God and morality in a nutshell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew654htG7yg&lc=Ugy6FjPwwYLqcvNTfWN4AaABAg.ANqDmMA9W-sANqLGq_TAnd 

 

In the 2015 Germanwings flight tragedy, the co-pilot deliberately crashed the plane, killing himself and everyone on board. Such an act is bad regardless of anyone's opinion of it being bad (just as the moon is smaller than the sun regardless of anyone's opinion). This badness is easy to see, dissect, and understand, without appealing to God at any point.

 

First, I don't see how God is supposed to solve this puzzle. Let's label the bad / evil act mentioned above E. If I ask: What is the wrong-maker of E, how is God meant to answer this?

 

Maybe: For an act to be wrong is for God to command against it and for an act to be permissible is for God to permit it.

But 1) God hasn't commanded for or against all human acts. So how do we know which are right or wrong?

 

2) It's controversial exactly where God's commands are (the Bible? The Quran?), which ones count as commands for which people at which times (just the Israelites, or us too?), or whether they really came from God and not from humans inventing a God character. (Christians, after all, are committed to the belief that Allah is a fictional character. Or if Allah refers to Yahweh, then Christians are committed to the view that the event of Yahweh sending Muhammad as a prophet is a fictional event.)

So the "God commands it" answer to the wrong-maker question seems pretty useless. Even Christians are forced to use their own judgment when it comes to modern day moral dilemmas; God is of no help to them. The Methodist church recently had a schism over gay marriage.

And 3) Doesn't this open up the Euthyphro Dilemma? If the right-maker is purely God's command, then God could command E and that would make E right. But my intuitions say, like that of Christians, that a good God could never make such a command because the act is wrong prior to any command made for or against it. So it must be something else that acts as the wrong-maker.

 

You might play William Lane Craig's card and say that something is good when it is aligned with God's nature, and God's commands are aligned with God's nature. But this shifts the arbitrariness of God's commands to the arbitrariness of God's nature.

 

a) If God's nature happened to be pro-atrocity, then those atrocities would be good. God could transform into a swan like Zeus and rape a woman named Leda, and because God's nature happens to be pro-rape, this action is good. If God's nature happened to be pro-genocide, then God could command genocide and that command would align with God's nature.

b) If goodness is defined as that which is aligned with God's nature, then saying "God is good" is to say "God is aligned with God's nature", which is a silly thing to say. But Christians don't see themselves as saying something silly when they say "God is good."

c) We call things good all the time – good friends, good food, good movies – without invoking God. These things aren't good because they are aligned with God's nature – they are good because they are intrinsic, extrinsic, or saving goods.

Second, I say again that the badness of E is easy to see, no God required.

1) We can give a phenomenal definition to intrinsic goodness and badness. Intrinsic goods are characterized by their felt experience, same with intrinsic bads (evils).

2) Extrinsic goods are those that lead to intrinsic goods. Extrinsic evils lead to intrinsic evils.

3) Saving goods are those goods that prevent evils. Depriving evils are those evils that prevent goods.
 

4) We also use 'good' as a success term. A good chess move might not be a chess move that is intrinsically, extrinsically, or savingly good, but good because it leads to success with respect to the goal of winning the chess game. A "good" torture device is good for torture.

And so by this analysis we can easily see what the bad makers are of E. The intrinsic evils of the suffering of the victims and victims' families are bad in their essence. The depriving evils of the deaths of the victims are bad too, grounded in the self-evident concept of "better" as used in the sentence: A joy feels better than a pain.

Now the wrong-maker is trickier. A consequentialist approach could be like this: The act that produces the worst outcomes (most badness + least goodness) in a situation is the worst act, and the act that produces the best outcomes (the least badness / most goodness) in that same situation is the best act.

Assumption 1: There is no difference whatsoever between epistemic and value-based wrongness. Both amount to being incorrect or mistaken in some sense.

