I remember is walking back into the house and entering my room; I sat down in my chair, looked around and thought, “Oh, something’s different”—something besides the marijuana high. The derealization is a feeling of unreality, as if I’m in a dream. Intellectually, I know what’s going on, but it lacks emotional impact. Perception is flat; the world looks two dimensional; it lacks depth. It’s as if I’m down a manhole on the street. I desperately want to get above ground, to cast my vision across the landscape to the horizon; but I can’t. For many years, I counted this as my central injury, until, at the age of about thirty-one, the loss of the bulk of my writing took its place. I used to strain at it, as if encased inside an inflated balloon, to stretch the skin of the balloon thin enough to be able to get a clear glimpse through to the outside world. In later years, my approach changed. Instead of straining to stretch the skin, I began to search for a pin to pop the balloon, the key that might magically open the door. Alas, both approaches have been in vain, and I’ve abandoned hope that this condition will ever go away (it has never lifted for so much as an instant). A few years after it started, though, there was a dramatic change in how I viewed the condition. At first, I feared that it was a result of brain damage, perhaps caused when I fainted (and possibly fell and hit my head on the concrete patio). I had a battery of psychological tests that showed that I had no brain damage—the problem was purely psychological. Just knowing that I didn’t have brain damage was a tremendous relief. The “perceptual impairment” doesn’t seem to adversely affect my mental ability or my creativity, or my creative productivity, which is far more important to me than how I feel, how happy I am. My overriding focus must be producing the work.

● Right-wing propaganda often relies on an equivocation on the word free. The opposite of tyranny is freedom, and everyone rightfully hates tyranny and loves freedom. But freedom in this sense is democracy, the right and power of the people to determine their course, individually and collectively. But the Rightist argument insinuates that freedom consists in or entails free enterprise, capitalism; which it doesn’t. Free men may democratically choose any economic system, including socialism or communism. Indeed, capitalism itself involves tyranny: the tyranny of the few rich over the rest of society.

● Suicide is a selfish act; yet the effort to prevent it, too, may be selfish. Which of those acts (suicide, or its prevention) is wrong depends on the balance of hardships. For example, if a person commits suicide for trivial reasons, but his loss to his friends is considerable, his suicide is wrong. But if a person is badly suffering, and is unproductive, with little hope of a change in his condition, then preventing his ending his life is wrong.

● An artist’s declaration that his creations are inspired by and dedicated to God lends a certain heightened grandeur to his (the artist’s) work. Alas, I’m not able to make that declaration.

● 9-3-2004:   My back injury has made me realize that, in estimating your fortunateness or unfortunateness in terms of traumatic injury, you must compare yourself, not with an uninjured person, but rather with the average person your age, who will have sustained any number of significant injuries or health problems. No one gets through life unscathed.

● Are Heaven and Hell spatially located places, or simply states of mind?

[Later note (11-4-2023): Of course, I know that they’re simply states of mind, because they don’t actually exist—they’re just fantasies. What I mean is, How do religious persons who believe in such things conceive of them?]

● If an oppressed people’s only means of striking at their oppressors is to attack civilians, but such attacks lead those civilians to pressure their leaders to end the oppression, and thereby in the long run more lives are saved than lost, and a just situation is ultimately achieved for the survivors and their descendants; are such tactics on the part of the oppressed inexplicable?; unnatural?; irrational?; immoral?

● 9-5-2004:   It’s all well and good to encourage businessmen to conduct their businesses ethically. But it’s inadequate. As the solution to murder is, not to encourage people to refrain from it, but rather to outlaw it; so, too, the equitable, environmentally compatible distribution and use of resources can be effected, not by the voluntary actions of individuals, no matter how well intentioned many of them may be (and of course many others of them will not be); but instead solely by compulsory public regulation, with a view of the entire system and a mandate to affect it for the general weal.

In a related vein, charity is what we do in the absence of justice. And, unlike charity, comprehensive, distributive justice can be accomplished only collectively, not individually. Religions, at their best, aim at charity; socialism and communism, at justice.

