Amie L. Thomasson on Ontology vs Aetiology

Contemporary academic philosophy consists of asking questions of the form 'Why do so many contemporary philosophers order salad at the cafetaria when, everybody agrees, nothing but one's own shit can be, or ought to be, eaten'? It is pointless to complain that nobody thinks coprophagy is a good thing. Why? Because this shows you aren't an academic- let alone a philosopher. 

As a case in point, Amie L. Thomasson, whom some consider one of our greatest living philosophers- which is like saying my neighbour's cat is the most proficient living alchemist- has a recent paper titled-

SHOULD ONTOLOGY BE EXPLANATORY?

The answer is no. 

 'What' questions are ontological. 'Why' questions are aetiological. What types of things, a particular discipline or discourse, exist or are posied as existing is the ontological question for that discipline or discourse. Why a thing arises is a question about causation and is aetiological because the Greek word for 'cause' is aitia (αἰτíα).

Abstract. The central question of ontology has long been thought to be ‘What is there?’.
The central way of answering it has been to consider which entities we must posit as part
of a best total explanatory theory.

This begs the question- be it central or peripheral- as to whether thoughts exist. We may, for certain purposes, posit their existences just as we can posit other things- e.g. cuddliness- but nothing is explained by saying 'the cuddliness of the baby causes me to cuddle the baby' or ' thought cause us to think there are thoughts'.  

This paper argues against this ‘explanatory’ conception of metaphysics,

Nobody thinks of metaphysics (literally 'what is beyond natural science') as aetiological. Diseases have aetiologies and curing diseases by understanding their causes is useful and noble. Philosophy is jejune and useless.  

by showing that it relies on an unarticulated assumption that all the terms at issue in these metaphysical debates serve an explanatory function.

If so academic philosophy is even shittier than we imagine it to be.  

Making use of work in systemic functional linguistics

can't help unless philosophers suffer some sort of nuerological disorder when it comees to language processing. 

enables us to identify the many different functions played by terms of interest in metaphysics.

The functions of interest to metaphysics are metaphysical. But language- it now appears- isn't beyond physics at all.  

And that makes it clear that ‘contribution of explanatory power’ should be rejected as an across-the-board criterion in ontology.

Who accepted it? Name & shame the cunts!  

This work in functional linguistics also enables us to see why it is useful to have a language that entitles us to use redundant inferences

e.g. 'that utterly cunty cunt' 

to introduce terms for properties, numbers,

e.g. cunty cunt as opposed 'not that cunty cunt, I meant the other cunty cunt'

and the like, giving us new reason to accept ‘easy’ inferences that there are such things.

cunty cunts?  

As a result, we should give up thinking that ‘what is there?’ provides a deep and interesting question for a discipline called ‘ontology’ to answer,

Quantum onlology- sure. But that's high IQ stuff. What this lady is doing is finger painting with her own faeces.  

and give up thinking that the task for ontology is to determine which entities to ‘posit’ as part of a best total explanatory theory.

Since we don't know what that is- but are pretty sure the best one we have will soon be superseded- nobody has ever applied themselves to any such task. 

The central question of ontology, as Quine presented it, could be expressed in three
words: “What is there?”

Quine was wrong. To find out what there is, you need to get out of your armchair & go look. For a example, to find out what is in the cupboard, I have to open the cupboard door. OMG! It's a ga..ga..ga ghost! I shut the door quickly. But that doesn't mean a ghost exists in the cupboard. I have to apply various verification protocols. 

Ontology is what you must content yourself with because neither direct obversvation nor verification are possible. Equally, it may be purely dogmatic- what in Sanskrit is called 'matam' as opposed to 'vigyan'. 

But those who aim to answer this question

are either doing 'vigyan' (science) or else they are talking about how many angels can dance upon the point of a pin.  

generally do not take their goal as simply to generate a list or inventory,

Physicists would love to have an inventory of elementary particles or to find out whether hypothetical ones- e.g. gravitons- can be verifiably produced in the laboratory or detected in the cosmos.  

and tend to deny that answers are easy to come by. Instead, the project of ontology has been
thought of

by whom? Usless shitheads.  

as a matter of determining what entities we should or must ‘posit’ as part of
a best total explanatory theory.

which is that these cunty cunts are copraphogous cunty cunts.  

Amie's paper shows a complete absence of thought. This is a sample-

Here is the idea. In early language—both developmentally and evolutionarily

we know nothing about 'evolutionarily' early language. As for 'developmentally' early language- all we can say is that infants are different from mature people. If some fundamental change occurs in our fitness landscape, we have no idea how language will 'develop'. Overy my own lifetime it has become much more mathematical.  

(and across languages)—we begin with ‘congruent’ meanings: nouns for things, verbs
for processes. . . (Halliday 2009, 117).

but anything can be a gerund or a denominal verb or whatever. What is certain is that philosophy is now only taught and studied by those who are developmentally challenged. 