Assumption 2: Every morally relevant act is caused by a belief or set of beliefs, or something like a belief that could be translated into a proposition.

Idea: The wrong-maker of an act is the falsity of the false belief that grounds the act.

People often (always?) act thinking that their action is the best action they could take, the action that maximizes goodness over badness. If that belief is false, then the wrongness of that belief transmits to the action, making the action wrong too (strictly speaking, there are no wrong actions, only wrong beliefs and bad actions).

He who succeeds in believing what's right will act rightly too. There are no categorical imperatives, only hypothetical imperatives: If you want to believe what's true, and act accordingly, and if you succeed in always believing what's true and acting accordingly, then you will never do wrong. Your actions will always be grounded in true beliefs.

If you want to do what's right, then you should act according to what's true – and there we see the hypothetical imperative. "Should" always applies to goals – given the goal of doing what's right, you ought to believe what's true. If you want to maximize goodness, then you ought not commit acts that fail especially badly to maximize goodness (which we call evil acts).

Of course, we humans are ignorant and stupid, and so we constantly fail to believe what's true. So we constantly act according to false beliefs and do actions that are bad. (And our answers as to why we chose to do these bad actions are always filled with lies, falsehoods, contradictions, confusions, or irrelevancies).

Inseparable subjectivity – Part 1: Bundle theory of personhood

A cool objection to my free will skepticism.

Part 1: Bundle theory of personhood

* The self is real, self-evident, and certain – just as first-person properties are real, self-evident, and certain. So there is a self – the self is not an illusion. We are not eliminating the self but reducing it to first-person properties. Always, anywhere, and only where there are first-person properties, there is personhood. To say "I am" is just to say "Here are some first-person properties" – it is not to say "Here is a mental substance."

 

* Definition of personhood:

 

Take Alice and Bob. 

 

* Person(1) = Public person = Alice's public person is that thing that generates within Bob certain experiences, such as visual experiences of a certain shape or auditory experiences of a certain sound (like the sound of Alice's voice).

 

* Person(2) = Private person = A subjective / experiential / first-person / phenomenological property.

 

That is, a singular subjective property or a single bundle of subjective properties closely related by time, event, cause, or something else.

 

E.g. Alice burns herself on accident when pulling cookies out of the oven by pulling at too steep an angle, causing the top of her forearm to touch the inner ceiling of her oven. You have a bundle of first-person properties here: The pain of the burn, the right-forearm-i-ness of the pain, the smell of the cookies, the weight of the oven door, the soothing feeling of aloe vera gel on the burn. When we speak of these experiences of Alice, we speak of Alice qua Person(2).

 

* Person(3) = Total private person = The collective phenomenological properties of Alice, i.e., all the experiences Alice has over her lifetime, or has had over her lifetime thus far.

 

* Person(4) = Total public person = The collective phenomenological properties of people other than Alice who've had experiences of Alice's public person.

 

* Person(5) = Total person = The combined sets of Person(3) and Person(4). 

 

* Your accidental properties are things you have or are associated with, but are not identical to you. Your essential properties are you.

 

* Because your accidental properties (like the sound of your voice) are responsible for the experiences generated within me (like the experience of hearing your voice), these properties are essential with respect to you qua person(1) but accidental with respect to you qua person(2). So what counts as accidental / essential depends on which definition of 'person' we are working with. It's contextual.

 

* This explains why it often feels like our accidental properties are identical to us. When folks talk about us, they are talking about that thing that generates within me xyz experiences. That is you qua public person, and in that context properties that would be accidental to you qua private person are essential.

