The principle
of sufficient reason (PSR), in a typical Neo-Scholastic formulation, states
that “there is a sufficient reason or adequate necessary objective explanation
for the being of whatever is and for all attributes of any being” (Bernard
Wuellner, Dictionary
of Scholastic Philosophy, p. 15).
I discuss and defend PSR at some length in Scholastic
Metaphysics (see especially pp. 107-8 and 137-46). Prof. Michael Della Rocca
defends the principle in his excellent article “PSR,”
which appeared in Philosopher’s Imprint
in 2010 but which (I’m embarrassed to say) I only came across the other day.
Among the arguments for PSR I put forward in Scholastic Metaphysics are a retorsion argument to the effect that if PSR were false, we could have no reason to trust the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, including any grounds we might have for doubting or denying PSR; and an argument to the effect that a critic of PSR cannot coherently accept even the scientific explanations he does accept, unless he acknowledges that there are no brute facts and thus that PSR is true. Della Rocca’s argument bears a family resemblance to this second line of argument.
Among the arguments for PSR I put forward in Scholastic Metaphysics are a retorsion argument to the effect that if PSR were false, we could have no reason to trust the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, including any grounds we might have for doubting or denying PSR; and an argument to the effect that a critic of PSR cannot coherently accept even the scientific explanations he does accept, unless he acknowledges that there are no brute facts and thus that PSR is true. Della Rocca’s argument bears a family resemblance to this second line of argument.
Della Rocca notes, first, that even among philosophers who reject PSR, philosophical theses are often defended by recourse to what he calls “explicability arguments.” An explicability argument (I’ll use the abbreviation EA from here on out) is an argument to the effect that we have grounds for denying that a certain state of affairs obtains if it would be inexplicable or a “brute fact.” Della Rocca offers a number of examples of this strategy. When physicalist philosophers of mind defend some reductionist account of consciousness on the grounds that consciousness would (they say) otherwise be inexplicable, they are deploying an EA. When early modern advocates of the “mechanical philosophy” rejected (their caricature of) the Aristotelian notion of substantial forms, they did so on the grounds that the notion was insufficiently explanatory. When philosophers employ inductive reasoning they are essentially rejecting the claim that the future will not be relevantly like the past nor the unobserved like the observed, on the grounds that this would make future and otherwise unobserved phenomena inexplicable. And so forth. (Della Rocca cites several other specific examples from contemporary philosophy -- in discussions about the metaphysics of dispositions, personal identity, causation, and modality -- wherein EAs are deployed.)
Now, Della
Rocca allows that to appeal to an EA does not by itself commit one to PSR. But suppose we apply the EA approach to the
question of why things exist. Whatever we end up thinking the correct
answer to this question is -- it doesn’t matter for purposes of Della Rocca’s
argument -- if we deploy an EA in defense of it we will implicitly be committing ourselves to PSR, he says, because
PSR just is the claim that the existence of anything must have an
explanation.
In responding to these different examples of EAs, one could, says Della Rocca, take one of three options:
(1) Hold that some EAs are legitimate kinds of argument, while others -- in particular, any EA for some claim about why things exist at all -- are not legitimate.
(2) Hold that no EA for any conclusion is legitimate.
(3) Hold that all EAs, including any EA for a claim about the sheer existence of things, are legitimate kinds of argument.
Now, the critic of PSR cannot take option (3), because that would, in effect, be to accept PSR. Nor could any critic of PSR who applies EAs in defense of other claims -- and the EA approach is, as Della Rocca notes, a standard move in contemporary philosophy (and indeed, in science) -- take option (2).
So that leaves (1). The trouble, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be any non-question-begging way of defending option (1). For why should we believe that EAs are legitimate in other cases, but not when giving some account of the sheer existence of things? It seems arbitrary to allow the one sort of EA but not the other sort. The critic of PSR cannot respond by saying that it is just a brute fact that some kinds of EAs are legitimate and others are not, because this would beg the question against PSR, which denies that there are any brute facts. Nor would it do for the critic to say that it is just intuitively plausible to hold that EAs are illegitimate in the case of explaining the sheer existence of things, since Della Rocca’s point is that the critic’s acceptance of EAs in other domains casts doubt on the reliability of this particular intuition. Hence an appeal to intuition would also beg the question.
So, Della Rocca’s argument is that there seems no cogent way to accept EAs at all without accepting PSR. The implication seems to be that we can have no good reason to think anything is explicable unless we also admit that everything is.
Naturally, I agree with this. Indeed, I think Della Rocca, if anything, concedes too much to the critic of PSR. In particular, he allows that while it would be “extremely problematic” for someone to bite the bullet and take option (2), it may not be “logically incoherent” to do so. But this doesn’t seem correct to me. Even if the critic of PSR decides to reject the various specific examples of EAs cited by Della Rocca -- EAs concerning various claims about consciousness, modality, personal identity, etc. -- the critic will still make use of various patterns of reasoning he considers formally valid or inductively strong, will reject patterns of reasoning he considers fallacious, etc. And he will do so precisely because these principles of logic embody standards of intelligibility or explanatory adequacy.
To be sure, it is a commonplace in logic that not all explanations are arguments, and it is also sometimes claimed (less plausibly, I think) that not all arguments are explanations. However, certainly many arguments are explanations. What Aristotelians call “explanatory demonstrations” (e.g. a syllogism like All rational animals are capable of language, all men are rational animals, so all men are capable of language) are explanations. Arguments to the best explanation are explanations, and as Della Rocca notes, inductive reasoning in general seems to presuppose that things have explanations.
So, to give up EAs of any sort (option (2)) would seem to be to give up the very practice of argumentation itself, or at least much of it. Needless to say, it is hard to see how that could fail to be logically incoherent, at least if one tries to defend one’s rejection of PSR with arguments. Hence, to accept the general practice of giving arguments while nevertheless rejecting EAs of the specific sorts Della Rocca gives as examples would really be to take Della Rocca’s option (1) rather than option (2).
Della Rocca also considers some common objections to PSR. In response to the claim that PSR is incompatible with quantum mechanics, Della Rocca refers the reader to Alex Pruss’s response to such objections in his book The Principle of Sufficient Reason, but also makes the point that appealing to QM by itself simply does nothing to rebut his own argument for PSR. For even if a critic of PSR thinks it incompatible with QM, he still owes us an answer to the question of where we are supposed to draw the line between legitimate EA arguments and illegitimate ones, and why we should draw it precisely where the critic says we should. (For my own response to QM-based objections, see pp. 122-27 and 142 of Scholastic Metaphysics.)
Della Rocca also considers an objection raised by philosophers like Peter van Inwagen and Jonathan Bennett to the effect that PSR entails necessitarianism, the bizarre claim that all truths, including apparently contingent ones, are really necessary truths. Della Rocca thinks van Inwagen and Bennett are probably right, but suggests that the defender of PSR could simply bite the bullet and accept necessitarianism, as Spinoza notoriously did. And in that case, to reject Della Rocca’s argument for PSR on the grounds that necessitarianism is false would just be to beg the question.
Here again I think Della Rocca concedes too much. As I argue in Scholastic Metaphysics (pp. 140-41), objections like the one raised by van Inwagen and Bennett presuppose that propositions are among the things PSR says require an explanation, and that for an explanans to be a sufficient reason for an explanandum involves its logically entailing the explanandum. But while rationalist versions of PSR might endorse these assumptions, the Thomist understanding of PSR does not.
Della Rocca also remarks:
I suspect that many of you simply will not see the force of the challenge that I am issuing to the non-rationalist. (I speak here from long experience, experience that prompted me to call my endeavor here quixotic.) Philosophers tend to be pretty cavalier in their use of explicability arguments -- using them when doing so suits their purposes, refusing to use them otherwise, and more generally, failing to investigate how their various attitudes toward explicability arguments hang together, if they hang together at all. We philosophers -- in our slouching fashion! -- are comfortable with a certain degree of unexamined arbitrariness in our use of explicability arguments. But my point is that a broader perspective on our practices with regard to explicability arguments reveals that there is a genuine tension in the prevalent willingness to use some explicability arguments and to reject others.
Amen to that. As with the urban legend about First Cause arguments resting on the premise that “everything has a cause,” the notion that the PSR is a relic, long ago refuted, is a mere prejudice that a certain kind of academic philosopher stubbornly refuses to examine. It doesn’t matter how strong is an argument you give for PSR; he will remain unmoved. He “already knows” there must be something wrong with it, because, after all, don’t most members of “the profession” think so?
In responding to these different examples of EAs, one could, says Della Rocca, take one of three options:
(1) Hold that some EAs are legitimate kinds of argument, while others -- in particular, any EA for some claim about why things exist at all -- are not legitimate.
(2) Hold that no EA for any conclusion is legitimate.
(3) Hold that all EAs, including any EA for a claim about the sheer existence of things, are legitimate kinds of argument.
Now, the critic of PSR cannot take option (3), because that would, in effect, be to accept PSR. Nor could any critic of PSR who applies EAs in defense of other claims -- and the EA approach is, as Della Rocca notes, a standard move in contemporary philosophy (and indeed, in science) -- take option (2).