● 9-6-2004:   The Republicans are the far right-wing party; the Democrats, the moderately right-wing party.

● 9-9-2004:   The reporting on the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has been unfairly one-sided, highlighting the bad and disregarding the good. For example, one recent news item described a U.S. military unit’s breaking down the front door of an Iraqi family’s house and killing the parents. Yet there was no mention whatsoever that, on their way out, the soldiers gave the children a candy bar.

● 9-12-2004:   My per-capita well-being standard, articulated in “Morality,” is a perfect synthesis of the selfish and the social.

● Many lawyers I’ve met are weaselly.

● My “Ethics” . . . and “Morality” are companion works, the former setting forth my great theory of value, the latter its greatest extension; the former essentially negative, the latter applying it positively; the first a composition in a minor mode, the second in major.

● 9-14-2004:   Injuries from floods, earthquakes, and other such natural disasters are God’s fault . . . since those events are acts of God.

● I’m doubtful whether an infinitely intelligent being is even possible; let alone likely; let alone necessary.

● My Inconsistencies

○ I pride myself on my unusual intelligence in being able to uncover and illuminate rhetorical flaws, which I often denounce as “stupid.” But is my exposing them a function of their stupidity, or my intelligence? (It can’t be both, can it?)

[Later note (2020): I think I had originally intended to write a list of my inconsistencies, but managed to come up with just one—that one. I’m sure there are many more!]

● 9-15-2004:   Hypochondria is the reverse of the placebo effect.

● 9-16-2004:   Einstein’s relativity theory is his masterpiece.

● 9-17-2004:   Nostalgia and homesickness are temporal and geographical forms of the same sort of feeling.

● 9-18-2004:   Civil libertarians are appalled by criminal convictions obtained through such dirty tricks as police perjury and evidence-planting. And yet, imagine that a known fascist war criminal is tried for his crimes against humanity. In his trial for the murder of one man, of which everyone knows he’s guilty; by some sharp maneuvering on his lawyer’s part, the case must be dismissed on a technicality. Then, in another case, for a murder he did not commit, he’s by some fluke found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison. Further suppose that, if he were acquitted in the latter case, he would go free, with no other cases available to be asserted against him. Under these circumstances, and assuming that a civil libertarian were the only one who knew that an error had occurred (in the second trial), would the civil libertarian insist that the conviction be set aside? If so, why? If not, how does he reconcile his two conflicting positions or attitudes?

[Later note (5-29-2022): A civil libertarian might say that the conviction must be set aside: that the lack of justice in this one instance is the price we pay to uphold an important principle.]

● 9-23-2004:   This afternoon, I noticed a parked car adorned with a profusion of religious bumper stickers. One read: “Dear God, Why do you allow so much violence in our school? — A young student.” Another: “Jesus is coming back—Tell a friend.”

I left this note on the car’s windshield: “Maybe He’ll stop the violence . . . when He comes back . . .”

● 9-25-2004:   As a heavenly body’s gravitational pull is a function of its size and its proximity to other objects, so, too, a person’s influence on other humans is conditioned, in part, on his importance and on his closeness to them.

● In one relevant sense, to exist is to experience.

● In my late teens, I took a community-college philosophy course, in which an examination posed the question of pacifism. Along with the great bulk of my early writings, the copy of my answer to that question was lost, but the gist of it was this: People who respond to violence with violence of their own have a short view, whereas pacifists take a long view. Initial violence is like a noxious chemical introduced into clear water. Those prone to respond with force emit chemicals of their own to attempt to neutralize the original toxin. But pacifists feel that such counter-emissions, though perhaps giving immediate relief, over time produce a chemical accumulation; whereas, their own refusal to react violently is like the emission of plain water (instead of chemicals), which counteracts the toxin of violence by diluting it, leading ultimately to a purer, less polluted milieu.

● 9-28-2004:   We’re constantly exhorted to take risks, as a precursor to success. But seldom do we hear about the other aspect of risk: losing. Risk entails the possibility of loss. When you take a risk, you may lose. And if you know of the risk in advance, it makes little sense to complain about losing.