 

To give a concrete example, let's say group G gossips about person P. Group G says that P can sing well. What they mean is that when P sings, certain good feelings are produced within them. But linguistically this comes out as (if they were to speak to P): "You are a good singer." If we were to take 'are' as one of identity, then: You = good singer. Personhood solved! Who is P as a person? Why, P is good singer! And so we can see how people in general can and often do attach their sense of self-worth to their public self rather than to their private self—the public self is the self that is, unsurprisingly, accessible to the public and thus the cause of one's praise, fame, hirability, employment, good reputation, money, career, and survival. If it's my public self upon which my survival hangs, and if xyz properties are essential to that public self, then xyz properties are essential to me in a highly relevant sense, i.e. the sense of survival.

 

* (This also explains a deep-seated loneliness that we all feel. When I'm talking about you, I'm really talking about me!—about my experiences of what I take to be you. And vice versa: When you talk about me, you're really talking about your experiences of this thing that you have labeled under my name, but from my point of view that thing isn't me at all but something accidental to me. We never get to access each other's true selves, only our public selves.) 

 

But it's obvious that these xyz properties are not at all essential to the sense of Person(2). It's also obvious that from my perspective, who I am essentially is not what other people see but what I see directly and within me. But again, it's contextual. Someone who thinks personhood is more context- / social- / narrative-based would be more inclined to think of Person(4) as what it really means to be a person at the end of the day – you are the experiences you cause others.

 

But because our own experiences of ourselves are so certain and undeniable, surely we'd want to include those, arriving at Person(5) as a more full sense of what it means to be a person. You are the experiences you have and the experiences you cause others. Because public properties = essential with respect to the public person and private properties = essential with respect to the private person, whether certain properties of yours are essential to you is a matter of context.

 

* However, clearly, if no one else existed but me, I would not only still exist, but exist with certainty! Because my own subjective properties are still certainly there. So it makes sense to favor Person(2) as the true self. Person(3) includes experiences of my past and future—experiences I am not currently having—and so is not relevant to the me in the present. Perhaps therefore we ought to build into Person(2) this sense of the present person, while Person(3) covers the whole person, past, present and future.

Brandon Ambrosino admits that suffering cannot be solved

Ambrosino, Brandon. Is it God's Will? New York: Morehouse Publishing, 2025.

 

Here's a recent book on the problem of evil I spotted in a Barnes & Noble. The author Brandon Ambrosino is addressing the problem of evil from a Christian perspective. So the book is a work of apologetics. I read the first few pages and was surprised at how conceding they were to the problem of evil. Consider:

 

“Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if my goddaughter were to grow up believing that God took her dad because he wanted to be with him. Does that mean God is selfish? Doesn’t God know that Carl’s [the dad] family also wants to be with him? Did God send the heart attack [at age 44] to get him to heaven quickly? Could he not have found a less horrific way to do it? Could he have given Rusty [Carl’s wife] some advanced notice? Or maybe my goddaughter will start to wonder why God doesn’t take all of us to heaven right now—does he not love us as much as he loves Carl?” (3) 

 

Good questions! 

 

“How, then, ought we think about God’s relationship to our world, a world that continues to go wrong, to spin off course, to wound us daily?

     We might not be able to construct an answer, as in the answer, as in the one and only answer. Anyone who’s suffered knows on a gut level that this kind of answer doesn’t exist. Suffering is unanswerable.” (6)

 

What a confession! I totally agree. On a gut level we know that evils are apparently unjustified. And until that changes, say, by a compelling theodicy, God apparently does not exist. But is there any hope of a compelling theodicy? Not so, says Ambrosino. "Suffering is unanswerable." And: 

 

“There is no system, theological or otherwise, within which suffering makes sense. . . . We cannot solve suffering, and attempting to do so only discounts the suffering and degrades the sufferers.” (7)
 

Taken out of context, I would think that this author is about to give a defense of an argument from evil!