So that leaves (1). The trouble, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be any non-question-begging way of defending option (1). For why should we believe that EAs are legitimate in other cases, but not when giving some account of the sheer existence of things? It seems arbitrary to allow the one sort of EA but not the other sort. The critic of PSR cannot respond by saying that it is just a brute fact that some kinds of EAs are legitimate and others are not, because this would beg the question against PSR, which denies that there are any brute facts. Nor would it do for the critic to say that it is just intuitively plausible to hold that EAs are illegitimate in the case of explaining the sheer existence of things, since Della Rocca’s point is that the critic’s acceptance of EAs in other domains casts doubt on the reliability of this particular intuition. Hence an appeal to intuition would also beg the question.
So, Della Rocca’s argument is that there seems no cogent way to accept EAs at all without accepting PSR. The implication seems to be that we can have no good reason to think anything is explicable unless we also admit that everything is.
Naturally, I agree with this. Indeed, I think Della Rocca, if anything, concedes too much to the critic of PSR. In particular, he allows that while it would be “extremely problematic” for someone to bite the bullet and take option (2), it may not be “logically incoherent” to do so. But this doesn’t seem correct to me. Even if the critic of PSR decides to reject the various specific examples of EAs cited by Della Rocca -- EAs concerning various claims about consciousness, modality, personal identity, etc. -- the critic will still make use of various patterns of reasoning he considers formally valid or inductively strong, will reject patterns of reasoning he considers fallacious, etc. And he will do so precisely because these principles of logic embody standards of intelligibility or explanatory adequacy.
To be sure, it is a commonplace in logic that not all explanations are arguments, and it is also sometimes claimed (less plausibly, I think) that not all arguments are explanations. However, certainly many arguments are explanations. What Aristotelians call “explanatory demonstrations” (e.g. a syllogism like All rational animals are capable of language, all men are rational animals, so all men are capable of language) are explanations. Arguments to the best explanation are explanations, and as Della Rocca notes, inductive reasoning in general seems to presuppose that things have explanations.
So, to give up EAs of any sort (option (2)) would seem to be to give up the very practice of argumentation itself, or at least much of it. Needless to say, it is hard to see how that could fail to be logically incoherent, at least if one tries to defend one’s rejection of PSR with arguments. Hence, to accept the general practice of giving arguments while nevertheless rejecting EAs of the specific sorts Della Rocca gives as examples would really be to take Della Rocca’s option (1) rather than option (2).
Della Rocca also considers some common objections to PSR. In response to the claim that PSR is incompatible with quantum mechanics, Della Rocca refers the reader to Alex Pruss’s response to such objections in his book The Principle of Sufficient Reason, but also makes the point that appealing to QM by itself simply does nothing to rebut his own argument for PSR. For even if a critic of PSR thinks it incompatible with QM, he still owes us an answer to the question of where we are supposed to draw the line between legitimate EA arguments and illegitimate ones, and why we should draw it precisely where the critic says we should. (For my own response to QM-based objections, see pp. 122-27 and 142 of Scholastic Metaphysics.)
Della Rocca also considers an objection raised by philosophers like Peter van Inwagen and Jonathan Bennett to the effect that PSR entails necessitarianism, the bizarre claim that all truths, including apparently contingent ones, are really necessary truths. Della Rocca thinks van Inwagen and Bennett are probably right, but suggests that the defender of PSR could simply bite the bullet and accept necessitarianism, as Spinoza notoriously did. And in that case, to reject Della Rocca’s argument for PSR on the grounds that necessitarianism is false would just be to beg the question.
Here again I think Della Rocca concedes too much. As I argue in Scholastic Metaphysics (pp. 140-41), objections like the one raised by van Inwagen and Bennett presuppose that propositions are among the things PSR says require an explanation, and that for an explanans to be a sufficient reason for an explanandum involves its logically entailing the explanandum. But while rationalist versions of PSR might endorse these assumptions, the Thomist understanding of PSR does not.
Della Rocca also remarks:
I suspect that many of you simply will not see the force of the challenge that I am issuing to the non-rationalist. (I speak here from long experience, experience that prompted me to call my endeavor here quixotic.) Philosophers tend to be pretty cavalier in their use of explicability arguments -- using them when doing so suits their purposes, refusing to use them otherwise, and more generally, failing to investigate how their various attitudes toward explicability arguments hang together, if they hang together at all. We philosophers -- in our slouching fashion! -- are comfortable with a certain degree of unexamined arbitrariness in our use of explicability arguments. But my point is that a broader perspective on our practices with regard to explicability arguments reveals that there is a genuine tension in the prevalent willingness to use some explicability arguments and to reject others.
Amen to that. As with the urban legend about First Cause arguments resting on the premise that “everything has a cause,” the notion that the PSR is a relic, long ago refuted, is a mere prejudice that a certain kind of academic philosopher stubbornly refuses to examine. It doesn’t matter how strong is an argument you give for PSR; he will remain unmoved. He “already knows” there must be something wrong with it, because, after all, don’t most members of “the profession” think so?
Why, it’s almost as if such philosophers don’t want the PSR to be true, and thus would rather not have their prejudice against it disturbed. Can’t imagine why that might be, can you?
Some related posts:
Marmodoro on PSR and PC
An exchange with Keith Parsons, Part IV [on “brute facts”]
Nagel and his critics, Part VI [on rationalism, PSR, and the principle of causality]
@ Jeremy Taylor
ReplyDeleteIndeed they were, although how much is a matter of debate.
@Timotheos:
ReplyDelete"For some reason, I thought you were a non-denominational Christian."
I'm kind of a 'tweener. I've previously expressed my sympathy/agreement with Rabbi Pinchas Lapide's view that Jesus is the Messiah for non-Jews and will be the Messiah for Jews when He returns, and I've defended the claim that His Resurrection was a historical event.
@ Scott
ReplyDeleteInteresting view; I'm assuming he stops short of Christ's divinity?
ReplyDeleteBrandon,
Thank you fopr your reply. You seem to be confusing a power with a modal possibility operator. You argue: "our free will is not power to violate the principle of noncontradiction." Agreed. I cannot choose X-and-not-X.
You add: "when God makes my choice determinate, ... my inability to act otherwise is just the conditional necessity of it being impossible for me to do not-X when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I do X." Here I disagree. You seem to equating "my ability to act" with the possibility of my acting. Wrong move.
My ability to act is my power to act, and it is a property of mine, whereas possibility-operators attach to propositions rather than individuals.
When you say that it is impossible for me to do not-X, even when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I do X,
all you are saying is: it is impossible that I do X and don't do X. But what I am saying is that I still have the power to do not-X, even when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I choose to do X. Without this power, I am not free. That is what defenders of libertarian freedom maintain.
Re the possibility of an instrument being free: you write that the sacraments make human persons instruments of grace without violating their freedom. But in the administration of the sacraments, human persons are instruments of grace only if they freely choose to do what the Church intends that they do.
In baptism, for instance, the person who is baptizing has to choose to pour water on the person being baptized, while saying the baptismal formula, and the person who is baptizing has to also intend to do whatever it is that the Church does. Only if the person has the requisite intention and makes the appropriate choices is grace conferred, and the conferral of that grace is logically consequent upon (not prior to) the person's free decision.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteThank you fopr your reply. You seem to be confusing a power with a modal possibility operator. You argue: "our free will is not power to violate the principle of noncontradiction." Agreed. I cannot choose X-and-not-X.
You add: "when God makes my choice determinate, ... my inability to act otherwise is just the conditional necessity of it being impossible for me to do not-X when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I do X." Here I disagree. You seem to equating "my ability to act" with the possibility of my acting. Wrong move.
My ability to act is my power to act, and it is a property of mine, whereas possibility-operators attach to propositions rather than individuals.
When you say that it is impossible for me to do not-X, even when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I do X,
all you are saying is: it is impossible that I do X and don't do X. But what I am saying is that I still have the power to do not-X, even when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I choose to do X. Without this power, I am not free. That is what defenders of libertarian freedom maintain.
Re the possibility of an instrument being free: you write that the sacraments make human persons instruments of grace without violating their freedom. But in the administration of the sacraments, human persons are instruments of grace only if they freely choose to do what the Church intends that they do.
In baptism, for instance, the person who is baptizing has to choose to pour water on the person being baptized, while saying the baptismal formula, and the person who is baptizing has to also intend to do whatever it is that the Church does. Only if the person has the requisite intention and makes the appropriate choices is grace conferred, and the conferral of that grace is logically consequent upon (not prior to) the person's free decision.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteI've been trying to think of a way to express the libertarian insight more clearly. Here's one way. The opposite of freedom is not necessity, as you imagine, but control. If someone controls my choices then by definition, they are not free, even if I happen to feel "in control" while making them.
I would also add that speaking of human agents as co-operating with God is strange, if the Bannezian view is correct. In ordinary parlance, when A co-operates with B, and and B are independent agents. But on the Bannezian view, we are God's instruments.
As I wrote earlier, Ed thinks the author-character analogy is an apt one to explain free will. Now ask yourself this: would it make sense for J.K. Rowling to get angry at one of the villains of her stories, such as Voldemort? Of course not.
Or think again of the adage: it's a poor workman that blames his tools. On the Bannezian account, we are all God's tools, or instruments: everything we think, say and do is what God wants us to think, say and do. So regardless of how willingly or unwillingly we act, it makes no sense for God to blame us.
@Matt
ReplyDeletePascal's Wager isn't an argument for God's existence.