● 10-2-2004:   It’s said that torture, as an interrogation tool, is not only unethical but also ineffective. Why it would be considered unethical is apparent. But is it ineffective; and, if so, why? It is, and here’s why: In most cases, an interrogator cannot immediately and easily corroborate or disprove information given by an interrogatee. Even where the information, like the combination to a safe in the same room, might be readily confirmed or disproven, the interrogatee’s claim of ignorance cannot be checked.

An interrogatee who’s threatened with torture, or who’s being tortured, has a motive to say anything, true or false, that will avoid or stop the torture. But because he knows that the torturer cannot tell whether his answers are true, he (the interrogatee) has no particular motivation to tell the truth. In fact, just the opposite: if either the truth or a lie will work, he’d be inclined to lie, to hurt the torturer. (And, needless to say, false information is useless, or worse, to the interrogator.) Whereas, in a humane (non-torture) interrogation, the interrogatee needn’t speak at all; he speaks only voluntarily, and he’s more likely to have a friendly motivation for speaking (he may, for example, form a bond with his interrogator and want to help him), and so the information he gives is likely to be true (certainly more likely to be true than information given by the torture victim).

Torture’s being less effective than other methods, is reason enough not to use it, and so we needn’t address its ethicality.

● “Words and ideas can change the world.” . . . a perhaps trivially true statement, since words and ideas are part of the world . . ..

● 10-4-2004:   On voting for the lesser evil: to turn around a car moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the driver must first slow down . . ..

● 10-6-2004:   My aim for my writing is, not to persuade, but to convince; and even this just so that it will be admired.

● 10-7-2004:   Gazinka rinka tinka shinka tooooooooo . . ..

● 10-8-2004:   I broadly agree with Wittgenstein’s statement, “As to that which we cannot [intelligently] speak, we must remain silent.” But I differ with him concerning what can and what cannot be spoken of.

. . . Wittgenstein’s thesis about “the language game” is yet another argument for the proposition that knowledge is impossible. I have come to the same conclusion, but with a different (and I think simpler, more elegant) argument. Another difference between me and Wittgenstein is that he makes that thesis the centerpiece of his philosophy, whereas in my work it’s merely one of many subsidiary elements.

● 10-9-2004:   The question has been posed: When parts of an object are changed, at what point does it become a different object? The answer may have to do with possession and function. For example, if, in the course of ten years, John’s auto mechanic replaces every part of John’s car; assuming it retains very similar operation and appearance, we consider it to be the same car because it’s still the car that John owns and that he drives on Main Street to transport himself to and from work every day. A person is the same individual if he remains the same percipient, or perceiver.

● 10-11-2004:   The oft-repeated notion that we cannot know reality is fundamentally flawed. For a significant—perhaps the most significant—aspect of reality is our experience itself; and we know our experience directly and perfectly. We know that we’re happy, or unhappy (at least sometimes we do), or that we’re having this or that sensation, and so forth. Hence, at least in this significant way, we do know reality.

● “President Bush asserts that we should not use embryonic stem cells for medical research, because it requires the destruction of life (an embryo). Obviously, he’s right. In fact, I think we should outlaw organ donation as well, since it (organ donation), too, requires death (the organ donor’s death). Killing people, even to save others’ lives, is simply wrong.” –John DiPuts, Right-Wing Activist

● 10-13-2004:   Twinkle, twinkle, little star; wonder, wonder where we are.

● I do not consider Ann Rand a genuine philosopher; she doesn’t warrant an intelligent response.

● 10-21-2004:   This morning in a Starbucks Coffee shop, when I purchased my morning cup of coffee, there were free samples on the counter of a new, high-priced pastry item. When the clerk invited me to take a sample, I replied, “It’s too expensive.” He responded, “The sample is free.” I said, “I don’t want to form a habit I can’t afford.”

