As I keep pointing out ...

... this guy is a fool (*): William Vallicella: Are Atheists Vincibly Ignorant?

The answer to his title question is, "Yes". Similarly, the answer to the question, "Is William Vallicella morally culpable for his constant denials that God-deniers are morally culpable for their God-denial?" is also "Yes".

It can be shown, thus *known*, via reason -- and without appeal to any purported divine revelation -- that God is. Therefore, as St Paul says, and Vallicella disputes, God-deniers are "without excuse"; that is, according both to reason-without-revelation and to the Christian Revelation, God-deniers are morally culpable for their refusal to gratefully acknowledge the reality of God.

There is a *reason* that -- when they think is safe-and-expedient to do so -- God-deniers assert such absurdities as:
* no (purported) truth can be known to be true (nor, for that matter, false);
* there is no such thing as 'right' and 'wrong';
* there is no such thing as 'free-will';
* there is no such thing as 'moral responsibility/culpability';
* 'consciousness' is an illusion/delusion;
* the 'self' is an illusion/delusion;

The reason that God-deniers assert the above absurdities, and many others besides, is because they follow, logically and inescapably, from the assertion that "God is not".

Since the logical entailments of the assertion/proposition that "God is not" are absurd, we *know* that the proposition that "God is not" is itself absurd, which is to say, false. Since we know that the proposition that "God is not" is absurd-and-false, we therefore know that its denial, the proposition that "God is", is true.


(*)Once again, the word 'fool' does not mean "stupid" or "idiot", it means "one who knowingly/willingly acts as though he were stupid" concerning some issue or other; it means "intellectually dishonest".

Compare and Contrast

William Vallicella (2017/08/03): Reliably Inconclusive

Such is philosophical argumentation. Philosophers arrive at conclusions, but the conclusions they arrive at are inconclusive.

If the "conclusions" at which "philosophers" arrive are (always-or-generally) inconclusive, then philosophy is worthless.

On the other hand, if what he really means -- and he does (in part) -- is that no matter how "conclusively" one establishes a conclusion, it is always possible for a free being to ignore-and-deny the logical necessity-given-the-premises of the conclusion; that is a free being may assert the premise(s) and yet deny the logical entailment(s) of the very premise(s) he has asserted; or, to use other words: to lie to himself.

As I've said before, Vallicella's problem is that (in almost all cases where it matters) he care more for the chin-wagging side of "philosophy" than he does of logical/rational task of determining/discovering what is true-and-may-be-known-to-be-true. This flaw is most obvious as regards "the God question" -- he's a "theist" who *hates* (and thus denies) the fact that we can know, without recourse to the Biblical Revelation (or any other alleged divine-revelation), using only the application of reason to experience, that there is a Creator-God (that is, that atheism is a false understanding of reality and the nature thereof).


William Vallicella (2017/08/04): A Neurosurgeon on the Immateriality of Thought

Michael Egnor, A Map of the Soul. Not philosophically sophisticated, but worth a look.

Given Vallicella's witticism of just one day prior, who gives a damn that he holds Mr Egnor's piece to be not "philosophically sophisticated"?

Generic Statements

Willaim Vallicella: Generic Statements

Everyone of normal intelligence intuitively understands the distinctions Vallicella draws here. But, oft times people play stupid so as to create a distraction.

Priorities!

William Vallicella, commenting on David Gelernter: Why No Women in the National Football League?

Why No Women in the National Football League?

Because we take football seriously.

David Gelernter:

Since when did we decide that men and women are interchangeable in hand-to-hand combat on the front lines? Why do we insist on women in combat but not in the NFL? Because we take football seriously. That’s no joke; it’s the sad truth.

We take panem et circenses seriously, but not the defense of the Republic.

On the other hand -- and mind you, I speak as a man with absolutely no interest in sports of any sort, who does his best to avoid all sports "news" -- the NFL clearly doesn't take itself, nor it customers, nor its future, all that seriously.

Do Aztecs and Christians worship the same God?

William Vallicella The Debate That Won't Go Away: Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

... So the conceptions of God in the two religions are radically different. But how is it supposed to follow that Christians and [Aztecs] worship numerically different Gods? It doesn't follow! Let me explain.