I know. That's why I phrased what I said the way I did. Some people however do use it that way as we all know.
Hi Vincent
ReplyDeleteHow are you getting on with Scholastic Metaphysics?
Random biographizings:
ReplyDeleteI'd probably identify as more as a Scholastic as opposed to a Thomist specifically though I do endorse most major points of A-T metaphysics withe exception of Analogy upon which I remain undecided. My point of departure lies not so much with what Thomists affirm but with what they deny, for instance in terms of Natural Theology I'm far more interested in Ontological and Modal type arguments than a lot of them seem to be*. In the end other realist scholastics such as Scotus and Bonaventure have a great deal to offer as a compliment to Thomas.
I am also very interesting in early Realist Phenomenology and the possibility of clarifying and advancing Scholastic epistemology with insights drawn from there (there’s an element of ‘brute empiricism’ latent in the thought of both Aristotle and Thomas which I think would be better substituted with the Phenomenological Principle of the Given).
With regards to Religion I would understand the varying religions as expressions of a culture or person's turning towards and growing awareness of the Divine Ground of Being and leave up in the air the question of there being a specific Revelation of God to Man. In fact the area where I would most differ from Thomists is that I hold the orientation and drive towards Transcendence is in some sense fundamental to the nature of rational beings (partly because of this I’m more sympathetic to the Orthodox take on Original Sin).
I don't know if I would consider myself a Thomist (though I am on the tipping point), but I am certainly sympathetic and am not a Catholic. Just a Protestant over here minding my own business. Nonetheless, I am greatly indebted to Alasdair MacIntyre, who I believe would be considered a Thomist, and Stanley Hauerwas, who at the least is indebted to Thomistic thought.
ReplyDeleteHere I disagree. You seem to equating "my ability to act" with the possibility of my acting. Wrong move.
ReplyDeleteThis is simply incorrect as an interpretation of the Banezian argument. (And would be irrelevant anyway, since the question is not what the ability to act is but what kind of necessity is involved.)
But what I am saying is that I still have the power to do not-X, even when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I choose to do X. Without this power, I am not free.
As I explicitly pointed out, Garrigou-Lagrange explicitly affirms our ability to do otherwise; we do not at any point cease to have it. Your argument instead misplaces the necessity: You assume that the choice is already determinate, then conclude that one cannot do otherwise. This is merely conditional necessity; given that the choice is already determinate, it has already been made so by God and by my free choice as exercised by my power to do otherwise, and the necessity is simply the same one as we get when we say "If Socrates is sitting, Socrates is not not-sitting." But conditional necessity arises on any account of free will because it's actually just a logical necessity introduced by the structure of the argument -- we have made an assumption, and therefore ex hypothesi nothing can contradict it. It's logical sleight of hand. What's more, it's logical sleight of hand everyone who's read Aquinas on free will knows to look out for, because Aquinas famously, and correctly, warns against confusing this conditional necessity, which is an artifact of argument, with simple necessity actually pertaining to the ability itself.
And likewise you are simply in error that libertarianism is at issue here; the issue at hand is that your interpretation of Garrigou-Lagrange is directly contrary to what Garrigou-Lagrange actually says and your particular argument is defective both because of this and because you are making a well-known logical mistake.
@Brandon:
ReplyDeleteJust a question about terminology. Does your use of "simple necessity" and "conditional necessity" differ from de re and de dicto in some way I'm missing, or are you just trying to be clear by avoiding the Latin?
Sorry for this being off-topic, but I can't resist...
ReplyDelete@Daniel
Would you please tell me what's your take on the Orthodox position on original sin and its differences from the Catholic position?.. I get to discuss that quite a lot and there actually seems to be no such difference in the substance of what the Catholic Church and the Orthodox teach qua churches.
Of course, it is possible to point to the relative vagueness of Orthodox "Magisterium" (they wouldn't use the word, but hey), but I think it's not just that.
I, for one, think that to explain this drive there's no need to posit it's inherence - why not just assign that to grace operating, the Holy spirit blowing wherever it pleases (possibly followed, heh, by other spirits)?..
I realise that this explanation requires commitment to Christianity, though, but still, I wouldn't cite insistence on distincions between nature things supernatural and not locating this drive in nature as a kind of a mistake "Ancien theologie" makes.
P.S.
Sorry for this, I need to fix my browser.
George LeSauvage,
ReplyDeleteIt's a different distinction. De re and de dicto necessity is the distinction between (e.g.) "Some S is necessarily P" and " 'Some S is P' is necessary"; both of these are simple necessity: neither one requires any kind of conditional structure. Aquinas has a famous discussion of the distinction (without labeling each side) in ST 1.25.4 in discussing the sense in which the past is necessary. What Vincent is essentially doing, in fact, is saying, 'Assume you have already made the decision; but then you can't not make it; therefore no free will.' It's just obscured because he repeatedly leaves out the fact that Banezians hold that God makes a choice determinate by making a person's free will possible and effective, and that God's doing so does not necessitate the choice itself, so whenever God 'determines' a choice, this immediately means that we freely made a choice.
Aquinas also discusses the distinction at ST 1.14.13, on God's knowledge of future contingents, and refers to it in the context of deliberation at ST 2-1.14.6. I'm not sure where the 'simple' (or 'absolute') /'conditional' terminology comes from; I don't think it's Aquinas's own, but they've become standard labels for it.
@Greg:
ReplyDeleteWe are drifting in space. God is not talking. The cosmos is vast and old, and we are tiny. We don't even remotely have access to the biggest picture.
Would you agree that belief in a good and personal God, when push comes to shove, is a matter of weighing evidence, incoming data points, probabilities, and competing models (Bayes) as opposed to reaching deductive certainty and coherence via non-empirical system building (Thomism)?
Or do you think it's a combination of these that arrives at a larger gestalt sense capable of saying, "I just know that I see it right. I'm there. I don't doubt a good and personal God's existence. I don't know everything, but I know this one thing. I'm 100% certain."
That larger gestalt somehow, as a matter of art, weighs in the scales a huge number of factors (coherence, probability, deduction, etc.) and says, without equivocation, "Yes. A good God is real. God exists."
But then the Holocaust intrudes. Again. It shadows the theist conclusion each time it arrives into the consciousness of a 21st century person. It has to. How does one reason sensibly about theism after the Holocaust?
There must be a sufficient reason, on theism, for the Holocaust. It's not just a matter of imagining a logically possible way for a good God to have allowed the Holocaust, but of arriving at something that does not make us intuitively recoil at the explanation.
I don't see how this can be tidily compartmentalized and cordoned off from an evaluation of whether a good God exists or not. Do you, Greg, think it can be?
"I'm not a Thomist, but I have great admiration for Thomism, Scholasticism, and Aristotelianism. And I'm not a Catholic. Indeed, I have recently left the Anglican Church and even my Christianity is somewhat up in the air."
ReplyDeleteDear Jeremy Taylor: In the midst of all the (purposefully opaque?) discussion this thread seems to have become--our prayers.
Re the possibility of an instrument being free: you write that the sacraments make human persons instruments of grace without violating their freedom. But in the administration of the sacraments, human persons are instruments of grace only if they freely choose to do what the Church intends that they do.
ReplyDeleteActually this is not right; it is only in such cases that the Church can certify that a specific sacrament is valid, which is not the same thing. But it is in any case not the point in view. You have ipso facto conceded that there is a perfectly reasonable sense in which one can be a free instrument.
Wow, interesting comments. I'm, mostly, a lurker, here, content to learn from Ed's post (thank you, thank you) and from the comments. I only stick my beak in when I actually have real experience with the subject, like in the humor post, last week.
ReplyDeleteSince I am using Bayesian statistics specifically to study the degree of confidence a person has in a set-up, which is the cornerstone of humor, perhaps, I might make a short comment about applying Bayesian statistics incorrectly. The a priori may be expressed either as a simple probability or a probability distribution. Every measurement of a natural phenomenon has an uncertainty associated with it due to the inaccuracies of measurement. Thus, there is no such thing as a natural 100% certainty even in the a priori probabilities. The new information that modifies the a priori probability and is used to compute the posterior probability, likewise, has inherent uncertainties. These uncertainties are propagated to the posterior probability and, thus, there is no such thing as certainty connected with Bayesian analysis of natural phenomena.
Now, objects and propositions outside of the purely natural do not carry the burden of uncertainty in measurement and, so, is spared the necessity of being uncertain in all cases. In other words, the natural process of how the brain responds to humor bears some uncertainty associated with it because no knowledge state is ever 100% certain, but the metaphysical notion of humor may be entirely a matter of certainty. The a priori can be exactly determined, so Bayesianism applied to metaphysical entities is different than applied to natural processes.
One has to be careful about the domain in which Bayesian analysis is applied. They are not swappable.
The Chicken
What is the sufficient reason for the tyger in William Blake's poem, "The Tyger"?
ReplyDeleteBlake is bamboozled by this tyger. Knowing what he knows about soft and cuddly lambs, he doesn't arrive at a sufficient explanation for the tyger's existence.
Blake beholds the tyger's "dread hand" and "dread feet" and is astonished. The sheer and concentrated violence represented by this animal astonishes Blake. This tyger was made by God. It's a burning thing; its eyes are afire; its coat is a symbol of fire; it's in the possession of "deadly terrors."