● On a parked car today, I saw a bumper sticker, “Mission accomplished. [with “mission” crossed out and “nothing” written above it] . . . Dump Bush in ‘04.” I left the following note on the car’s windshield: “He accomplished nothing?—Well, yes and no. He accomplished nothing good; but he accomplished considerable harm.”

● Am I a writer?; a philosopher? . . . I’m a man who seeks glory by producing work of lasting value; my best sort of work is writing; and my best subject for writing seems to be philosophy.

● 10-24-2004:   It takes less discomfort to keep you awake than it does to wake you up.

● 10-26-2004:   I often use “just” to mean if and only if, or exactly.

● 10-29-2004:   If humans were essentially “all one” rather than separate, we would speak of amounts of people rather than numbers of them.

● 10-30-2004:   I think one reason why President Bush is so averse to admitting his errors is that he likes to think (or he wants us to think) he’s carrying out God’s will, which, by definition, is perfect; any apparent negative consequences of his (Bush’s) actions are simply part of God’s unfathomable plan. To view your conduct as justified, not by results, but by definition, is a convenient way to avoid criticism.

● 10-31-2004:   The Taoists who in the early part of the first millennium favored laissez-faire simply did not foresee technology and overpopulation.

● When I hear a person declare an antipathy to voting on the ground that his vote doesn’t count, or doesn’t make a difference, I wonder whether he’s not demanding too much: that, in effect, his preference not merely be tallied, but actually determine the outcome (that it should win).

One who complains that his vote made no difference, probably voted for the losing candidate. But I think it would be interesting to ask such a person this question: “If you had voted instead for the winner, would you then think that your vote made a difference?” . . ..

● Could a state’s populace favor a form of government other than democracy? Yes (but if they later changed their mind, then they might have a problem . . .).

● Some of the Christian Right insist that God put George W. Bush in the White House. But if God bestowed the presidency on Bush, why was the election so close?

[Later note (2021): Oh, come on, Richard! Obviously, to hide His intervention.]

● I look forward, the day after this year’s presidential election, to hear how the Christian Right, who insist that God installed President Bush in the White House, will explain his defeat.

[Later note (2021): Would they not just say that God saw fit to replace him? More generally, though, a question is: If God installed Bush in the White House, does He not install every president (including liberal ones)? Indeed, doesn’t He cause everything?]

● A consideration which supports the thesis that faith is uncritical is that a religion is a congeries of doctrines; and it’s unlikely that a man would arrive at or agree with all of them spontaneously, were they not presented to him prepackaged.

● The notion of a person’s attempting to do God’s will is a strange one. If God is omnipotent, and He wills a particular event or situation, would it not come to pass, quite regardless of our effort for or against it? . . . If God wills that we act in a certain way, would we not so act?; a man’s acting contrary to an all-powerful being’s will is a virtual contradiction in terms. . . . Moreover, to think that an omnipotent being needs our puny assistance to carry out his will is extravagant self-flattery!

● Religion is a socially acceptable form of insanity.

● All great music comes from the heart, but not all music that comes from the heart is great.

● 11-1-2004:   In my opinion, the right-wing are the greedy and the stupid (some of them are greedy; others of them are merely stupid).

● 11-4-2004:   Bin Laden’s recent video-taped statement to the effect that the American people, not only their leaders, are responsible for the country’s actions, was, I believe, designed to negate the idea of “innocent civilians,” to make all citizens equally guilty for the actions of their government, and thus justify his mass murder.

[Later note (2021): To clarify, I’m not saying that if all citizens were responsible for their government’s bad actions, then murdering them would be justifiable. I’m saying that that’s Bin Laden’s twisted reasoning, or rationalization.]

● I’ve heard Black people complain that the Democratic party takes them for granted, no longer addressing their needs. But why should Black people insist on being in a special category with respect to voting, and insist that they receive special benefits as a reward for their vote? Why shouldn’t they vote Democratic for exactly the same reason the rest of us do: namely, that the Democrats are significantly, if just marginally, better than the Republicans for the country as a whole (including us)?