Suppose Sam's conception of the author of Das Kapital includes the false belief that the author is a Russian while Dave's conception includes the true belief that he is a German. This is consistent with there being one and same philosopher whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same man, Karl Marx, is such that Sam has a false belief about him while Dave has a true belief about him.

Now suppose [Atl]'s conception of the divine being includes the false belief that said being [demands, or at least requires/needs, unending blood sacrifice, and on an industrial scale] while Peter's conception includes the true belief that God [offered himself once and for all as the only fitting blood sacrifice]. This is consistent with there being one and same being whom they have beliefs about and are referring to. One and the same god, God, is such that [Atl] has a false belief about him while Peter has a true belief about him.

What I have just shown is that from the radically different, and indeed inconsistent, God-conceptions one cannot validly infer that (normative) Christians and (normative) [Aztecs] refer to and worship numerically different Gods. For the difference in conceptions is consistent with sameness of referent. So you can see that Fr. O'Brien has made a mistake.

Or, alternately, we *could* allow ourselves to see that William Vallicella has made the same mistake he constantly insists upon making.

You know, it's one thing to say that Protestants and Catholics worship the same God, despite that Catholicism just can't seem to get that "once and for all" bit; it's quite another thing to say that Moslems and Christians worship the same God, when nearly every statement of Islam touching on Christ is *explicitly* formulated as a denial of a Christian statement.

But nota bene: Difference in conceptions is also consistent with a difference in referent. It could be that when a Christian uses 'God' he refers to something while a Muslim refers to nothing when he uses 'Allah.' Consider God and Zeus. Will you say that the Christian and the ancient Greek polytheist worship the same God except that the Greek has false beliefs about their common object of worship, believing as he does that Zeus is a superman who lives on a mountain top, literally hurls thunderbolts, etc.? Or will you say that there is no one God that they worship, that the Christian worships a being that exists while the Greek worships a nonexistent object? And if you say the latter, why not also say the same about God and Allah, namely, that there is no one being that they both worship, that the Christian worships the true God, the God that really exists, whereas Muslims worship a God that does not exist?

Well, you *could* say, as I do, that the being whom Moslems worship does indeed exist and is not God.

In sum, difference in conceptions is logically consistent both with sameness of referent and difference of referent.

You don't say! Might that be why -- contrary to Vallicella's prestntation of him -- Fr. O'Brien noted not simply differences between the Christian and Moslem conceptions of God, but also explicit Islamic repudiations of key Christian concepts?

Summary

Most of the writing on this topic is exasperatingly superficial and uninformed, even that by theologians. Fr. O'Brien is a case in point. He thinks the question easily resolved: you simply note the radical difference in the Christian and Muslim God-conceptions and your work is done. Others make the opposite mistake. They think that, of course, Christians and Muslims worship the same God either by making Tuggy's mistake above or by thinking that the considerable overlap in the two conceptions settles the issue.

My thesis is not that the one side is right or that the other side is right. My thesis is that the question is a very difficult one that entangles us in controversial inquiries in the philosophies or mind and language.

Well, Vallicella does love him some entanglements and "inquiries" -- he loves nothing more than to keep jawboning a question while never arriving at an answer.

Making America Mexico Again

By his appearance, this little boy at a recent anti-Trump demonstration in California could be one of my cousins, and certainly one of *their* cousins. And by the use to which his parents are putting him, it is clear that he and his parents are not Americans and do not belong in America.

Maverick Philosopher: Making America Mexico Again -- "There is, however, a minor problem with this notion, namely, that Mexican invaders will then have to travel so much farther north to get to a place worth living in.

The graphic below is from a recent Trump protest rally in California. ..."


As I keep saying, for many decades now, regardless of which party holds its presidency, the Mexican government has been pursuing a more patient version of the Green March ... with the deliberate connivance of the Democratic Party and the RINOs in the GOPe.

As much as a despise Trump, and always have, and likely always will, the fact remains that he is the *only* contender who is even making noises about stopping/rolling-back the Green (and White and Red) March.