"Did he [God] smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"
Now apply this to the Holocaust, and offer a sufficient reason: "Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the Holocaust make thee?"
@Timotheos:
ReplyDelete"Interesting view; I'm assuming he stops short of Christ's divinity?"
Yes, he does. I haven't read the book in some years, but as I recall, he regards Jesus as a human being raised bodily to heaven along the same lines as Elijah.
R. Lapide was also an Israeli diplomat and a staunch defender of Pope Pius XII. Interesting fellow.
@Vincent Torley:
ReplyDelete"[W]hat I am saying is that I still have the power to do not-X, even when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I choose to do X."
And again, as Brandon has carefully explained to you several times now, that is Fr. G-L's view as well. You are simply misunderstanding/misrepresenting it.
Santi asks (someone else):
ReplyDeleteWould you agree that belief in a good and personal God, when push comes to shove, is a matter of weighing evidence...
Jumping in. The tendency to belief in something (I would say) unreal is emotional. It certainly can't be based on the weight of any evidence as there is none. I suspect the readiness to believe what someone tells you is advantageous in a context where it is not generally exploited and thus may well be heritable. It means the individual can learn from the experience of others and does not have to reinvent the wheel.
I think of the tendency to belief as somewhat akin to smoking. I am a non-smoker (literally and metaphorically) and only tried to smoke as a kid due to peer pressure, never getting the hang of it. I admire ex-smokers who can kick the habit but don't really understand the attraction. I was introduced to religion as a kid but it never really made any sense. I have no issue with religious believers that are content with a live-and-let-live secularism. I just don't understand the attraction.
I am very interested in an explanation for life, the universe and everything but I find the current various religious explanations on offer unconvincing.
Blake's "The Tyger" poem and the Holocaust raise an interesting question: are there things that God does (or allows) that humans cannot provide a sufficient reason for, and that must therefore be treated by us, from our limited vantage, as brute facts?
ReplyDeleteIf so, how do we trust our reason? Descartes, if I recall correctly, thought he could be assured he wasn't being manipulated by an evil demon because God is good. But if God can do things that we must treat as brute facts and cannot provide sufficient reasons for, then God can do, well, anything, and still be "good" (including the Holocaust; including deceiving our senses, etc.). Doesn't the Holocaust open up a can of worms with regard to rational confidence (one's ability, on theism, to provide sufficient reasons, and believe things for good reasons)?
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteWould you agree that belief in a good and personal God, when push comes to shove, is a matter of weighing evidence, incoming data points, probabilities, and competing models (Bayes) as opposed to reaching deductive certainty and coherence via non-empirical system building (Thomism)?
Or do you think it's a combination of these that arrives at a larger gestalt sense capable of saying, "I just know that I see it right. I'm there. I don't doubt a good and personal God's existence. I don't know everything, but I know this one thing. I'm 100% certain."
I think it is more like reaching deductive certainty and coherence than weighing probabilities. The premises on which i.e. cosmological arguments rest are simply not the sort of things that one can coherently ascribe nuanced probabilities to. Does change occur? Or: consider Barry Miller's linguistic analysis of the need for the existence of contingents to be caused. This has nothing to do with Thomism per se; I have listed several philosophical theses from different subdisciplines, and have charged that you will not be able to ascribe probabilities to them in anything but an ad hoc manner. (There is evidence in this in the non-coherence of the few probabilities you've listed in this thread, as well as the theoretical implausibility of ascribing probabilities to such theses.) I have not heard your thoughts on them yet (and perhaps I won't--one might wonder if the evidence against the Bayesian approach is being ignored, so as to keep the probability of its viability comfortably high), but the Bayesian approach quite simply appears to be hopeless. (There is, as I've said, the additional issue: in philosophy, there is little distinction between conditional and non-conditional probabilities, and any attempt to judge the latter dispassionately is surely sophistical.)
I don't think that Thomism is "non-empirical" (as the other philosophical theses I've listed are not necessarily non-empirical). The considerations are based on observations of sensibles. But insofar as they claim incoherence of the contraries (i.e. the denial of change), neither are they probabilistic claims.
But then the Holocaust intrudes. Again. It shadows the theist conclusion each time it arrives into the consciousness of a 21st century person. It has to. How does one reason sensibly about theism after the Holocaust?
The fixation on the Holocaust kind of puzzles me. Generally I would think of cases of natural evil as the only serious challenges to theism. Evils caused by humans are prima facie not at all odd under the assumption of Christianity. (Or theism, but if Christianity is a species of theism, then we can assume it for the sake of argument here.)
The Holocaust poses no unique problems over and above the vanilla case of human evil. It is like a brutal rape on a much, much larger scale. That is why it strikes me as interesting that the dispassionate and rational Santi Tafarella is making an appeal that is so plainly an appeal to emotion.
There must be a sufficient reason, on theism, for the Holocaust. It's not just a matter of imagining a logically possible way for a good God to have allowed the Holocaust, but of arriving at something that does not make us intuitively recoil at the explanation.
There is a sufficient reason for the Holocaust on theism: Humans are terribly, terribly depraved.
I don't see how this can be tidily compartmentalized and cordoned off from an evaluation of whether a good God exists or not. Do you, Greg, think it can be?
Again, it strikes me as odd that the example you can't get off your mind is one of the types of evil that does not call for anything resembling an ad hoc explanation.
@Alan Fox:
ReplyDeleteYour smoking analogy is interesting. I like it.
A friend recently said to me regarding a different matter, "Perhaps it's not a problem, but a peptide." In other words, there are temperamental/chemical/neuro-synaptic responses to things that might be driving our reason in ways barely discerned by us consciously.
It's a tricky subject, how the brain parallel processes competing models and probabilities for us very quickly in each moment, and calculates outside of conscious awareness what's going to make sense to us.
A neuron fires, and suddenly we're aware of a desire to believe in x or y. "It makes sense." Or we get a felt sense that this or that is not right, and we become especially cautious as we're reading.
There's this larger gestalt at work as we reason.
This is why I'm very suspicious of people who express 100% certainty with regard to controversial matters, denigrating people's motives or intelligence if they can't wake up and see the truth exactly as someone else sees it.
There's a great deal of gambling, modeling, probability processing, and weighing going on beneath the surface of consciousness, even when we're overtly imagining ourselves focusing exclusively on narrow deductive problems.
@ Alan Fox
ReplyDeleteThe tendency to belief in something (I would say) unreal is emotional.
How does one square this with the history of science, wherein people have believed in numerous entities for non-emotional reasons? (Or was belief in phlogiston fueled, in general, by emotion?)
Or is it just an attempt at armchair psychology, a none-to-subtle attempt to ascribe irrationality to theists? Coming from the guy who knew there was something wrong with Aquinas's argument before he had ever read it, in spite of admitting his lack of competence in formal logic and argumentation? No belief fueled on emotion there.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteI'm in a hurry this morning, and won't be back to the thread till perhaps this evening, but you wrote:
"There is a sufficient reason for the Holocaust on theism: Humans are terribly, terribly depraved."
But God made those depraved humans. God did that. Just like he made Blake's "tyger." I'm asking you not to cordone off God from responsibility for making a cosmos where the Holocaust could be a part of it and still be good.
I'll look forward to your response this evening if you choose to provide one. : )
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteBut God made those depraved humans. God did that. Just like he made Blake's "tyger." I'm asking you not to cordone off God from responsibility for making a cosmos where the Holocaust could be a part of it and still be good.
First, the scale of evil committed in the Holocaust does not provide any unique difficulty over and above the fact of human evil.
I would simply note that humans either possess libertarian free will or compatibilist free will. The only one of those consistent with Christianity (which is, I'll claim, consistent with the existence of a good God) is libertarian free will, and the existence of beings with libertarian free will implies the possibility of any humanly possible atrocity. (If compatibilism is true, then no more evil would have been committed than there is in a violent video game.) There is nothing odd about atrocities happening on theism.
(Even with those considerations, I do not find the occurrence of the Holocaust intuitively implausible. I believe there are other factors that should mitigate the implausibility further. Atheists making the argument from evil generally ignore the possibility of afterlife, wherein those brutalized may be rewarded and those guilty may be justly punished. Discussions are generally detached, as well, from the writings of the saints and their attitudes toward e.g. martyrdom and suffering for Christ's sake. Given atheism, concern for the afterlife or value in suffering appears to be positively immoral; but one can't assume atheism if one is making this argument.)
Back when I was an atheist, I spent a lot of time around Catholics. Until I was very close (timewise) to abandoning atheism, I did not much doubt my atheisms. It just seemed very obvious to me. But before coming a theist, I never found the argument from evil very compelling. In the context of a religion the central event of which was the unjust crucifixion of God in human form, and which promises justice in the afterlife, making an argument from evil has always struck me as strange and out of touch with what theists actually believe. I know people's intuitions about this differ a lot, and since talking more with other atheists I realize that it is a big factor in many of their views.
ReplyDelete@Scott
ReplyDelete"Interesting view; I'm assuming he stops short of Christ's divinity?"
Yes, he does. I haven't read the book in some years, but as I recall, he regards Jesus as a human being raised bodily to heaven along the same lines as Elijah.
