Thursday Metaphysics Blogging
Back in college, I studied philosophy. And I didn’t even focus particularly on political philosophy. So when I read things like this from The Washington Post, my concerns naturally turn toward the philosophical:
John McCain is a serious man who promised to wage a serious campaign. Win or lose, will he be able to look back on this one with pride? Right now, it’s hard to see how.
The implication here is that a person can possess the attribute of “serious” even if his actions don’t manifest the attribute in question. As you know, I won’t comment on McCain’s character. But to make a point of pure logic, a serious person would be one who behaves seriously during his serious undertakings. Perhaps McCain is a serious person and running for president is serious business and McCain is waging a serious campaign. Or perhaps McCain is a serious person running an unserious campaign, but running for president isn’t that big a deal. You could imagine saying someone was a serious person who happened to do something unserious when he watched a DVRed episode of Gossip Girl last night. But it’s can’t be that running for president is a serious undertaking, and John McCain is doing so in an unserious way, and John McCain is a serious person. People who do important things in unserious ways aren’t serious people.
50 Responses to “Thursday Metaphysics Blogging”
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September 11th, 2008 at 11:41 am
So, I guess you’re saying the egg came first?
September 11th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Deep. Like wow, man.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:43 am
I kind of hate the word “serious” in political contexts. What exactly is it supposed to mean? It’s usually used to mean, “something that I like,” as in, “John McCain has a very serious foreign policy,” or, “John McCain is running an unserious campaign.” People who are serious about the English language should stop using the term.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:43 am
McCain would be a seriously bad president. i’m serious.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:45 am
You neglect the Aristotelian option; since we all know that John McCain is a Serious (and Honorable) Person, anything he does is de facto a Serious (and Honorable) Thing since this just means “the sort of thing a Serious (and Honorable) Person does.”
September 11th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Shorter Matt: “Serious is as serious does (in a serious setting).”
September 11th, 2008 at 11:52 am
The Post is saying he’s no longer serious, but they didn’t put it very well, obviously.
The Palin pick, the scorched earth campaign, are all signs of a desperate campaign who, like Petey, believes the ends justify the means.
He was for campaign finance reform and immigration reform and double downed on the surge when it seemed unwise. Now he’s caved completely to the conservative base and his reputation is ruined forever. As is Hillary’s.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:54 am
There is a branch or something of philosophy called phenomenology, I think. Basically, what you are is what you do. You, know like Forrest Gump’s “Stupid is as stupid does”? At this point in his life McCain is a gutless weasel who lies for effect and pleasure. Four more years.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:58 am
McCain is a serious man.
So are they all, all serious men–
And Hiatt says he was honorable;
And Hiatt is an serious man.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I knew a man once whose cardiovascular health was so checkered and poor the phrase “Serious as a heart attack” was wasted on him. Has McCain’s life in many ways been such a checkered series of painful events that similarly precious little is taken seriously anymore?
September 11th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Perhaps John McCain believes that who becomes president is seriously consequential and is willing to run an unserious campaigan to ensure that he is the one elected.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Wow that is some bad philosophy.
I think the obvious solution to this “riddle” is that the “serious” in “serious campaign” refers not to the seriousness with which the candidate views the contest, but rather the nature of the candidate’s attempt to get marginal votes, meaning a “serious campaign” would be one in which the candidate tried to get marginal votes on serious grounds, and a nonserious campaign would be one in which the candidate tried to get marginal votes on nonserious grounds. But even in the latter case, the candidate himself could be very serious about trying to win the electoral contest–he is just basically assuming that the relevant marginal voters were not themselves serious, which would explain the conclusion that a nonserious campaign would be the best strategy for winning.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Another guy who isn’t serious is The Anointed One. Obama has been given a free ride for 19 months & been unvetted about Rezko, Ayers, & Rev. W[rong]. He is so mortified by Sean Hannity that he’s brought him up numerous times for having unearthed the Ayers connection & emphasized the Wright racist rants—Sean has actually done the country a favor & BHO keeps scratching that scab in public—now he’s doing the same with Palin after flipping Hillary the bird.
He thinks he’s so clever he can get away with a snarky stand-up schtick line about “lipstick” when he had the audience tittering even before the “punch line.” But he went there and now he’s paying the price and he’s WHINING about Palin. And McCain is called “not serious” because Obama made a very silly misjudgment that the media are trying to exonerate him from. “Lipstick” is a catnip word ever since Palin brought down the RNC house & Obama tries to snark past the titters into a punchline that was an insult?
Anyone ever pause to consider that Obama’s not really presidential material?
September 11th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Remember in the Republic how all the chatterers were trying to figure out how to identify the just man. Some thought that behavior should be a good indicator, but Socrates said it was deeper than that, the just man had a well balanced and properly organized soul. From there we go to the analogy between the just soul and the just state, where “each does its own” and so forth.