[Later note (1-2-2022): There was a Jew in 1930s Germany who thought the political party opposing Hitler was taking his vote for granted. So in the next election he voted for Hitler. Hitler won. Some years later that Jew was killed in a Nazi death camp.]

● Candidates for the board of the local left-wing radio station advertise their intention to foster “diversity,” to give a voice to unrepresented groups. But I wish they’d focus less on diversity and more on commonality. It’s well and good to hear from a draftsman about his lack of money for pencils; from a painter about his lack of money for paint; and from a composer about his lack of money for ink. But at some point, it would be better to hear from, say, an economist about funding for the arts.

● 11-5-2004:   I heard that our present Governor, Arnold Schwartzennegar, when asked recently whether he would consider proposals by Democrats to raise taxes on wealthier citizens, replied, “Why should I listen to losers?” We on the left should not take the insult personally; we should take it with a grain of salt, and consider the source. . . . Everyone knows that Schwartzennegar was not elected on the basis of his high intelligence.

● It may be that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, but I’m beginning to think you can fool most Americans most of the time. This country is turning into a bloody theocracy.

● 11-6-2004:   Republicans are rogue elephants, and Democrats are jackasses.

● 11-7-2004:   I think many of the so-called moral values promoted by the Right, such as opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage, are cheap values at best, immoral ones at worst, which require little or no sacrifice by their holders; do not enhance the common good, but instead merely oppress other people; and spring, not from a desire to help others, but from intolerance and bigotry. These are in sharp contrast to the politics of the Left, whose fundamental tenet is sacrifice on the part of the better-off for the well-being of the community. In sum, the morality of the Right is counterfeit; the morality of the Left is genuine.

● 11-8-2004:   For me, personally, moral values are largely subsumed in the category of values.

● Because religion is ambiguous enough to be citable on either side of almost any political issue, religious dogma is essentially irrelevant to such disputes, which ultimately must be judged solely on their own merits. Religion can doubtless inspire good conduct as well as ill; but I believe that in politics it’s generally a negative, a superfluous element that doesn’t indicate any certain outcomes, but enables the ill-intentioned to confuse and manipulate the people, blunting their common sense and clear thought.

(Query whether the reverse is not true, that a religion should be judged by what’s done in its name, that, for instance, the so-called Christian Right is a poor reflection on Christianity.)

● Some Israelis attempt to justify their occupation of Palestinian land on the basis that, according to Scripture, God gave this land to the Jewish people. To those Israelis, I would say that, when you use Judaism to justify oppression, it’s a bad reflection on Judaism, for a doctrine that entails a bad act is a bad doctrine.

● We owe some deference to the received wisdom come down to us from the past, for it has (thus far) stood the test of time. This is not to say we shouldn’t reject it, but only that we shouldn’t do so arbitrarily, and that, when we do reject it, we bear a burden of proof, or at least a burden of explanation. Similarly, with regard to our own past declarations, we’re not obliged to conform to them, but when we contradict them, we owe a duty to ourselves and others to explain our inconsistency.

● Today I began for the first time to read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Self Reliance, and was surprised to find that, rather than distinguish good and bad forms of consistency, he disparages consistency and never seems to say anything good about it.

● 11-9-2004:   Whatever time is, whether real or unreal, we disregard it at our peril.

● 11-10-2004:   “Jesus is coming back.” . . . Where is he now, and what does he do there??

● Do those who are “born again” have two birthdays? Which one do they celebrate?

● The gippagoosta!

● It’s an okey-dokey-doggy-doodle-dandy day! (Yesterday it was an ochy-coachy-loachy-toachy-poachy day.)

● A prime challenge of this age is to find outlets for man’s natural urge for growth, to replace existing ones, like expansion of population and industrialization, and amassment of private wealth, which have now begun to both diminish our overall well-being and threaten our very survival.

● 11-16-2004:   The significance for us of discovering intelligent life in outer space would depend in part on whether that other life was more intelligent than we are.

● 11-17-2004:   Where did God dwell before He created the universe?

● 11-18-2004:   To some extent, the articulation of the argument is the argument.