What does he/you make out of Christ's own claims to divinity? Are they misconstruals? If you prefer a link instead of a lengthy answer, that will do! :)
----
@All
I'm an Agnostic turned Protestant turned Protestant Thomist for what it's worth (much thanks to the accessible works of Feser). I've given myself ten years to make the final step to Rome. Still a lot of knowledge to be explored and digested, but I find myself more and more often siding with Catholics in public debates these days.
Greg said...
ReplyDelete@ Alan Fox
The tendency to belief in something (I would say) unreal is emotional.
How does one square this with the history of science, wherein people have believed in numerous entities for non-emotional reasons? (Or was belief in phlogiston fueled, in general, by emotion?)
Phlogiston was a hypothesis to explain an observed phenomenon.
Or is it just an attempt at armchair psychology, a none-to-subtle attempt to ascribe irrationality to theists? Coming from the guy who knew there was something wrong with Aquinas's argument before he had ever read it, in spite of admitting his lack of competence in formal logic and argumentation? No belief fueled on emotion there.
Actually, I am beginning to like the real Aquinas; his own writing gives a much better impression than, say, Feser's interpretation in "Scholastic Metaphysics". Of course, his "five ways" are pretty daft but that is a minor issue and the point that these arguments are unnecessary for the faithful and wasted on the faithless probably explains why he didn't put much effort into them.
'Phlogiston was a hypothesis to explain an observed phenomenon.'
ReplyDeleteYes, but it was still 'unreal', right?
Now, how is this for a proposal:
ReplyDeleteWhat if Alan and Santi are really tests from God Himself to test humility?
Glancing at the charade about Bayes, and watching a person pretending to read Aquinas and calling the Ways "daft", even after repeatedly failing to display to other even a faint suspicion of understanding them, it's pretty obvious how this might enduce a dangerous sense of pride and conceit in people who actually have performed some honest attempts at doing so?
Not even mentioning the shocking news of Holocaust as if the knowledge of horrendous human evil weren't already well proven before the sins of modern unlightenment.
It seems like the main criteria for choosing an epistemology, is change, not truth. Much like complaining that 2+2 cannot really be 4 because the Ancients believed so as well, even without the knowledge of quantum theory.
I mean: What's the probabilty of all of this being genuine, even after this recent holocaust of reason?
'Of course, his "five ways" are pretty daft but that is a minor issue and the point that these arguments are unnecessary for the faithful and wasted on the faithless probably explains why he didn't put much effort into them.'
ReplyDeleteWait what?
Surely the 5 ways, whatever you think of them, are carefully-written arguments. Calling them 'daft' seems pretty odd.
Surely they're not 'unnecessary for the faithful' because they're a central point in the Thomism of Feser and co.
If they're 'wasted on the faithless' then that is the fault of the faithless, not the arguments.
Finally, do you really think Aquinas 'didn't put much effort' into the 5 ways? Whatever you think of Aquinas, surely his prose is carefully put together, precise and economical with words.
Arthur said...
ReplyDelete'Phlogiston was a hypothesis to explain an observed phenomenon.'
Yes, but it was still 'unreal', right?
Combustion is an observable phenomenon and the phlogiston theory was an attempt to explain it that was wrong. What's not real?
@IrishThomist
ReplyDeleteI apologize, my response was more to Daniel (I believe it was Daniel) who used that quote from you rather selectively.
'Combustion is an observable phenomenon and the phlogiston theory was an attempt to explain it that was wrong. What's not real?'
ReplyDeleteThe phlogiston.
@Daniel Joachim:
ReplyDeleteSorry, I really don't remember what R. Lapide had to say on that subject. It's been a decade or more since I read his book and I don't have a copy of it any more (I lent it out to someone who emailed me asking to borrow it, and I never got it back).
Santi,
ReplyDeleteYou've manage to mangle Bayes' Theorem, Wittgenstein, and now William Blake
"And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart
And when thy heart began to beat.
What dread hand? & What dread feet?"
The dread hand and dread feet here are not the Tyger's but that maker of the Tyger. In the poem from Songs of Innocence concerning the Lamb, Blake writes
"Dost thou know who made thee
...I'll tell thee
He is called by thy name
For he calls himself a lamb."
The poem has nothing to do with the softness and cuddliness of lambs. A theme runs through much of Blake's work, expressed quite explicitly in certain works as an outright disdain for Hume, Voltaire, and other "deists" of his day. This is the general insufficiency of unaided reason, and the despair that is man's "eternal lot" should his perception be limited to the senses, which "distort the heavens from pole to pole." Elsewhere he says that "God becomes as we are, so that we may be as he is."
At any rate, I think it is not too difficult to show that Blake is not too bothered by the problem of evil. The Holocaust, if his words in Jerusalem are any indication, he would have blamed on the deists (e.g. those men who had an ideology somewhat like yours).
You seem to have a low view of the literacy of the commenters, or else too high a view of your own.
@Daniel Joachim
ReplyDelete"It seems like the main criteria for choosing an epistemology, is change, not truth."
And, of course, whatever changes is changed by something else...
@Matt
ReplyDeleteHaha, I actually considered on whether to include that one.
And if only there were some argument from change to ultimate truth. If only...
But who wouldn't opt to be a modern Heraclitus instead?
:)
Alas, most do choose to live as if each of them had a private intelligence of his own.
ReplyDeleteI find all these testimonies (for lack of a better word) regarding Christianity and Catholicism to be quite interesting. I hadn't been aware of the diversity of viewpoints we have on here.
ReplyDeleteFor what it is worth, I am a cradle Catholic just starting to get his feet wet in Thomism. If I may ask, to those who are not Catholic yet have some inclinations toward Catholicism, what is the draw for you?
@ ccmnxc
ReplyDelete"If I may ask, to those who are not Catholic yet have some inclinations toward Catholicism, what is the draw for you?"
Technically I'm still in the process of converting, so I'll give some of my reasons. I have never been one to like the divisions in Christianity; if they must exist on the principle of real doctrinal differences (ie. the other party is somehow heretical), then so be it, but otherwise we should be united.
The realization that the differences between Catholics and Protestants on Soteriology are much overblown was the first thing that got me looking into the issue (I came from a Methodist background, so there really was hardly any difference)
Overall, I'd say the rest was just clearing through the various minutia; reading through the church fathers helped confirm for me that they indeed were in support of the more "Catholic" interpretations of scriptures.
So there wasn't particularly one thing that drew me towards the Catholic church; it was more of seeing how all the various pieces of Catholic doctrine worked together as a system.
The one exception here for me was Mary; I very much liked the idea of asking for saints' prayers, and I took it that if the Catholics were right on Mary in general, she would be a big deal.
@ Alan Fox
ReplyDeletePhlogiston was a hypothesis to explain an observed phenomenon.
Redescribing it does not really change the point... phlogiston was 'something unreal' in which people believed, not out of emotion, so it is not the case that "The tendency to belief in something (I would say) unreal is emotional."
Actually, I am beginning to like the real Aquinas; his own writing gives a much better impression than, say, Feser's interpretation in "Scholastic Metaphysics". Of course, his "five ways" are pretty daft but that is a minor issue and the point that these arguments are unnecessary for the faithful and wasted on the faithless probably explains why he didn't put much effort into them.
Well, I'd be happy to hear your now-informed opinion on how Feser stumbles as an interpreter of Aquinas. (I'm also surprised you branched out. One would have to go beyond Summa theologiae to be able to make a substantial comparison of Aquinas's writing to Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics, since ST deals mainly with natural and dogmatic theology, whereas Scholastic Metaphysics deals with... metaphysics.)
As far as the five ways... all I can say, Alan, is that you are incapable of subtlety. But you try so hard.
@ Alan Fox
ReplyDeleteCombustion is an observable phenomenon and the phlogiston theory was an attempt to explain it that was wrong. What's not real?
I now see you plan to be dense on this one.
Change is an observable phenomenon and the unmoved mover is an attempt to explain it. If it's wrong, then people still believe in the unmoved mover for reasons, rather than emotions.
Phlogiston is an entity that was posited but doesn't actually exist. People, when they did believe that it existed, did not do so on the basis of emotion.
@ccmnxc:
ReplyDelete"If I may ask, to those who are not Catholic yet have some inclinations toward Catholicism, what is the draw for you?"
Really, the main attraction for me is just that there seems to be good reason to think it's true. (That reply may sound flippant, but I don't mean it that way.) David Berlinski somewhere describes himself as waiting for the gift of faith; I could say something similar.
I could just as well have said (and this wouldn't be flippant either) that the main attractions are Aquinas and Palestrina, not necessarily in that order.
@Timeotheos:
ReplyDelete"I very much liked the idea of asking for saints' prayers[.]"
I've never understood why that practice is so problematic to so many Protestants. A saint is just somebody who we can be sure is already in heaven; why is asking for his or her prayers any different from asking a friend to pray for you?
@Georgy Mancz,
ReplyDeleteOkay my understanding might be a little off here as it's been about three years since I looked into this. My information is based largely on Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church - there's also a book by Fr. John Romanides called The Ancestral Sin which is also quite good on this. So here goes. the Western take has the Paradisiacal state as something beyond our natural capacity which we were given and then denied due to transgressions; the Eastern view by contrast holds death and Man's separation from God as a result of Man's cutting oneself off and falling into the power of darkness (there is usually some talk of Divine Energies at this point). As I always understood it connects with the two different Atonement models the 'Western' being the Ransom and subsequently Satisfaction theories on which Christ becomes incarnate and dies to pay for our sins and the 'Eastern' being the Christus Victor in which Christ's death is not so much a paying for our sins as it a way to break the metaphysical hold cosmic Evil has over the souls of man. The latter has an appeal to me as it makes the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection not just an event to alter the eschatological fate of one species but a kind of Cosmic transmutation in which the entire of Creation is remade anew.