Refusing to see what's right in from of your face

William Vallicella: Does Evil Prove the Nonexistence of God? --

I'll grant you that it does if you grant me that truth, existence, order, conscience and twenty of so other phenomena prove the existence of God. And let's not leave out the moral heroism of Maximilian Kolbe.

You can reasonably ask how there could be a God given the fact of natural and moral evil. You can also reasonably ask how there could not be a God given the transcendent moral heroism and selflessness of Kolbe and others like him.

I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God. (Click on the first hyperlink and locate the argument from evil for the existence of God.)

My point is that there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God.

Whatever it may be, it is not his *point* that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

Consider -- "I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God."

What Vallicella is referring to here is that 'evil' is utterly meaningless if atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

IF there is no Creator (*) -- if the world just randomly happened -- THEN there can be no "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'good'. AND, if there is no "way things ought to be", then there can be no violation of the "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'evil'.

Contrary to all the confused (when not merely dishonest) bleating of 'atheists', far from being evidence against the reality of God, the reality is evil is evidence *for* the reality of God.

Now, Vallicella does actually know this, but he will not see it and he will not acknowledge it, because he has a prior commitment to the falsehood that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

In other words, the man is a fool.


(*) Not only must it be the case that there is some entity which may be called 'God', but this entity must be the cause of the world -- this 'God' cannot be an item in the world, but is rather "outside the world" -- this 'God' must be transcendent and immaterial and eternal. At the same time, it is not enough that 'God' be the cause of the world, 'God' must be the deliberate cause of the world -- this 'God' must be personal.

In other words, even before he can appeal to 'evil' as his rationale for denying the reality of God, the so-called atheist must make the logically prior appeal to a transcendent, eternal, immaterial and personal Creator-God.

A fool for all seasons

William Vallicella, 'the Maverick Philosopher', is a fool. And his foolishness in rooted in his refusal to acknowledge -- indeed, even to critically examine the question (*) -- that we human beings can know that the Creator is; and that, in fact, we cannot *not* know that the Creator is.

Consider these recent pronouncements --

William Vallicella: The Decline of the Culture of Free Discussion and Debate

... And now we notice a very interesting and important point. To be a liberal in the old old sense (a paleo-liberal) is, first and foremost, to value toleration. Toleration is the touchstone of classical liberalism. (Morris Raphael Cohen) But why should we be tolerant of (some of) the beliefs and (some of) the behaviors of others? Because we cannot responsibly claim to know, with respect to certain topics, what is true and what ought to be done/left undone. Liberalism (in the good old sense!) requires toleration, and toleration requires fallibilism. But if we can go wrong, we can go right, and so fallibilism presupposes and thus entails the existence of objective truth. A good old liberal must be an absolutist about truth and hence cannot be a PC-whipped lefty.

Examples. Why tolerate atheists? Because we don't know that God exists. Why tolerate theists? Because we don't know that God does not exist. And so on through the entire range of Big Questions. But toleration has limits. ...

Now, aside from the fact that we *can* know that God is -- that in fact, we all do know it already -- the reason to tolerate God-deniers has nothing to do with knowledge or ignorance of the reality of God.

By Vallicella's rationale for tolerating them, should the majority of humanity come to accept the truth that we human beings can, and do, know that God is, it would then be “right” to cease to tolerate the God-deniers amongst us. You know, like they do to us whenever they get their filthy paws on the levers of governmental force. And the reason they *always* persecute us is precisely because their metaphysical commitments provide no reason to refrain from doing it.

William Vallicella: Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?

So I am quite puzzled by Ryan's claim that the existence of God is contradicted by much of what we know to be true. I would like him to produce just one proposition that we know to be true that entails the nonexistence of God. The plain truth of the matter, as it seems to me, is that nothing we know to be true rules out the existence of God. I cheerfully concede that nothing we know to be true rules it in either. Pace the doctor angelicus, one cannot rigorously prove the existence of God. One can argue for the existence of God, but not prove the existence of God. By 'argue for the existence of God,' I mean give good arguments, plausibly-premised arguments free of formal and informal fallacy, arguments that render theistic belief reasonable. What I claim cannot be done, however, is provide rationally compelling arguments, arguments that will force every competent philosophical practioner to accept their conclusions on pain of being irrational if he does not.