 

Question: If the author thinks there is no answer to suffering, and that even attempting to give an answer to suffering betrays a misunderstanding of suffering and insults victims of suffering, then what exactly is his book for? It's not for answering the question of suffering, because, per the author, there is no answer. It's not for solving suffering, because, per the author, suffering cannot be solved. It's not for providing a theological system in which suffering makes sense, because, per the author, there is no such system. So by the author's own admission in the first few pages, the book is not providing an answer, solution, or systematic account of suffering. How then is this meant to be a defense of Christian belief? Only an answer to suffering or a solution to the problem of evil or a systematic account of suffering can act as a defense of Christian belief. So if none of these things are possible, then that is just to admit that it's not possible to defend Christian belief against arguments from evil.

 

There is a system in which suffering makes perfect sense, and it's called naturalism. There is an answer – a very simple, elegant, and obvious answer – to the problem of evil: there is no perfect and loving God.

Owen Griffiths and A.C. Paseau. — Implication vs Inference

Griffiths, Owen and A.C. Paseau. One True Logic: A Monist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

 

"As just hinted, we take capturing implication and capturing reasoning as distinct applications. The implications of some premises are their logical consequences; they follow from them, whether or not one can deduce them from the premises. In contrast, an inference is what an agent does when she deduces a conclusion from some premises. Reasoning or inference tries to respect implication, though is distinct from it. Thus we write ‘implicational’ rather than ‘inferential’ whenever we are interested in what follows from what—as we typically will be—rather than what can be deduced from what. All this applies even to idealized notions of reasoning (which for example prescind from human subjects’ errors in reasoning). [Fn6: So long as the sense of reasoning/inference is not so idealized that it means nothing other than the ability to accurately reflect implicational facts.]

     It follows in particular that there is no reason to suppose at the outset that the correct foundational logic is completable by a (sound and effective) deductive system . . . Perhaps no deductive system can capture all logical entailments. (Incidentally, we use the words ‘implication’, ‘consequence’, and ‘entailment’ interchangeably, with the epithet ‘logical’ understood when omitted.) [Fn7: With the usual act/outcome ambiguity, resolvable by context; e.g. ‘entailment’ can mean the relation that holds between some premises and a conclusion, or the conclusion itself.] Implication is modelled by model-theoretic consequence (⊨) and derivability by deductive consequence (⊢)." (Prologue xx-xxi.)

Reductio ad Absurdum is preserved on glut theory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkMTC5TfpiE

One objection to dialetheism, or any kind of glut theory, is that by giving up the Law of Non-Contradiction* we give up the truth seeking tool of reductio ad absurdum. But this isn't true. In a reductio, we start with a conclusion, like God exists, and from there, combined with other necessary truths, conclude that God does not exist. If negativity and positivity cannot overlap, and thus all contradictions are strictly false, then showing that A leads to ~A shows that A is strictly false. Given glut theory, you lose the strictly part of the reductio. Showing that A leads to ~A, on glut theory, shows either that A is strictly false or that A is true and false.

 

But there never has been a case where someone has had orange juice in their fridge and also has not had orange juice in their fridge. There never has been a case where someone is both in Sidney, Australia and not in Sidney, Australia. There has never been a case where someone has both casted a ballot and not casted a ballot. Etc. It seems that for virtually any imaginable contradiction, there's no good reason to think that it's anything other than strictly false. If the only plausible candidates for true contradictions are found in self-reference, law, motion, mathematics, maybe quantum mechanics, and maybe ineffability, then that leaves nearly all imaginable contradictions strictly false. So showing something to be a contradiction is to show that it's a priori almost certainly false. The theist who wants to escape the above reductio's conclusion that God does not exist is forced to refute the reductio or argue that God's existence is a true contradiction – that it's true and false that God exists. But 1) the vast majority of theists would not feel comfortable with this conclusion (probably because their intuitions say that it's impossible for something to be true and false), and 2) this is quite the burden to bear for the theist, considering that God's existence is not found in the list of plausible dialetheias. 
 