● 11-19-2004:   Religion is the ultimate instance of the pathetic fallacy.

● My great dread is oblivion (that my work will not survive).

● 11-20-2004:   Those who criticize legislators for blocking legislation should bear in mind that non-action is better than bad action, that prevention of evil is good.

● When you are called a bleeding heart, say this to your interlocutor: “Let me get this straight: You’re belittling my urge to help others. That says a great deal about your morality.”

● 11-21-2004:   In any list of conditions justifying war, the last item should be “or when necessary to prevent harm that’s great, irreparable, and significantly worse than the damage likely to be caused by war.” (Of course, an understood proviso as to all such conditions is that the facts given in support of war must constitute the real reason, not a pretext, and be genuinely believed to exist.) For example, if a certain country were about to destroy irreplaceable great art, stopping the destruction might justify military intervention.

. . . The ethics of war is a special application of ethics generally; the same basic ethical considerations pertain to war as pertain to any action. This means that no single rule or set of rules will in all cases tell us whether military action is justified. Such determinations are ultimately ad hoc. But it’s useful to develop a set of rules and principles, and to establish a forum for their application, to hold warriors accountable for their actions. As with the law in general, a set of rules, and a means of enforcing them, however imperfect (up to a point), is better than none at all.

● A policeman shoots a man to death in order to rob him. In defending himself against a criminal or disciplinary charge for the deed, the policeman alleges that he (the policeman) shot the victim because he (the policeman) thought the deceased had a gun and was about to shoot him. But the other man had no weapon, and the policeman never really believed that he had one. Several weeks later, a group of people gather to discuss whether the policeman was justified in the shooting, to answer which question they debate the proposition, “Is a policeman justified in shooting a person who the policeman believes threatens him with a weapon?”

● Why are the standards of justification for and prohibition against violence between nations not the same as those pertaining to violence between individuals? Perhaps it’s largely because, unlike nations, individuals are subject to laws that both provide them with a non-violent alternative means of resolving disputes, making violence unnecessary, and set forth rules for the use of violence and punishments for breaking the rules. Which argues for international law and a world court to serve the same functions for nations as those governing individuals.

● 11-24-2004:   Does God feel good? Is He happy? How did God come to be so fortunate as to be God? . . . I guess He was just born that way; that’s just how things turned out.

● 11-26-2004:   There’s no up or down in space. What we (on Earth) mean by up is away from the Earth.

● 11-28-2004:   I listened to an audio-taped lecture on Christian philosophy five times because I didn’t understand it. The fifth time, it occurred to me that it was not so much that I didn’t understand it as that it was unintelligible.

● 12-3-2004:   Today I posted on a website (on the Internet) my short essay “On the Significance of Purpose in War: A Rebuttal.” In a sense, this is my first published work. Nothing may come of it, but it seems a momentous occasion. I’m quite proud of it; and, at very least, some people will see it (usually no one sees my work but me, and occasionally my father).

● On the growth of urban sprawl and population:   “If you build it, they will come.” . . . Indeed so; and therein lies the problem.

● Our perception of the truth is a view through a clouded lens that we’re perpetually trying to clean, or a painting that we’re constantly reworking.

● The truth (or our perception or understanding of it) is not something we start off without, search for, and either find or don’t find, but rather something we all possess in some form and to some extent, and which, by cultivation, we may enhance; it’s less like a hidden jewel that we hunt for than an essay we constantly revise. The average man thoughtlessly cobbles together a shoddy essay, as if to satisfy the bare requirements of a school homework assignment, then hardly thinks about it again; whereas, the philosopher creates his essay as a labor of love and pride, ceaselessly editing and polishing it. (Of course, many non-philosophers have other sorts of work they produce as labors of love.)

● Truth (or understanding) is not sought, so much as nurtured. It’s less a hidden jewel that we either find or don’t find than a tree which, depending on our cultivation of it, bears more or less fruit.