2. Ryan also claims that there is no evidence for the God hypothesis. This strikes me as just plain false. There are all kinds of evidence. That it is not the sort of evidence Ryan and fellow atheists would accept does not show that it is not evidence. People have religious and mystical experiences of many different kinds. There is the 'bite of conscience' that intimates a Reality transcendent of the space-time world. Some experiences of beauty intimate the same. There are the dozens and dozens of arguments for the existence of God. Add it up and you have a cumulative case for theism.

The atheist will of course discount all of this. But so what? I will patiently discount all his discountings and show in great detail how none of them are rationally compelling. I will show how he fails to account for obvious facts (consciousness, self-consciouness, conscience, intentionality, purposiveness, etc.) if he assumes that all that exists is in the space-time world. I will expose and question all his assumptions. I will vigorously and rigorously drive him to dogmatism. Having had all his arguments neutralized, if not refuted, he will be left with nothing better than the dogmatic assertion of his position.

Look at this, the last paragraph especially: right there, the fool *has* proven that atheism is false -- which is to say, contrary to his continuous insistence that no one can either prove or disprove the reality of God, *he* has proven, right there, that God is.

But he refuses to see it, for he is a fool: he values something more than he values truth. And one of the things he values more that truth is "discussion and debate" (as in the title of the first linked post)


(*) his characterization of me as a "punk" is a manifestation of his refusal to reason about the matter, pure and simple.

The Worldly Too Know that Life is Short

William Vallicella: The Worldly Too Know that Life is Short

You're late

Wm.Vallicella: Government Overreach Stymied "... I hereby introduce 'obamination' to refer to those abominations perpetrated against the populace by big government, whether perpetrated by the POMO prez himself or by any liberal fascist. Every obamination is an abomination, but not conversely."

Obama as Bullshitter

William Vallicella: Obama as Bullshitter

While listening the other day to Barack Obama shuck and jive about fiscal responsiblity, shamelessly posturing as if he and not his Republican opponents is the fiscally responsible one, when he is in truth the apotheosis or, if you prefer, the Platonic Form of fiscal irresponsibility, I realized just how uncommonly good our POMO Prez is at bullshitting. He is indeed a consummate bullshitter. But what is it to bullshit, exactly? When is a statement bullshit?

According to Harry Frankfurt, a statement is bullshit if it is

. . . grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as of the essence of bullshit." (emphasis added)

Professor Frankfurt has a fine nose for the essence of bullshit. The bullshitter is one who 'doesn't give a shit' about the truth value of what he is saying. He doesn't care how things stand with reality. The liar, by contrast, must care: he must know (or at least attempt to know) how things are if he is to have any chance of deceiving his audience. Think of it this way: the bullshitter doesn't care whether he gets things right or gets them wrong; the liar cares to get them right so he can deceive you about them.

The word you're looking for

Vallicella: Rosenberg's Definition of Scientism and the Problem of Defining 'Scientism' --

So I say, nontrivially,

2. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge.

Among the natural sciences we have, in first place, physics. And so a really hard-assed 'scientisticist' (to coin a word as barbarous as what it names) might that hold that

3. Scientism is the view that the only genuine knowledge is physics and whatever can be reduced to physics.

The word you're looking for is 'scientiste' (in the manner of Miss Piggy, the Artiste), which word is silent on whether the person so denoted is employed as a scientist, or even understands, much less cares, what 'science' is and is not, can and cannot tell us.

You're welcome.

If Obama Could Have Been Trayvon Martin . . .

William Vallicella: If Obama Could Have Been Trayvon Martin . . . "then most of us could be the next George Zimmerman."

Exactly. And that's rather the point of Zimmerman being Zimmerman, isn't it?

"Besides, if you could have been Trayvon 35 years ago, what does that say about you? Did you go around thuggishly attacking people, breaking their noses, pinning them on the ground, pounding and grounding, slamming heads into pavements, threatening 'crackers' with death?"

That was my first thought on hearing the Alien's foolish assertion.

==========
K T Cat: Why Race Is The Go-To Excuse "It's because the alternative would be to blame behavior and no one wants to be judgmental."