In the end I don't accept either view as the idea of Original Sin is something for which as far as I can see there is no philosophical evidence or argument. With due respect to Christianity which I admire greatly in many respects that aspect of it (Original Sin) sometimes seems like a way to erect a blockade between Man and God. Also I cannot shake of the impression that if to be born is to be destined for damnation or the powers of evil until proven otherwise then humanity should cease to reproduce.
I, for one, think that to explain this drive there's no need to posit it's inherence - why not just assign that to grace operating, the Holy spirit blowing wherever it pleases (possibly followed, heh, by other spirits)?..
That is definitely a plausible stance I think. My reason for not doing so would be because I’d probably follow Eric Voegelin to the effect that it lies in the very nature of reason to turn to the Divine Ground, in fact it is from that very tension reason arises. So a rational being that wasn’t by nature orientating towards Transcendence would be a contradiction, something akin to a Rational Material Soul or a Square-Circle.
Santi Tafarella said...
ReplyDeleteWe are drifting in space. God is not talking. The cosmos is vast and old, and we are tiny. We don't even remotely have access to the biggest picture.
Oh.My.God. Someone actually used the ‘the cosmos is too big’ argument against Theism.
Just like he made Blake's "tyger." I'm asking you not to cordone off God from responsibility for making a cosmos where the Holocaust could be a part of it and still be good.
And we have repeatedly asked you to affirm what it precisely about the Holocaust or anything else for that matter that makes it objectively Good or Evil. All you do is appeal to a sense of Herd-Morality which is meaningless on your own terms and unworthy of our time.
Santi,
ReplyDeleteI see you are now butchering Blake. Blake was a Platonist-Hermeticist. His tyger is all tigers and it is none. It is the very essence and idea of a tiger.
The Tyger is a sister poem to The Lamb. They are meant to show the contraries of existence which God reconciles. It is not meant to represent atheistic doubts about God's goodness.
But then the Holocaust intrudes. Again. It shadows the theist conclusion each time it arrives into the consciousness of a 21st century person. It has to. How does one reason sensibly about theism after the Holocaust?
How can the holocaust simply as a mantra shadow the theist's conclusion? Where is your argument?
You keep banging on about guarding against emotions and biases, but your entire point here is just an appeal to emotion without a hint of an argument. You are a drooling moron, I'm sorry. Can I second those who told you to go away.
Matt Sheen,
ReplyDeleteIt is highly ironic that Santi chose Blake, as, along with Coleridge, he was one of the most explicitly Platonic and anti-materialist of the English romantic poets.
Although he sometimes used obscure imagery, Blake's poems and thought are fascinating to a Platonist like myself, especially as an Englishman.
I very much recommend Kathleen Raine writings on Blake.
@ Scott,
ReplyDeleteWell in your position I think now one needs must pray, and pray constantly, for the gift of faith. I know that I pray everyday that He might increase it in me. For there is nothing more important that a deep committed relationship with God. This will I suppose feel quite odd, at least initially, but practice brings ease.
Your mention of both Palestrina and Aquinas together is revealing, it seems. Would it be correct to say that in Aquinas you find intellectual satisfaction (theism) and in Palestrina, a deep sense of (philosophically supported) transcendent Beauty whereby one is touched at a deeper level than the intellect, and lends support to a conviction that Christianity, as such, is true? Excuse me if that is impolite, and assumes too much, but it mirrors my own case, and I am, I am proud to say, a "cradle Catholic." But I'll stop gas-bagging here.
I'll certainly keep you in my prayers, since you seem so close to having it all. God bless you, friend.
Jeremy,
ReplyDeletethanks, I'll have to check out Raine.
And yes, Blake is a weird one, but I guess the obscurity of his work lends it to being claimed by all sorts of funny folks. Using the Tyger as a poetic articulation of the problem of evil, however, got me a bit miffed, since that's about as shallow a reading as one could wring from it.
sorry... I left a statement a bit unqualified up there
ReplyDeleteI meant,
"Blake is a weird one for an agnostic/atheist to pick in support of their own position"
especially given that some of his least obscure passages are those in which he is excoriating the atheists of his day.
@DeusPrimusEst:
ReplyDelete"Your mention of both Palestrina and Aquinas together is revealing, it seems. Would it be correct to say that in Aquinas you find intellectual satisfaction (theism) and in Palestrina, a deep sense of (philosophically supported) transcendent Beauty whereby one is touched at a deeper level than the intellect, and lends support to a conviction that Christianity, as such, is true?"
It would, and you've put it nicely. And thank you for your advice and support.
@ Scott
ReplyDelete"I've never understood why that practice is so problematic to so many Protestants. A saint is just somebody who we can be sure is already in heaven; why is asking for his or her prayers any different from asking a friend to pray for you?"
Well, nowadays it is mostly just never thought about; at best, they'll say that scripture has no example of it, so we have no doctrinal grounds to say it is permissible (with the anti-Catholics usually throwing something in about the old testament condemnations of necromancy)
Historically speaking, attacking Catholics about "worshiping the saints" and "putting intermediaries before God" has been a time-honored Protestant practice, and some of the vestiges of that are still running around.
And to be fair to them, some of the Marian prayers especially use language that might be seen as tending towards that direction; for instance, Mary is often referred to as "Queen of heaven", "advocate", or "counselor", the last 2 titles being usually reserved for the Holy Spirit, among other things.
At this point though, a lot of the reason why they don't is probably that it is just too otherworldly for them; I know that certainly in my case, abstractly considering the idea was one thing, but actually performing the task was hard for me to get used to. It took me about a month before I finally got the hang of it.
Timotheos,
ReplyDeleteWhat is your opinion of the Second Vatican Council?
There are various reasons I don't consider the Roman Church a viable option for me (including a preference for spiritual and philosophical approach of the Orthodox Church, as much as I admire Aquinas and the Schoolmen), but misgivings about the Second Vatican Council are sort of the nail in the coffin for me (obviously, there are parishes which don't accept much of that Council - either within or without mainstream Catholicism, but I don't want to get sucked back into such internecine conflicts).
Greg:
ReplyDeleteYou said that arriving at belief in God is "more like reaching deductive certainty and coherence than weighing probabilities. The premises on which i.e. cosmological arguments rest are simply not the sort of things that one can coherently ascribe nuanced probabilities to."
What I hear you saying is that there are deductive proofs for God's existence that are for you as convincing as a mathematical proof (such as 2 + 2 = 4).
Now my question then becomes: Does it at all matter to you that mathematicians and mathematically trained philosophers do not universally share your ability to see how tightly reasoned these deductive proofs are?
Some see them as compelling in the way that you do, but most don't. You don't get these sorts of disagreements when a proof in math is achieved, but you get them here, in the realm of theology and metaphysical philosophy.
So does that data point simply not count for you? What makes you believe you apprehend the deductive syllogisms right, even as other equally or better trained logicians apprehend them wrong?
I'm not promoting a herd mentality. You can believe things against the herd. But shouldn't it bring your confidence down with regard to the conclusion to some degree?
Put another way, if the consensus of trained philosophers--or at least a substantial majority--find themselves unconvinced by Thomistic proofs for God's existence, shouldn't that at least moderate your confidence in your own judgment a little bit?
@ Scott
ReplyDeleteAnd it of course goes without saying that you have my prayers as well.
@ Jeremy Taylor
"What is your opinion of the Second Vatican Council?"
Well I haven't set down and gone through the council, so I can't talk much more about it than in a general sense. Everytime I've seen it brought up, it seems like it is being used to justify everything from using Ritz crackers as the matter in the sacrament to machine-gunning down Pope Francis, so I have a hard time to know what to make of it quite honestly.
Santi, alongside all the rest of his sophisms, is engaged in that perennial Gnu routine of implying that the theist cannot be 100% certain, therefore naturalism or materialism is true. This seems to be an important undertone of his comments, at least.
ReplyDeleteTo say that we cannot be 100% sure that God exists, or a particular religion is correct, doesn't make scientific naturalism that much more likely to be true.
In fact, many of us here find naturalism and materialism to be deeply problematic and whether we can be sure God exists or not doesn't change that much: it doesn't solve problems of intention, qualia, indeterminacy of meaning, nominalism, and so on for naturalism and materialism.
Out of curiosity Jeremy Taylor, what do you find particularly problematic about Vatican II? If anything, it would seem like Vatican I would be where your issues would lie.
ReplyDelete@Timotheos:
ReplyDelete"And it of course goes without saying that you have my prayers as well."
It does, but I appreciate your saying it anyway.
@Jeremy Taylor:
"To say that we cannot be 100% sure that God exists, or a particular religion is correct, doesn't make scientific naturalism that much more likely to be true."
That's a good point. Even if somehow we couldn't be 100% sure that, say, 2 + 2 was 4, it would still be possible for us to be certain that it wasn't 0.
Timotheos,
ReplyDeleteWell, obviously I don't accept the Roman Church's position on the Papacy as a total truth. But I don't begrudge the position of the Pope within Roman Church itself.