So reductio ad absurdum is still a powerful tool on glut theories, and indeed it retains nearly all of its strength. In fact, reductio could be a key tool in discovering further plausible dialetheias. First, use reductio to establish a contradiction. Second, argue that this contradiction is a dialetheia. So while I don't subscribe to any glut theory, the "loss of reductio ad absurdum as a truth seeking tool" objection to glut theory is not a viable objection at all.
 
*Classical logic is typically associated with three laws: The Law of Non-contradiction, the Law of Excluded Middle, and the Law of Identity. You might also include the Law of Bivalence. But why can't we simply reduce all of that to the Law of Excluded Middle? 
 
LEM: All propositions are either true or false.  
 
This is equivalent to: For any proposition, either it is true or its negation is true.
 
∀x(Px⟶Tx∨Fx) "For all x, if x is a proposition then x is true or false."
 
But if something is true or false, then it's a proposition. So:
 
∀x(Tx∨Fx⟶Px)

 

So: ∀x(Px⟷Tx∨Fx)
 
But this means that something is a proposition if and only if it is true or false. But that's not right. A proposition is more than just being something that is true or false. A proposition will include other elements like bundling references to properties and relationships between properties (or whatever your favorite theory of propositions says).

 

Easy fix: ∀x(Px⟷Hx∧(Tx∨Fx))

Something is a proposition if and only if it has [insert preferred theory of propositions here] and is true or false. This assumes acceptance of LEM and separates out the LEM from the other parts of the theory of propositions.

 

On the theory I'm playing around with, a proposition is true when it is comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences.

 

So: ∀x(Rx⟷Tx) = If and only if when something is comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences, then it is true.

 

∀x(~Rx⟷~Tx) = If and only if when something is not comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences, then it is not true. 

 

∀x(Qx⟷Fx) = If and only if when something is comprised of references to properties and relationships between properties that we do not experience and that do not explain our experiences and cannot explain anyone's experiences, then it is false.

 

∀x(Fx⟶~Tx) = When something is false, it is not true.

 

∀x(Fx⟶~Rx) = When something is false, it is not comprised of references to properties or relationships between properties that we experience or that explains our experiences or can explain someone's experiences.
 
A rock is not true, because rocks are not propositions and only propositions can be true, but a rock is not false, because only propositions can be false. So 'not true' and 'false' are not equivalent, but are mutually entailing when it comes to propositions.  
 
This by itself entails a) there are no gaps, as no propositions can be neither true nor false; b) there are no gluts, as no propositions can be both true and false; c) that A=A (because truth and falsity are assumed to be different things) and d) that there are only two truth values: true and false (otherwise, the law would read: Propositions are true or false or a secret third thing, with that third [or fourth, fifth, etc.] thing spelled out by a many-valued logic).

Goobye Darcy 😭

Our cat of almost 11 years, Mr. Darcy, disappeared two weeks ago. It has hit me pretty hard. Like a lot of cats he was pretty aloof, independent, and indifferent to the folks around him. He didn't like his personal space being invaded and would quickly lose his temper if picked up. But every now and then he would be very sweet, happy, and cuddly. He rarely purred but when he did it was special. About a year ago when I was sick and stuck in bed, his personality changed and he was suddenly very concerned about me and spent more time with me, only to return to his normal indifferent self once I got better (typical...).

 

Even though he was that way, he would act socially too in some ways. At night he would almost always spend the night on someone's bed at their feet. If I got out of bed, he would get out too and follow me, and if I got back in bed he would get back in with me. He was very curious and hated closed doors, often scratching and meowing at them so he could check out what's inside. He had a strong sense of object permanence; if nothing had changed from previous days, he would quickly change rooms. But if there was a change, he would be curious and check it out. He was very anxious. He would run away from strange objects, new people or animals, and anything that made loud noises like the vacuum. Normally he would never go under blankets, but during thunderstorms he would sheepishly sneak under them and start shivering. No amount of cuddling or reassurance from me seemed to do him any good; he would stay miserable during loud events. He did the same when we had large fans running to dry the carpet after it had been cleaned. 