Of course, another, and perhaps deeper reason, is that there is an on-going class-warfare amongst whites.

'Amongst' may not be the best word to us, as this class-war is being waged by the self-selected elites against the rest of us ... who really have no interest in having a class-war.

In any event, indiscriminate accusations of racism is just a tool these self-selected elites, these "liberals", use in their war against you and me; they don't actually give a damn about blacks, and everyone knows it.

On the Supposed Non-Existence of the Self

Vallicella (and Lupo): More on the Supposed Non-Existence of the Self

Peter Lupu e-mails:

In your recent post criticizing Harris' argument against the self (which is already present in Hume) you point out that the argument against the self is lacking. It is lacking, you argue, because from the mere fact that the self is not revealed in certain types of introspective experiences it does not follow that the self does not exist. I agree.

But a stronger complaint can be advanced. Harris (and Hume) must answer the following question: Who (what) is doing the introspection (meditation) which allegedly reveals no experience of the self? I suggest that there is no reasonable candidate for such a role other than the self. And so now an explanation can be given to the puzzle how come introspection does not reveal the self; it fails to do so because the self is inevitably absent from the introspective field in order to perform the introspective function. But the self leaves its own recognizable trail behind; it is the trail of a conscious subject which unifies the various experiences encountered by the introspective self as belonging to the same person. If it were not for this trail, the introspective self would have no reason to think that this toothache and that memory or desire belong to one and the same subject.

I think your searching-for-my-glasses-on-my-nose example illustrates well the point.

It is a pleasure to have Peter as a sort of philosophical alter ego who sees many matters as I do. Here are the main points and I think we agree on all of them.

1. The nonexistence of what one fails to find does not logically follow from one's failing to find it. So the failure to find in experience an object called 'self' does not entail the nonexistence of the self.

2. So failure to find the self as an object of experience is at least logically consistent with the existence of a self.

3. What's more, the positing of a self seems rationally required even though the self is not experienceable. For someone or something is doing the searching and coming up 'empty-handed.'

4. There are also considerations re: diachronic personal identity. Suppose I decide to investigate the question of the self. A moment later I begin the investigation by carefully examining the objects of inner and outer experience to see if any one of them is the self. After some searching I come to the conclusion that the self is not to be located among the objects of experience. I then entertain the thought that perhaps there is no self. But then it occurs to me that failure to find X is not proof of X's nonexistence. I then consider whether it is perhaps the very nature of the subject of experience to be unobjectifiable. And so I conclude that the self exists but is not objectifiable.

This reasoning may or may not be sound. The point, however, is that the reasoning, which plays out over a period of time, would not be possible at all if there were no one self -- no one unity of consciousness and self-consciousness -- that maintained its strict numerical identity over the period of time in question. For what we have in the reasoning process is not merely a succession of conscious states, but also a consciousness of their succession in one and the same conscious subject. Without the consciousness of succession, without the retention of the earlier states in the present state, no conclusion could be arrived at.

All reasoning presupposes the diachronic unity of consciousness. Or do you think that the task of thinking through a syllogism could be divided up? Suppose Manny says, All men are mortal! Moe then pipes up, Socrates is a man! Could Jack conclude that Socrates is mortal? No. He could say it but not conclude it. (This assumes that Jack does not hear what the other two Pep Boys say. Imagine each in a separate room.)

The hearing of a melody supplies a second example.

To hear the melody Do-Re-Mi, it does not suffice that there be a hearing of Do, followed by a hearing of Re, followed by a hearing of Mi. For those three acts of hearing could occur in that sequence in three distinct subjects, in which case they would not add up to the hearing of a melody. (Tom, Dick, and Harry can divide up the task of loading a truck, but not the ‘task’ of hearing a melody, or that of understanding a sentence, or that of inferring a conclusion from premises.) But now suppose the acts of hearing occur in the same subject, but that this subject is not a unitary and self-same individual but just the bundle of these three acts, call them A1, A2, and A3. When A1 ceases, A2 begins, and when A2 ceases, A3 begins: they do not overlap. In which act is the hearing of the melody? A3 is the only likely candidate, but surely it cannot be a hearing of the melody. For the awareness of a melody involves the awareness of the (musical not temporal) intervals between the notes, and to apprehend these intervals there must be a retention (to use Husserl’s term) in the present act A3 of the past acts A2 and A1. Without this phenomenological presence of the past acts in the present act, there would be no awareness in the present of the melody. But this implies that the self cannot be a mere bundle of perceptions externally related to each other, but must be a peculiarly intimate unity of perceptions in which the present perception A3 includes the immediately past ones A2 and A1 as temporally past but also as phenomenologically present in the mode of retention. The fact that we hear melodies thus shows that there must be a self-same and unitary self through the period of time between the onset of the melody and its completion. This unitary self is neither identical to the sum or collection of A1, A2, and A3, nor is it identical to something wholly distinct from them. Nor of course is it identical to any one of them or any two of them. This unitary self is given whenever one hears a melody.