Vatican I actually seems to be a courageous refusal to submit to modernism by the Roman Church, which I can only admire.
Like you I cannot claim a detailed knowledge of Vatican II, but I'm certainly worried it may have allowed modernist forces power in the Church. My understanding, for example, is Teilhard De Chardin was well respected by many of the leading voices at the Council. And what happened to the Tridentine Mass was a sad affair, as is the subsequent decline of Neo-Scholasticism.
I can say nothing categorical on it, but if I were interested in joining the Roman Church (I lean more towards Orthodoxy, anyway), I would have to thoroughly assuage my fears about what happened to the Church at this Council and afterwards.
Greg:
ReplyDeleteYou said: "I have listed several philosophical theses from different subdisciplines, and have charged that you will not be able to ascribe probabilities to them in anything but an ad hoc manner."
I agree with you. You won't get an argument about that from me. When Bayes hits the end of the line, we have no other choice but to switch gears to description and analysis of the vocabularies being used. What language game is being played?
There is a temptation here, obviously. When a person tries to move beyond language-game description to ultimate explanation, she imagines herself a scientist, when what is actually needed is a literary critic.
I take it as inevitable that someone will accuse me of misunderstanding Wittgenstein here, but I think this quote of his from The Blue Book is saying that the folly of metaphysical system building (and comparison) is to confuse non-empirical vocabularies with ultimate truth:
"Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything."
In other words, non-empirical metaphysical system building (and evaluating one system against another) is not science, it's art. If you can't reality test, it's literary criticism.
That's why I keep bringing up the Holocaust and neuroscience. And why I asked you about philosopher consensus. Does anything inform the Thomistic system from the outside?
Santi,
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'm only going to try this one more time because you clearly aren't listening.
You started by complaining that we all, especially theists, must try to not let our emotions and biases get in the way of our reason.
You appear to have ended by saying we must assess our reasoning against our pre-rational emotional intuitions. So, you appear to have done a complete 180 degree turn around.
I don't think you really know what you are talking about and are just grabbing at whatever straws you think make passable points against theists.
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteWhat I hear you saying is that there are deductive proofs for God's existence that are for you as convincing as a mathematical proof (such as 2 + 2 = 4).
Well as someone with a mathematical background, I should insist that not all mathematical proofs are equally convincing. I should even admit that when I am being lazy I tend to just assume that my textbooks get it right.
However, what I said was not that I regard Thomistic arguments as being as deductively obvious as a mathematical proof. I said they are in a class of philosophical arguments to which one cannot coherently ascribe probabilities. I do not find preference utilitarianism coherent, but if a preference utilitarian pressed me, I could not show him that it was false in the same way that I could show a student of mathematics that there is an error in his proof.
Does it at all matter to you that mathematicians and mathematically trained philosophers do not universally share your ability to see how tightly reasoned these deductive proofs are?
I am fairly interested in the fact that philosophy almost always results in stalemate. (Bill Vallicella writes on that topic pretty frequently.) There are, to be sure, many reasons. In mathematics, people are not viscerally attached to their results. (And you find that in the few cases where they are, and where the proofs become sufficiently complex, there can be some disagreement and conflict.) In philosophy, people do get pretty attached to their results and may have non-cognitive motivations for holding them. My charge has been that it is nonetheless not coherent to ascribe probabilities to a large class of philosophical theses.
Put another way, if the consensus of trained philosophers--or at least a substantial majority--find themselves unconvinced by Thomistic proofs for God's existence, shouldn't that at least moderate your confidence in your own judgment a little bit?
Sure, but I think you've got the wrong guy here. The way I view Thomistic proofs is I hope clearer from the above. It doesn't mean that I think there is some formula to them such that anyone who reads it ought to believe unquestioningly that the proof is sound. I do not think anyone's reservations about them can be coherently quantified. (Similarly, the fact that Peter Singer is a pretty smart guy is a consideration in my rejection of preference utilitarianism. That doesn't mean it would make any sense for me to ascribe a nonzero probability to it.)
I don't know, maybe I just don't regard 'certainty' in Descartes' sense as the paradigm epistemic quality.
Greg, can I just say that you have the patience of a Saint, though I doubt it will be rewarded in this current exchange.
ReplyDelete@ Santi
ReplyDeleteWhen Bayes hits the end of the line, we have no other choice but to switch gears to description and analysis of the vocabularies being used. What language game is being played?
I don't know Santi. Perhaps this is to engage in abstruse, confused metaphysical speculation, but if I had to conjecture why no one is taking you seriously, it's because you repeatedly and shamelessly stack the deck in favor of cool dispassionate agnostic indifference (to quote Anscombe on Hume: "with which [you are] in love"). It doesn't matter whether or not you're misinterpreting Wittgenstein; what matters is that you are appealing to controversial philosophical theses to judge every other thesis, and when people point out the problems with that approach... you just keep on going. Here you give us the algorithm: Apply Bayes. If that doesn't work, apply Wittgenstein. After that, surely no metaphysical claim will have survived.
Just take any of the many analytic metaphysicians who have been writing in spite of Wittgenstein for the last half-century. John Searle, for instance. He is notorious for insisting that his interlocutors' positions do not make sense, that they do not understand his, that certain theses obvious to him should be obvious to others. He engages in systematic philosophy that would make Wittgenstein cringe. But it doesn't really make sense to expect him to regard it as plausible that (for instance) his theory of speech acts is only probably true. These sorts of judgments just make no sense in the context of most philosophical claims.
@ Jeremy
ReplyDeleteGreg, can I just say that you have the patience of a Saint, though I doubt it will be rewarded in this current exchange.
Woops, I didn't see this before I posted... although maybe you should take it back now.
For a case of a straightforward mathematical problem that resulted in quite a lot of disagreement and ill will: Monty Hall.
ReplyDelete@Greg:
ReplyDelete"Monty Hall."
Do you know, until you posted this, I didn't realize that I'd misspelled his name in the other thread where I brought up that puzzle? (Although his birth name was in fact "Monte"—"Monte Halparin," in fact.)
@ Scott
ReplyDeleteDo you know, until you posted this, I didn't realize that I'd misspelled his name in the other thread where I brought up that puzzle? (Although his birth name was in fact "Monte"—"Monte Halparin," in fact.)
I didn't know either of those things. But now I do!
Hi Brandon,
ReplyDeleteYou write: "As I explicitly pointed out, Garrigou-Lagrange explicitly affirms our ability to do otherwise; we do not at any point cease to have it."
Since you seem to think I've misunderstood the Banezian argument, I'll quote the Catholic Encyclopedia's article, "Controversies on Grace" (at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06710a.htm ):
"The first objection is the danger that in the Thomistic system the freedom of the will cannot be maintained as against efficacious grace, a difficulty which by the way is not unperceived by the Thomists themselves. For since the essence of freedom does not lie in the contingency of the act nor in the merely passive indifference of the will, but rather in its active indifference — to will or not to will, to will this and not that — so it appears impossible to reconcile the physical predetermination of a particular act by an alien will and the active spontaneousness of the determination by the will itself; nay more, they seem to exclude each other as utterly as do determinism and indeterminism, necessity and freedom. The Thomists answer this objection by making a distinction between sensus compositus and sensus divisus, but the Molinists insist that this distinction is not correctly applicable here. For just as a man who is bound to a chair cannot be said to be sitting freely as long as his ability to stand is thwarted by indissoluble cords, so the will predetermined by efficacious grace to a certain thing cannot be said to retain the power to dissent, especially since the will, predetermined to this or that act, has not the option to receive or disregard the premotion, since this depends simply and solely on the will of God. And does not the Council of Trent (Sess. VI, cap. v, can. iv) describe efficacious grace as a grace which man "can reject", and from which he "can dissent"? Consequently, the very same grace, which de facto is efficacious, might under other circumstances be inefficacious."
(To be continued...)
Hi Brandon,
ReplyDeleteBack again. The article continues:
"Herein the second objection to the Thomistic distinction between gratia efficax and gratia sufficiens is already indicated. If both graces are in their nature and intrinsically different, it is difficult to see how a grace can be really sufficient which requires another grace to complete it. Hence, it would appear that the Thomistic gratia sufficiens is in reality a gratia insufficiens. The Thomists cannot well refer the inefficacy of this grace to the resistance of the free will, for this act of resistance must be traced to a proemotio physica as inevitable as the efficacious grace.
Moreover, a third great difficulty lies in the fact that sin, as an act, demands the predetermining activity of the "first mover", so that God would according to this system appear to be the originator of sinful acts. The Thomistic distinction between the entity of sin and its malice offers no solution of the difficulty. For since the Divine influence itself, which premoves ad unum, both introduces physically the sin as an act and entity, and also, by the simultaneous withholding of the opposite premotion to a good act, makes the sin itself an inescapable fatality, it is not easy to explain why sin cannot be traced back to God as the originator. Furthermore, most sinners commit their misdeeds, not with a regard to the depravity, but for the sake of the physical entity of the acts, so that ethics must, together with the wickedness, condemn the physical entity of sin."
Convinced? Game, set, match?
"For a case of a straightforward mathematical problem that resulted in quite a lot of disagreement and ill will: Monty Hall."
ReplyDeleteI know, right? People really get angry about that one. In the course of a conversation about the problem, I witnessed a friend worked up to shouting that the probability in the end must be 50%.