● 12-8-2004:   I would not, now, in present circumstances, kill myself. But, viewing the question objectively, I think I would have been better off never having been born, as my suffering has far outweighed my joy. For most of us, life is a misery we’re addicted to.

● 12-9-2004:   If pigs could fly, would they nest in trees?

● 12-11-2004:   While I oppose the death penalty; that it’s applied disproportionately against people of color, is not a good reason to discontinue it. If the practice is beneficial (for example, if it deters murder or provides relief to the victims’ relatives), then the appropriate remedy is to apply it evenhandedly, not to simply end it. If we punished people of color disproportionately to white people for committing murder, is that good reason to legalize murder? No. The appropriate response is to make the punishment fair and to apply it impartially.

● Paul Kurtz’s essay “Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments?” (the 12 December 2004 Philosophy Club reading) suffers from the double defect of banality and inconsistency. As to the first fault (banality), that facts should potentially influence our deliberations on what we should do is a truism. Such facts’ origin, be it common knowledge, plain observation, reason, or “science,” makes no difference, and hence that science can be a source of such material does not enlarge this concept, much less constitute a new one.

Regarding the second flaw (inconsistency), Mr. Kurtz’s implication that science can provide an objective basis on which to judge fundamental ethical values or attitudes conflicts with his acknowledgment that those values are essentially subjective. On the other hand, if Kurtz’s point is simply that our moral principles should be open to reconsideration, this is true with or without science, which moreover affords no categorically distinct means therefor, and so, again, the idea of science here adds nothing.

(I had intended to post this comment on the Philosophy Club website [“Philosophy in L.A.”], but have decided against it. I think my doing so might alienate people, because the comment is gratuitously harsh, going beyond attacking a man’s conclusion or argument, and attacking his writing. I’ll leave the note in my papers, to be published ultimately, but not at this time in this way.)

● . . . Aha! I think I found a gentler way to put it, which I think might work:

Paul Kurtz’s essay “Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments?” (the 12 December 2004 Philosophy Club reading) boils down to the following points:

One. In deciding what we ought to do, we should consider facts.

Two. Science is a potential source of those facts.

Three. (Kurtz’s apparent inconsistency in suggesting that science can provide an objective basis on which to judge fundamental ethical values or attitudes, which he acknowledges are essentially subjective, can probably be reconciled by interpreting him simply as urging that . . .) We should be open-minded about our moral principles.

It’s hard to disagree with any of this. I just wonder whether it was necessary to take eight pages to say it.

(. . . No. Same problem.)

● A third try:

Paul Kurtz, in his essay “Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments?” (a 12 December 2004 Philosophy Club reading), at first blush seems inconsistent, in suggesting that science can provide an objective basis on which to judge fundamental ethical values or attitudes, which he acknowledges are subjective. But this apparent conflict can be reconciled by interpreting Kurtz to mean simply that we should keep an open mind with regard to our moral precepts. Thus, Kurtz’s piece boils down to the following points:

One. In deciding what we ought to do, we should consider facts.

Two. Science is a potential source of those facts.

Three. We should be open-minded about our moral principles.

. . . I agree.

– Richard J. Eisner (12/12/2004; 1-818-343-0123)

. . . Still no, partly because I have a more substantial rebuttal to another of the essays.

● In her essay “Evolutionary Ethics” Doris Schroeder says that Darwin hypothesizes that morality developed in man because it fitted him for survival; and that Darwin identifies good as that which enhances the greatest happiness for the greatest number; evil, that which reduces it. I can readily understand how concern for the group’s welfare aided the species’ survival; but “greatest happiness for the greatest number” seems a sophisticated intellectualized extension, which I find hard to envision as part of the natural cooperative urge that helped us to survive. Moreover, even a rudimentary moral sense or motivating principle centrally involving happiness, the group’s, or even one’s own, would seem insufficient for our survival, since, if pleasure and pain were the sole, or even the main, criterion for human behavior, we would long ago have gone extinct through suicide, life for most men being predominantly miserable—“short, brutish, and nasty” (or at least so life often seems). Ergo, if morality helped our survival, it didn’t involve happiness. In fact, I think it’s less likely that we had an instinct for morality, per se, than that we had an instinct for survival, and we were intelligent enough to sense that at least minimal cooperation with others would help us survive.