The unitary self is phenomenologically given, but not as a separate object. Therein, perhaps, resides the error of Hume and some Buddhists: they think that if there is a self, it must exist as a separate object of experience.

It is also an error of 'materialistic' "reasoning" that, in one way or another, it generally presupposes materialism, which leads to constant category errors by the materialists. At base, behind all the verbiage, Harris' (and Hume's) argument (ahem) against the reality of the self amounts to this: "This so-called 'self' is not a material/physical entity, nor can it be *reduced* to a material/physical entity ... therefore, it doesn't exist."

True, but

William Vallicella posts an aphorism that "He who merely restates his position in the teeth of criticism has not responded to it." And this is true, so far as it goes. But, at the same time, most of what passes for 'criticism' isn't.

But, an acorn is an oak tree

But, in fact, an acorn is an oak tree. It is not a potential oak tree, but an actual oak tree.

Or, if one wants to scientifically pedantic about it, an acorn is two sibling (*) individual organisms of some particular species of oak.

(*) They are not actually the children of the oak tree on which the acorn grew, but are rather its grandchildren.

Theism on Secular Grounds

William Vallicella: Theism on Secular Grounds

A reader inquires:

Can one reason from secular premises to a theistic conclusion? Or is any argument that concludes to God's existence non-secular by nature?

To answer the reader's question, yes, one can reason from secular premises to a theistic conclusion. Indeed, the traditional arguments do precisely that. For example, cosmological arguments proceed a contingentia mundi, from the contingency of the world, and they attempt to show that there must be a necessary being responsible for the world's existence. That the universe exists and that it exists contingently are secular starting points -- in one of its meanings saecula just means 'world' -- and not deliverances of revelation or churchly doctrines to be taken on faith.

Now the same goes for the rest of the theistic arguments, the ontological, the teleological, the moral, and indeed for all of the twenty or so arguments that Plantinga lists.

The problem with arguments for the reality the Biblical conception of God isn't that we Jews and Christians are arguing in a circle. The problem is that the pretend atheists who deny the validity and truth of these arguments are "listening in a circle".

Consider the reader's second quoted question: "Or is any argument that concludes to God's existence non-secular by nature?" Almost every so-called 'free-thinker' whom one encounters believes, at least implicitly, the falsehood that any argument which concludes to God's existence is, by its very nature, non-secular ... and non-logical. Mind you, they cannot demonstrate that the argument is either non-logical or non-secular, yet they will continuously assert that it is, and assert that they are rejecting it for that reason.

He doesn't get it, either

William Vallicella: Does Government Create Jobs?

In their last presidential debate, President Obama strangely agreed with Governor Romney when the latter said that "Government does not create jobs."

But of course government does create jobs. There are all sorts of government jobs. That perfectly obvious point was underscored in a recent NYT op-ed piece. So both the president and the governor were wrong to claim that government does not create jobs.

But, as one would expect, the NYT piece missed the real point, which is what the governor had in mind but did not clearly state, namely, that government does not create economically productive jobs.

Where does the money come from to pay government workers? From taxes and loans. Such money is not available for consumption. The economy expands, and jobs are created, when people buy things. The point is made well by Robert Samuelson in Flat-Earth Economics.

So if the Obama Administration claims that it has created x jobs, ask yourself: what sort of jobs? The ones that count, the ones that will have a real effect on expanding the economy, are not government jobs. Private sector jobs are what we need and these are precisely the ones that government cannot create.

