R.I.P. Peter Geach (1916-2013). “I can now state my first thesis about good and evil: ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are always attributive, not predicative, adjectives. this is fairly clear about ‘bad’ because ‘bad’ is something like an alienans adjective; we cannot safely predicate of a bad A what we predicate of an A, any more than we can predicate of a forged banknote or a putative father what we predicate of a banknote or a father. We actually call forged money ‘bad’; and we cannot infer e.g. that because food supports life bad food supports life. For ‘good’ the point is not so clear at first sight, since good is not alienans–whatever holds true of an A as such holds true of a good A. But consider the contrast in such a pair of phrases as ‘red car’ and ‘good car.’ I could ascertain that a distant object is a red car because I can see it is red and a keensighted but colour-blind friend can see it is a car; there is no such possibility of ascertaining that a thing is a good car by pooling independent information that it is good and that it is a car. This sort of example shows that ‘good’ like ‘bad’ is essentially an attributive adjective. Even when ‘good’ and ‘bad’ stands by itself as a predicate, and is thus grammatically predicative, some substantive has to be understood; there is no such thing as being just good or bad, there is only being a good or bad so-and-so. (If I say that something is a good or bad *thing*, either ‘thing’ is a mere proxy for a more descriptive noun to be supplied from the context; or else I am trying to use good or bad predicatively, and its being grammatically attributive is a mere disguise. The latter attempt is, on my thesis, illegitimate.) “. . . The moral philosophers known as Objectivists [*] would admit all that I have said as regards the ordinary uses of the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’; but they allege that there is an essentially different, predicative use of the terms in such utterances as ‘pleasure is good’ and ‘preferring inclination to duty is bad,’ and that this use alone is of philosophical importance. The ordinary uses of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are for Objectivists just a complex tangle of ambiguities. I read an article once by an Objectivist exposing these ambiguities and the baneful effects they have on philosophers not forewarned of them. One philosopher who was so misled was Aristotle; Aristotle, indeed, did not talk English, but by a remarkable coincidence ἀγαθός had ambiguities quite parallel to those of ‘good.’ Such coincidences are, of course, possible; puns are sometimes translatable. But it is also possible that the uses of ἀγαθός and ‘good’ run parallel because they express one and the same concept; that this is a philosophically important concept, in which Aristotle did well to be interested; and that the apparent dissolution of this concept into a mass of ambiguities results from trying to assimilate it to the concepts expressed by ordinary predicative adjectives. It is mere prejudice to think that either all things called ‘good’ must satisfy some one condition, or the term ‘good’ is hopelessly ambiguous. A philosopher who writes off most of the uses of ‘good’ as trivial facts about the English language can, of course, with some plausibility, represent the remaining uses of ‘good’ as all expressing some definite condition fulfilled by good things–e.g. that they either contain, or are conducive to, pleasure; or again that they satisfy desire. Such theories of goodness are, however, open to well-known objections; they are cases of the Naturalistic Fallacy, as Objectivists say. The Objectivists’ own theory is that ‘good’ in the selected uses they leave to the word does not supply an ordinary, natural, description of things, but ascribes to them a simple and indefinable non-natural attribute. But nobody has ever given a coherent and understandable account of what it is for an attribute to be non-natural. I am very much afraid that the Objectivists are just playing fast and loose with the term ‘attribute.’ In order to assimilate ‘good’ to ordinary predicative adjectives like ‘red’ and ‘sweet’ they call goodness an attribute; to escape undesired consequences drawn from the assimilation, they can always protest, ‘Oh no, not like that. Goodness isn’t a *natural* attribute like redness and sweetness, it’s a non-natural attribute.’ It is just as though somebody thought to escape the force of Frege’s arguments that the number 7 is not a figure, by saying that it is a figure, only a non-natural figure, and that this is a possibility Frege failed to consider.” — Peter T. Geach, “Good and Evil” (1956) http://fair-use.org/peter-t-geach/good-and-evil [* Followers of G.E. Moore’s argument in Ch. 1 of PRINCIPIA ETHICA, no relation to Randian Objectivists.]

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Best Christmas movies. My vote is for THE LION IN WINTER.

Bibliographical question: Anyone recognize this quotation or know where it might actually come from? — quote — “Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won’t kill, injure, kidnap, defraud, or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will.” — quote — The quote has been circulating through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. over the past few months, and it always seems to be attributed, without a work or page reference, to Gustave de Molinari. It is almost certainly not by Gustave de Molinari; it doesn’t appear in Utopia of Liberty, Soirees, Society of To-morrow, etc. And if it did come from him, it would be exceptionally surprising to see him describe his own favored views as “anarchy.” But anyone know who, and where, it does come from?

Y’all. Most similar to: Irving, TX; Brownsville, TX; and Jackson, MS. This is utterly unsurprising if you know my family or where I live now.

Your Monday morning para-military policing. Well, the “para” is questionable. “. . . The Salinas Police Department recently issued a news release proudly announcing the arrival of the armored truck built to survive minefield explosions, which it got compliments of federal taxpayers as part of a program to convert military equipment to law-enforcement use.” ~ Cop Block

Your morning heavy metal pianoforte.

N.B.: if you happen to eating at the (excellent) Sheesh on 5 Mile and you plan on getting the Vegetarian Combo for 2, you should be aware that this actually comes with enough food for about 5-6 people.

This is somewhat significant.

A bookstore that I normally like just sent me an advertisement e-mail with the Subject: line “Is There a Malcolm Gladwell Fan on Your List?” Well, I don’t know that for sure. But if there is, I am certainly not going to indulge them.