Nagel on Stroud on the possibility of metaphysics

Much of modern philosophy has been hypnotized by the idea that causality, necessity, and value are not features of objective reality but merely features the human mind projects onto reality.  David Hume is, of course, the main hypnotist in this connection.  In his important book Engagement and Metaphysical Dissatisfaction, Barry Stroud holds that the arguments for this skeptical attitude do not succeed, and that causality, necessity, and value in fact cannot coherently be eliminated from our conception of the objective world.  At the same time, he does not think that this yields a proof that they really are features of the objective world.  It may be that they are illusions after all, even if we can’t help but believe in them.  Hence, if metaphysics is concerned with establishing one way or another whether such features really are part of objective reality, it is, in Stroud’s view, an impossible project.

No, the U.S. has not been at war with Iran for 47 years

After the United States and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February of this year, the war’s defenders suddenly began to claim (and incessantly to repeat) that the U.S. has already been at war with Iran for 47 years.  Evidently, the motivation for this newly minted talking point is to try to defuse two obvious objections to the war: that it is a war of aggression and therefore unjust, and that it did not receive constitutionally required congressional authorization and is therefore illegal.  The idea is that, if the current operation is part of a wider war that is already longstanding, then it does not constitute aggression and does not need special authorization.

The transmission theory of authority

Scholastic thinkers like Cardinal Cajetan, St. Robert Bellarmine, and Francisco Suárez developed what is sometimes called a “transmission theory” of governmental authority.  It holds that such authority ultimately comes from God, but is directly vested by him in the community as a whole, and then transmitted by it to some particular form of government (which may or may not be democratic).  Yves Simon offered an influential discussion of this theory in chapter 3 of his book Philosophy of Democratic Government.