So if you have any sense, you will vote for Romney-Ryan.

Vallicella still doesn't fully get it, himself -- "The economy expands, and jobs are created, when people buy things"

The wide-spread belief in, and perpetuation of, that false idea is one of the main reasons we are, and most of the world is, in the dire economic mess we're in ... and is why no one at all is going to do anything to get us out of the mess -- the whole world's economy is going down the toilet because no one wants recognize reality and life in accord with it.

The truth is not that "the economy expands, and jobs are created, when people buy things", but rather that "the economy expands, and jobs are [ultimately] created, when people *make* things".

Simply buying things -- the mere consumption of wealth -- does not, and cannot, make us wealthy. "I feel rich when I spend money" does not make one rich. To become wealthy, we have to work productively so as to generate wealth.

The homeowner analogy is pretty good

Willian Vallicella responds to a reader who directs him to (the fool) Paul Krugman as having the correct answer to (right-minded) concern about the destructive nature of the (continuously mounting) Federal debt -- Left, Right, and Debt

Krugman's 'argument,' if you want to call it that, consists in an attack on an analogy between individual and government debt:

Deficit-worriers portray a future in which we’re impoverished by the need to pay back money we’ve been borrowing. They see America as being like a family that took out too large a mortgage, and will have a hard time making the monthly payments.

This is, however, a really bad analogy in at least two ways.

Krugman's first reason is that families have to pay off their mortgages, but governments don't have to pay back what they borrow. ...

Ready for Krugman's second reason? It's a real winner: "Second - and this is the point almost nobody seems to get - an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves."

That's bullshit, which is presumably why nobody gets it except him of the simian countenance. It makes no clear sense to say that the debt is money we owe ourselves. So each of us owes a portion of the debt to every other one of us?
...
The homeowner analogy is pretty good.

No analogy is perfect, of course. A perfect analogy would be an identity, and you can't compare a thing to itself --except vacuously.

Do read Vallicella's full take-down. But I have a shorter, or, at least, simpler --

1) Krugman's first point of "refutation" of the applicability of the easily understood analogy between household debt and state debt is to assert that, states being sovereign, a state may simply repudiate its debts. Krugman's ultimate "solution" to the massive -- and continuously expanding -- debt of the United States is to repudiate it, to welch on it, at some point.

Now, we all know that debtors who are seen to welch on their debts tend to find it impossible to secure new loans. Absent some third party willing to legally assume the risk should the maxed-out debtor bug-out yet again, who would risk his own money with further lending to the known welcher? To put it another way, who is going to co-sign for the US government when it is known to welch its debts -- and who is going to legally enforce the terms of the (new) contract? Remember, states are sovereign -- until they collapse.

2) Krugman's second point of "refutation" of the applicability of the easily understood analogy between household debt and state debt is to assert that "an over-borrowed family owes money to someone else; U.S. debt is, to a large extent, money we owe to ourselves." ... and therefore, magically, it isn't a problem that the Federal government of the United States of American is currently borrowing about 40% of the monies it spends.

To put this point of his "refutation" of the applicability of the analogy into the terms of the analogy, he's saying that Mrs Welcher can loan the money to Mr Welcher to cover the (ever-expanding) family debt, and that Mr Welcher can loan the money to Mrs Welcher to cover the (ever-expanding) family debt, and that that will "solve" the family debt problem ... and that, anyway, ultimately, Mr and Mrs Welcher can simply decline to repay one another the debts they've contracted to one another.

That's what they're trying to do in "the European Union", isn't it?

NOW, combine his two point of "refutation" of the applicability of the easily understood analogy between household debt and state debt -- he's asserting that: unlike private entities, the Federal government of the United States of American can continuously expend more monies than to collects in taxes, and continuously expand the amount of the over-expense, because:
1) "we" are "borrowing" the monies from "ourselves";
2) and "we" don't have to repay the "loans", anyway.

"Liberals" seem to believe in perpetual motion.

'Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?'

Wm.Vallicella: Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?

Wm.Vallicella: More on my Non-Identity With My Living Body

[I hope I can find the time to comment upon this]