 

He would often hunt and catch small birds, mice, rats, and baby bunnies. Once he caught a bat of all things. I felt tortured by this as I wanted to save the critters, and I did save a few small bunnies and birds. But at the same time there are a lot of bunnies in our neighborhood and it might be good to have a bit of population control... Often he would bring these animals inside which freaked me out. Though I admit how adorable it was how he would do his victory strut inside and his primordial pouch would swing back and forth. The worst was when I woke up to squeaking under my bed in the early morning – a baby bunny – and had to take it outside and shut out the cat. That inspired the following poem:

 

18 March 2024 - Baby Bunny Blood

 

i wake up to a squeak  

a little baby bleat

baby bunny blood

on the floor, on the sheets 

 

how the cat would howl

wanting out the back door
baby bunny disemboweled
on our back porch

with food in his dish he did it for sport

with nature like this, no God of course
i wanna blame the little thing for his murdering brain
but it’s not his fault, he was born this way

 

Often he would have accidents, regurgitating whatever he was getting into. I won't miss cleaning up those messes, or the blood off the carpet from innocent animals he dragged in. Usually it only takes maybe up to 5 minutes to clean a mess, but recently he ate a mouse or rat and I guess his stomach couldn't take it. It took me something like 30 to 45 minutes, and a whole lotta Spot Shot, to get the carpet back to new.

 

Despite these headaches, I still miss him.  

 

At the risk of sounding too nerdy, he inspired me to come up with a word just before he disappeared: philomeiony. Pronounced: fil-uh-MAY-uh-nee; or in IPA: /fɪləmeɪəni/, /fɪl.ə.meɪ.ə.ni/

 

From Greek phil meaning love, and meíōn meaning lesser (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BC%CE%B5%CE%AF%CF%89%CE%BD). "Love of the Lesser."

 

Darcy reminded me that even though something could be so small and "unachieving", like a cat, I could still feel this feeling of love and preciousness. It reminds me that something can be lesser and yet so valuable. Less valuable does not mean worthless. Something can be less-and-yet-great. So philomeiony means: The feeling that something is smaller or lesser and yet at the same time that it is precious and irreplaceable nonetheless, and feeling a great love for it.

 

I give credit to ChatGPT for helping me come up with this word. It's similar to the word 'pity', though usually 'pity' evokes ideas of sadness or looking down at something. Philomeiony is the opposite: it's a happiness – an admiring, loving, cherishing, and looking up at something despite its perceivably lesser features. You might also think that 'love' already builds into it this idea of loving something in spite of its shortcomings. Even still, 'philomeiony' sounds to me more specific and ambivalent than 'love', emphasizing both the feeling that something is lesser and yet feeling love all the same. Often with love you feel that what you love is greater, not lesser! Another close word is 'adorable' or 'adoration'.

 

You could also go for a word like 'elattophilia' from Greek elatton meaning lesser. But '-philia' has unsavory connotations given words like 'pedophilia' and 'necrophilia'. You could go for something like 'philelattony', but that's a bit of an ugly word. The modern Greek spelling is elasson – elassophila or philelassony. Still ugly. There may be a word out there that already captures what 'philomeiony' is going for, or there might be a better neologism to be made. Maybe 'love' is enough.

 

You could add a certain nuance to philomeiony, that it might not be you who views the object as lesser, but rather the object is viewed as lesser by others, and you understand why this is, and maybe you only partially accept it or withhold both acceptance and rejection.

 

Derivations:

 

Philomeioner = Someone that experiences philomeiony.

 

Philomeionizer = Someone or something that philomeionizes.

 

Philomeionize = To evoke philomeiony within someone.

 

Philomeionized = To have been struck with philomeiony by someone or something.  

 

Philomeionous = To be prone to experiencing philomeiony or to be experiencing philomeiony, or to relate to philomeiony.

 

Philomeionable = To be worthy of philomeiony or prone to philomeionizing.