With McCain we have sort of a converse problem, “can we conclude that McCain is not a serious man based on patently unserious behavior?” I suppose he might be putting us on, but I’d bet not. I’m comfortable concluding that he’s not a serious man, and ought not be considered for a serious position by a serious electorate.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
To be Serious, you have to want to do the things other Serious people want you to do.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Matt,
No question in my mind that McCain is being serious. Whatever you might think of his tactics (chidish,meretricious, etc) they seem to be working, so they are doing unserious things for serious purposes.
Now that you are getting philosophical, you might want to dig up your copy of “The Prince” by a certain Niccolò Machiavelli. He doesn’t seem to object to murder per se in order to adquire power, so in that perspective whatever McCain is doing is fair game.
This quote of the book got me thinking if the US is really what we like to think of,
“Many men have imagined republics and principalities that never really existed at all. Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.”
September 11th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
daveinboca is not serious.
September 11th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Yes daveinboca, Obama is so fearful of having his beliefs, background and positions probed he sat down for a nationally televised interview (without preconditions on the questions) with Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly, avowedly conservative and pugnaciously dismissive of everything Left, liberal and progressive. When Sarah Palin agrees to go into a room alone with Sy Hersh or Greg Palast for an hour, on the record without conditions, then I’ll read some more of your bullshit.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
War is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.
- Carl von Clausewitz
If you’re not fighting to win, you’re not serious about a war.
McCain is as serious about this war as he is about any other war, so what’s the problem?
Winning is the only thing that matters.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
This isn’t a point of pure logic. At best, it’s a point of conceptual analysis, and not a plausible one, at that. (This also isn’t really a question in metaphysics: more like moral psychology).
It might be that a person who was only a serious person would always behave seriously during his serious undertakings; but a person who is, in addition to being serious, also ambitious, might act on his amibition, rather than his seriousness, in some- or, perhaps, even all- cases.
I’ll grant, though, that unserious action in serious context is (a) sufficient evidence to conclude that the actor isn’t as serious as he could be; and (b) highly defeasible evidence that the actor isn’t serious at all.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
John McCain is like the Eucharist.
Even though he possesses all the accidents of an unserious candidate running an unserious campaign, the underlying substance is that of serious John McCain.
September 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Reihan Salam’s latest post:
“McCain is convinced that defeating Barack Obama is of vital importance for the country, and that he is willing to be as ruthless as necessary.”
http://theamericanscene.com/
September 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
The statement ‘All prime ministers live at 10 Downing Street’ tends to be confirmed by finding a kennel containing a dog, because this is an example of a dwelling that is not 10 Downing Street which is the home of a non-prime-minister; which is a logically equivalent statement.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
nice little exercise in virtue theory!
props,
Lanier
September 11th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
“McCain is convinced that defeating Barack Obama is of vital importance for the country,”
bullshit. McCain’s just another ambitious cynical politician.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I would think that a serious person would be someone who usually did serious things in a serious way. In this way McCain could run for president in an unserious way even if running for president is a serious undertaking. Because he could be doing other serious things in serious ways. He could also be a good person who sometimes does evil things.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Re “Rev. W[rong]“: At long last, you’ve found the line that has convinced me to vote for McCain. I only wish you had helped me see the light earlier.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
serious = guy in a suit that elites like
September 11th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
I have to agree that McCain’s just not serious. A serious man would have accepted early release from the North Vietnamese, returned home, and become a community organizer.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Although I’m very persuaded by both the moral and competency arguments (by Joe Klein, Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall, Yglesias, etc…) against the way McCain is waging his campaign at the moment, those arguments don’t seem to be making a bit of difference in the national polls.
In other words, McCain’s gutter, shameless tactics are working (as did his seemingly reckless VP choice.) As long as they continue to work, why would he ever stop them and why would future campaigns for president not copy his act?
Do we really expect the press all of a sudden to act more responsibly or the American public to wise up? Do we really expect McCain to become ashamed or “serious? In his mind, I imagine, politics is in essence an end-justifies-the-means game in which no one is pure. And if no one is pure, why not be as impure as possible? Nearly every politician makes at least some concessions to end-justifies-the-means thinking (for example, Obama certainly isn’t above dishonestly distorting opponents’ statements — McCain’s $5 million joke about the middle class, for instance). Is McCain pushing the dishonor to new, intolerable levels, or is he just playing politics — an essentially dishonest game, especially when the public isn’t paying enough attention and the press aren’t doing their job — better?
Right now, it sure looks like the best propagandists are going to win, and that McCain and the Republicans are far and away the better propagandists. I’m sorry, my faith in the wisdom of the American electorate was shattered in 2004. The popular reaction to Palin has only deepened my cynicism.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Noun, verb, POW.
September 11th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
The Kantian parameters of Magoo’s seriousness form a spastic nexus from Phil Gramm to Tarjuffe (Lieberman) and all the way to Dungface (Palin.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:09 am
I wish you’d do more metaphysics blogging. It was one of the treats of your earlier days. And I’m a Nozick fan
November 10th, 2008 at 2:38 am
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