Lyly's Campaspe

Since every rouged & rutting Phyllis

& our rude waking to what her bill is

 By Homonoia is accorded an Appelles

Suet her tits, sausage rings her bellies

Nathless, that whore so rides Aristotle

Only to prove no wine is its bottle.

Why Hohfeld rules, Kelsen drools.

 

Henry Cohen summarises Hans Kelsen's pure theory of law thus- 

Kelsen was a legal positivist.

i.e. law is a command 

The "positivity" of law, in his words, lies in the fact that it is created and annulled by acts of human beings,

sovereigns or those acting for sovereigns 

thus being independent of morality and similar norm systems.

This does not follow. A command may be defeated by the higher claim of morality, religion or some other normative system. Moreover, one defeated command may lead to loss of sovereignty or the power to command. Thus commands aren't independent of anything which might lead to their defeat or disregard.  

This constitutes the difference between positive law and natural law,

Positive law may say it is natural and natural law might say that it is obvious that the Sovereign has commanded it or was just about to do so before deciding to invade Poland instead. Kelsen was a stupid man who couldn't tell the difference between shite which is only different by ipse dixit stipulation.   

which, like morality, is deduced from a presumably self-evident basic norm which is considered to be the expression of the "will of nature" or of "pure reason."' Kelsen labelled his theory of positive law "the pure theory of law."

rather than the 'shit theory of law'. I wonder why? 

He explained the nature of its purity: [I]t seeks to preclude from the cognition of positive law all elements foreign thereto.

This can't be done. Cognition is bound up with the entire web of predication. You can't even separate law from econ or biology.  

The limits of this subject and its cognition must be clearly fixed in two directions:

No limits can be placed on any thing which is epistemic. German pedants were donkeys. 

the specific science of law, the discipline usually called jurisprudence, must be distinguished from the philosophy of justice, on the one hand, and from sociology, or cognition of social reality, on the other.

Distinguishing things doesn't mean they have discoverable 'limits'.  

The pure theory of law should be distinguished from the philosophy of justice.

Both are useless. Moreover, they may presuppose each other in various useless ways.  

While the pure theory of law is a science

only in the sense that the sexy theory of astrology is a science 

justice is an "irrational ideal" 

it may be arbitrary. It isn't irrational.  

and "a judgment of value, determined by emotional factors and therefore subjective in character."

Emotions are either Darwinian algorithms of the mind or we live in an occasionalist universe. There can be 'naturality' in that which is 'subjective' (i.e. has no observable metric) just as naturality may be lacking in an 'objective' configuration space- e.g. Arrow Debreu.  

" The pure theory of law must also be distinguished from sociological jurisprudence.

Only in the sense that we must distinguish my attempt to donate sperm to the moon from ordinary cases of public exposure & indecent behaviour during the course of a School excursion to the Zoo. 

Still, if you are too stupid to practice law & are stuck teaching it to people who are too stupid to practice law, then make such distinctions by all means. 

The pure theory of law studies norms-"propositions that state how men should behave" -

There are no such norms. There are merely certain actions which are forbidden- that too in specific circumstances (e.g having a wank on the Tube or taking a dump on the steps of No.10 Downing Street).  

whereas sociological jurisprudence studies what "is"-how people actually behave.

It is shit. Turds are incapable of studying anything except how to get smellier or squishier.  

Thus, Kelsen agreed with neither the natural law theorists,

who thought laws could have 'naturality' (i.e. be 'non-arbitrary') or canonicity such that all jurisdictions would converge to the same rule. Since this hasn't happened even between Scots & English law, we can safely say the thing is a pipe dream.  

who viewed law and morality as sharing the same basis,

Everything to do with human beings shares the same basis- e.g. wanking on the Tube & teaching this shite in a University.  

nor the legal realists, who believed that law consists solely of "the actual decisions of courts that litigants must live with."

This is clearly false. Many things which are clearly justiciable are nevertheless res non lege decisae

Law as a Coercive Order 

The coercive order is independent of law. I have the legal right to tell Mike Tyson he is totes gay & desperately wants to suck me off. Sadly, the coercive order which obtains has him punching off my fucking head if I try to exercise my right. 

Kelsen viewed law as a coercive order of human behavior. 

Did it stop the 'Night of the Long Knives'? No. Kelsen was clearly wrong. No wonder he couldn't get an Academic appointment when he first moved to the US. 

Laws "command a certain human behavior by attaching a coercive act to the opposite behavior."

No. Those with the means of coercion command. My infant son used to beat the fuck out of me till I surrendered the TV remote to him so he could watch Tellytubbies. The odd thing was, he got me to clean up after myself and even do some cooking and cleaning. He didn't like his Mum having to act like my unpaid servant. 