 

Philomeioning = The act of viewing someone or something as lesser and yet loving it and appreciating it anyway.

 

Philomeionied = To be viewed as lesser and loved and appreciated anyway; to be the subject of someone's philomeiony. 

 

This doesn't seem all that clean to me, and maybe part of that is my own imperfect derivations, and maybe part of it is that English doesn't lend itself all that well to creating clean derivations.

 

At the risk of risk of sounding even more nerdy, here's another poem, inspired by 'philomeiony':

 

24 Sep 2025 - Philomeiony 

 

strike in me, in my heart, philomeiony

humanity
grant me philanthropy
despite how broken, it
works good enough
what else is there?
beggars can’t choose
despite your shortcomings i don’t want
to be short on you
please stop feeling insecure
you are nothing, and yet
it kills me to see you hurt
i am hungry, i don’t care if
the food is a tad burnt
i know i am broken and i know
you’re better off with me
than not

remove from me this heart of stone

let me radiate warmth like the hearthstone 

comparisons are never fair i don't

care i don't care i don't care 

you are you

and you are there

i can compartmentalize my criticism
and not take for granted how much better things are

that you are there

what else is there
to do?
beggars can’t choose, and yet
i would, in fact, choose you

 

Here's a blurry photo of when Darcy was a baby (late 2014):

 

 

He was a bit goofy looking, like a lot of kittens.

 

Momma with her four babies, with Darcy the second from the top (2015): 

 

Darcy on the far left with his three siblings (early 2015): 

 

 Fast forward two years, laying in a spiral (late 2016):

 

 

His eyes were once a golden color, or even yellow-orange (2015): 

 

 

But over time they turned green (2021):

 

He looks a little miffed in this photo. He was grumpy a good bit of the time.

 

Sleepy head (2021):  

 

He was a cutie. His primordial pouch made him extra cute (2024): 

 

 

The time he caught a bat (2024): 

 

Thankfully the bat was rescued and released outside.

 

A meme and a mood:

 

Straight out of a magazine (2024):

 

 

One of the last photos I took of him. Sometimes he would make prolonged eye contact, and seemed to be taking in the moment (2025): 

 

 

The white spray bottle of carpet cleaner very appropriately in the background. 

 

"Baby Blue Cat had a smiley worm doll.

 

The smiley worm doll was a funny-looking old thing, tattered and gray and falling apart.

 

But Baby Blue Cat didn't care.

 

Baby Blue Cat loved his smiley worm doll."

 

-The Baby Blue Cat and the Smiley Worm Doll, by Ainslie Pryor.

Non-overlap theory has greater explanatory power

Non-overlap: Truth and falsity are inverse operations that cancel each other out and do not and cannot overlap. You can no more have a proposition that is both true and false than you can have a number that is both positive and negative. This theory is in direct opposition to any glut theory, including dialetheism, which will say that truth and falsity can overlap and are not inverse operations that cancel each other out.

 

Support for Non-overlap: This theory explains, where gut theories fail to explain, the data of my intuitions (and I bet the intuitions of most people) surrounding the impossibility of everyday contradictions. If there is orange juice in my fridge, this is not merely strong evidence that it is not also the case that there is no orange juice in my fridge. Rather, this is proof that it cannot also be the case that there is no orange juice in my fridge. If a barber has shaved himself, this is proof that he has not also not shaved himself. If a person has casted a ballot, this is proof that they cannot also have not casted a ballot. And so on.

 

But why would the positive be a proof of an absence of a negative in these cases? Why do I feel so forced to believe that positivity entails an absence of negativity in these cases? Suggestion: Because Non-overlap is true and positivity and negativity are inverse operations and where truth picks out positivity, falsity picks out negativity.

 

Graham Priest says accounts of negation are contentious. (See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dialetheism/#ArguNega.) Are they? Isn't Non-overlap the common account of negativity?