● 12-12-2004:   Meeting of the Philosophy-in-L.A. Club. Topic: “Can the Sciences Help Us to Make Wise Ethical Judgments?”

● Any good bits in Peter V’s essay “True Morality: Rational Principles for Optimal Living” would be like a few coins in a cesspool, and the effort to retrieve them about as worthwhile.

● I have many stations available on my radio. When I tune in to hear news and current affairs, usually it’s, not because I feel I should be informing myself on political matters, but simply because I’m in the mood for talk instead of music. That’s my mood most often, and so I end up being fairly well informed.

● 12-17-2004:   People who advocate pet adoption from pounds think they’re engaged in saving lives: namely, the lives of dogs and cats. But think of all the resources used to sustain a dog or cat over its lifetime, which resources are saved if the animal is destroyed. And if we should save dogs and cats, why should we not make more of them? Or is there an optimal population size for dogs and cats? (My own answer: We should have as many dogs and cats as people want as pets. Any beyond those should be destroyed, to save resources. Killing them is not something to be avoided, like killing people, as long as we do it humanely, painlessly. Keeping an animal alive just for its sake is a product of misguided sentimentality on our part, and perhaps of the pathetic fallacy: thinking that dogs and cats have a concept of and an interest in longevity.)

● One man’s trivia is another’s profundity.

● 12-18-2004:   I’ve recently heard the anti-abortion theory involving “ensoulment”: that the soul comes into being upon fertilization of the woman’s egg, from which time on, destroying the fetus kills a human soul and is tantamount to murder. But I’m puzzled. Do convicted murderers not have souls, too? And, if the soul is immortal (as Western religions maintain), then killing an “ensouled” being does not kill the soul, which survives all the same (since it’s immortal)?

● Some people express displeasure with the fact that we evolved from lower life forms. Yet it’s not what we came from that matters, but what we are. We developed as fetuses, which are simpler forms. Also, would those people feel better to know we came from forms superior to us?

● We express wonder about the possibility of alien life forms in the universe. Why do we not feel such wonder about the innumerable other life forms here on Earth?

● 12-22-2004:   Philosophy is half science, half art.

● I finished my short essay “On Egoism: A Rebuttal” (Philosophy Club).

● 12-23-2004:   One thing I’ve learned is that in philosophical disputation it’s always a great advantage to be right.

● 12-24-2004:   There’s a relationship between skill in one’s craft and ability to earn a living at it. Unfortunately, with me it has always been an inverse relationship.

[Later note (2-15-2024): That makes no sense. Was I saying that, the less skill I have, the more money I’d make?! . . . Probably my point was that, though I have much more skill in the craft than many other practitioners of it, many of them make good money, but I make none.]

● 12-25-2004:   I would like to found a new religion to be known as Gipism. Our deity is Gippagoosta, who’s identical to the traditional conception of God, except that He has a big red nose.

● A useful truth for writers to bear in mind: If there’s a part of your writing that you don’t understand . . . it probably doesn’t make sense.

● When you’re having trouble finding a way to defeat your opponent’s argument, consider the possibility that he’s right.

● 12-26-2004:   I finished my “Response to Ron’s Reply” (Philosophy Club). It turned out beautifully, I think. There was about seventy-two hours’ time between my first reading Ron’s (12-19-2004) Response and finishing my Reply to it.

● 12-29-2004:   The typical man divides humanity into categories, even if it be just two, such that he himself is in the top one, and such that the top one is as small as possible. Thus, Mozart said he was the greatest composer. Whereas, an American jazz composer was quoted as saying, “There’s just two kinds of music—good music, and bad music.” (And he no doubt prided himself on his music being “good.”)

● 12-30-2004:   Religious people are closed-minded in not being open to the possibility that God does not exist. It’s true that I’m not open to the possibility that God exists. But I am right.

2005 >>