He disagreed, however, with the belief of John Austin, who

lived in a nice country where the 'Crown in Parliament' saw Justice as a service industry whose aim was utility- nothing more, save in egregious cases of repugnancy. 

 posited laws to be "a species of commands,"" since a command "is essentially a willing and its expression," 

or baby beating me or  biting my nose till I changed the channel to 'Tellytubbies'. But, at a later point, even the neighbour's cat could get me to watch 'Aristocats' for the umpteenth time instead of 'Fist of Fury'. I'm lying. It is 'Pyaasa' that I watch continually. 

and because it is doubtful whether some laws embody the true will of anyone."

There can be no doubt that, if everybody wants 'representative government', they go along with whatever legislative compromise proves 'incentive compatible'. 

 Many legislators enact laws without understanding them, let alone willing them.

They 'meta-will' them- i.e. will to will whatever results from some legislative process. But 'meta-will' is just 'will'. 

 Kelsen preferred to describe laws as norms or rules "stating that an individual ought to behave in a certain way, but not asserting that such behavior is the actual will of anyone."

In Civil Law, this may seem to be the case- e.g the conduct of a bonus paterfamilias with respect to culpa levis in abstracto. But, Hohfeld shows us the proper way to understand tort actions of this type. Essentially, you have an immunity if you show that your conduct was such as a person of the highest diligence would have exhibited in defending his own interest albeit it was a third party who was affected. 

Hohfeld was the only jurist of the previous century who wasn't pants. Add in Coase's theorem & Myerson type incentive compatibility & ...what? We are back where we started- which is a good way to be if the alternative is being stuck up our own assholes. 

முருகன் அழகு

When the Shraman pauses peregrination for Ind's four months of rain

& the Brahman praises Shiva for taking on Vishnu's Katechon's strain

Then, because Nappinnai repaired Venkateshwara's tresses

Not even Shunyata's mundan Bali, in Sutala, distresses.

Envoi- 

Prince! Krishna is the cowlick of whose skulls are bare

& why even the blackest black hole yet has hair

What Sheep say about parables

Though our shepherd's flesh furnishes, to gourmets, galavati kebab

& His blood burnishes, for the bibulous, Burgundian sharab

Nathless, it is to traffic in, but, the mohair of His beard

That, for England's Woolsack, we, yet, are reared

Envoi-

Prince! That Berenice's votive tresses, Belinda's ravished lock

Heaven's pasture now possesses, famished thy flock!

Wang Wei's Sarnath divyadhvani

Wingless the lonely mountain affords not a soul to sight

Just human voices homing through gloaming light

Slanting sun-beams, as green moss, are remade

& of Hou Yi's loss- Dreams' deer palisade. 

Did Karl Marx know the difference between dot Indians & feather Indians?

Yes. He had been to University. But he often got them confused because his IQ was low. 

The following is from Das Kapital

When machinery seizes on an industry by degrees, it produces chronic misery among the operatives who compete with it.

Why compete with a machine? Suppose my wife had tried, even in the most luckluster manner, to compete with my Dyson, do you really think I'd have voided the warranty on it? 

Where the transition is rapid, the effect is acute and felt by great masses.

The benefit is gained by everyone. However, there can be transitional 'structural unemployment' for some. 

History discloses no tragedy more horrible than the gradual extinction of the English hand-loom weavers,

Fuck off! The harrowing of the North was the worst thing in English history. 100,000 died.   In Yorkshire, 75 percent of the population perished.  

an extinction that was spread over several decades, and finally sealed in 1838.

the spinning jenny enabled the wages of handloom weavers to rise very substantially. Then weaving itself was mechanised.  

Many of them died of starvation,

why not enter the Work House instead?  

many with families vegetated for a long time on 2 1/2 d. a day. 

But cloth got cheaper for everybody.  

On the other hand, the English cotton machinery produced an acute effect in India.

It made cloth a little cheaper- a good thing.  

The Governor General reported 1834-35: “The misery hardly finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the cottonweavers are bleaching the plains of India.”

Why the fuck would Lord Bentinck tell such a stupid lie? The answer is that he said no such thing. Karl Marx is thinking of the 'trail of tears' in the US. The path taken by the forcibly relocated Native Americans was marked by the bleached bones of those who succumbed to hunger, disease, exposure or exhaustion. 

If cloth gets cheaper, everybody benefits though some may suffer in the short run as they are forced to change their occupation. When technology improves, the quantum of muscular labour required tends to fall. This created the possibility that the industrial proletariat might, at some point in the future, shrink as a percentage of the population. This meant that the window for a Communist Revolution only existed while this percentage was still rising. Even in that case, there was the danger that an employer might share productivity gains with the workers. Without class conflict, Marx's theory of history collapses.