@Vincent Torley:
ReplyDelete"Convinced? Game, set, match?"
Why? Because Fr. Joseph Pohle sympathetically summarizes Molinist objections to Aquinas?
How in the world do you suppose that could possibly affect the claim that you've incorrectly represented Fr. G-L's own views?
Vincent,
ReplyDeleteyou seem to think I've misunderstood the Banezian argument
(1) What I've explicitly said that I've thought -- there's no 'seem' about it -- is that you are attributing to Garrigou-Lagrange things he explicitly denies and claiming he does not hold things he explicitly says he does, and that your argument against Banezianism involves a logical error.
(2) Unfortunately, however, even if we set that aside, it is a wonder to me that you think that your quotations are even relevant. First of all, as anyone who reads the passage quoted can see immediately, the discussion is specifically of efficacious grace, not a general discussion of premotion. This is pretty obvious in particular given the title of the section from which it comes. And efficacious grace, especially with respect to the indefectibility of the saints in heaven, has particular features (and potential pitfalls) of its own that cannot be fully generalized.
Second, the passage from which you have bolded sentences in your first comment is not even Banezian; it is explicitly a Molinist argument against a specific argument put forward by Banezians on a specific issue. Unsurprisingly, it does not look like what Banezians say about their position but like what some Molinists have tried to argue the Banezian position can after full analysis be shown to imply.
Third, your entire second comment is irrelevant to any argument I've made -- neither of these are actual statements of the Banezian position, being explicitly summarized possible criticisms such as one finds in encyclopedia articles, and neither of them address any argument I have actually made.
So what we've discovered is (1) you have provided nothing that shows that your interpretation of Garrigou-Lagrange is correct; (2) you have provided nothing to correct the logical error of your previous argument, in which you conflated conditional necessity with simple necessity; (3) you have compounded your error by taking summaries of criticisms of Banezianism as confirmations that you were correctly stating the Banezian position itself; (4) and you have absurdly tried to claim victory by quoting things that are irrelevant to the questions at hand: Is your interpretation of Garrigou-Lagrange correct? Does your argument against Banezianism make the error of conflating conditional necessity and simple necessity? The answers are still No and Yes, respectively.
And I see Scott pointed out the obvious problems, too, while I was still writing.
ReplyDeleteGreg: Back when I was an atheist, I spent a lot of time around Catholics. Until I was very close (timewise) to abandoning atheism, I did not much doubt my atheisms. It just seemed very obvious to me. But before coming a theist, I never found the argument from evil very compelling. In the context of a religion the central event of which was the unjust crucifixion of God in human form, and which promises justice in the afterlife, making an argument from evil has always struck me as strange and out of touch with what theists actually believe. I know people's intuitions about this differ a lot, and since talking more with other atheists I realize that it is a big factor in many of their views.
ReplyDeleteI have seen that the problem of evil genuinely plagues Christians also. The problem of evil never even made sense to me, but atheists generally seem to think it decisively refutes theism and some theists seriously struggle with their faith because of it. I guess I am simply not emotional enough to get it.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the responses. They were smart and helpful, and I won't burden you with another question.
Georgy Mancz: Does anybody know when exactly people started to put mathematical values to their beliefs qua psychological en mass? When did this nonsense become a fashion?
ReplyDeleteIt does seem to have become all the rage in the last several decades… presumably because it turns a guess into a Scientificalistic™ fact! As long as one isn’t boorish enough to ask to see the actual calculations, let alone question the foundation for making such calculations in the first place.
Even legitimate application of probability often seem to ignore their necessary metaphysical backgrounds; I’ve never figured out how statistics are supposed to apply to a single event — as mentioned in other comments, the probability is either 0 or 1. (And sure, “probabilities” are typically epistemological, but what exactly are they measuring then?)
@Matt
ReplyDeleteThats fine.
@All
This has went way off topic from the OP again, and again someone is 'but the Holocaust'ing [Santi I think].
This has come up before. So if people don't want a history lesson maybe go off and read some unbiased books on the matter.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteIt has been 30 years since I read Garrigou-Lagrange, and I do not have a copy of Volume II of his book on hand to quote from. I notice that you haven't provided any quotes either, and nor has Scott. You claim that "Garrigou-Lagrange doesn't think choices are determined by circumstances beyond our control." I am quite prepared to grant that he thinks our choices are within our control - given his definition of the word "control." However, he also holds that the human will is an instrument moved by God, and that the choices we make are the choices that God (as primary agent) has decided we shall make.
You seem to be using the word "determine" in a different way from the way I use it. Let me be clear: when I say that A determines B, I simply mean that A infallibly makes B happen. That's what it means in normal parlance. The fact that G-L uses "determine" differently in his book(a point which I'll concede as I can no longer check his work) is of no concern to me.
You write: "On Garrigou-Lagrange's account, as indeed every Banezian account, determination of choices is cooperative; the determination of the choice is from God as principal cause and us as subordinate cause. Given this, your conclusion is a non sequitur; the choice is not made determinate 'by circumstances beyond my control'."
But since God's decisions are beyond our control, and since these decisions are ultimately what makes us choose the way we do, it logically follows that on G-L's view, it is indeed circumstances beyond our control - namely, Divine fiat - which ultimately (if not proximately) makes us choose the way we do. If you want to claim a small victory over the word "proximately," and over the question of whether G-L views the determination of the choice (in his sense of the word) as being within our control, then you are most welcome to it, but my main point stands. On the Banezian view, it is God Who ultimately makes us do everything we think and say and do, as primary cause of our choices. We are instruments. Whether willing or unwilling is of no concern to me. My point is simply that God cannot make me do everything I do and then hold me responsible when I sin. I marvel that you cannot see this point: a child could grasp it.
You also write:
"Thus your claim is no different -- and on Banezian principles, directly entails -- the claim that I am not free because when I make my choice determinately X I am not free to choose otherwise than X. Again, this is conditional necessity, not simple necessity; and it has nothing to do with free choice, nor does it actually rule out the possibility of doing otherwise. On the Banezian account, when God makes my choice determinate, this determination is directly united with my using my freedom to make one choice among several possible ones determinate. This means that any determinate choice is already freely made determinate by both me and God, and my inability to act otherwise is just the conditional necessity of it being impossible for me to do not-X when it is already the case ex hypothesi that I do X. Your argument requires the conflation of conditional necessity and simple necessity; but they are distinct, and only the latter is a problem for free will." You repeat this last criticism in your latest post.
In reply: my argument requires no such conflation. You are misconstruing my argument, which has nothing to do with necessity, as I have abundantly made clear several times. My argument is simply that being free is incompatible with being made to do something, whether willingly or unwillingly.
I notice that you haven't provided any quotes either, and nor has Scott.
ReplyDeleteA number of Garrigou-Lagrange's works are available online for those not too lazy to find them. And in fact my summaries have deliberately echoed passages by Garrigou-Lagrange.
Let me be clear: when I say that A determines B, I simply mean that A infallibly makes B happen.
Setting aside the fact that you had previously said you were using the term in Garrigou-Lagrange's sense, this is too ambiguous to take seriously, since 'making happen' can be read any number of different ways, and it is not, in fact, what the term means in common parlance, since the modality used for the term in common parlance is necessity, not infallibility; infallibility is an epistemic modality rather than an ontological one, and is unsurprisingly essential to Banezianism given that it takes divine foreknowledge and divine premotion to have the same account.
But since God's decisions are beyond our control, and since these decisions are ultimately what makes us choose the way we do, it logically follows that on G-L's view, it is indeed circumstances beyond our control - namely, Divine fiat - which ultimately (if not proximately) makes us choose the way we do.
Again, no, this is simply incorrect. Garrigou-Lagrange is explicit that we make ourselves choose the way we do: the entire decision is entirely under our control, and that that is entirely the point of thinking in terms of divine premotion: God makes our choices determinate by making our free will possible and efficacious, so that the choice is entirely attributable to the will. Garrigou-Lagrange will on occasion even laud this as an advantage over Molinism: he thinks Molinism, making the free choice a coordinate cooperation, actually does split the free choice so that we cannot genuinely be self-determining, whereas Banezianism, making it a subordinate cooperation, can hold that the choice depends on God in a way that it necessarily also depends entirely on us.
My argument is simply that being free is incompatible with being made to do something, whether willingly or unwillingly.
Setting aside the fact that 'being made to do something' is a verbal phrase typically indicating some kind of necessitation, all this does is make your argument simply irrelevant, since Garrigou-Lagrange does not think we are 'made to do something'; we choose it freely from alternative possibilities. Garrigou-Lagrange does think that God (cooperatively with us) makes our choices determinate, but he does so not by 'making us do something' but by activating our free will so that we (cooperatively with God) make determinate our own choices. This is one reason why it's absurd, in a criticism requiring the examination of an argument based on technical discussion, to use terms as loosely and colloquially as you are now claiming to use them: it massively increases the risk of equivocation.
The trouble, though, is that there doesn’t seem to be any non-question-begging way of defending option (1).
ReplyDeleteAre you sure about this?
Option 1 is stated as follows:
(1) Hold that some EAs are legitimate kinds of argument, while others -- in particular, any EA for some claim about why things exist at all -- are not legitimate.
For example if:
1.the first law of thermodynamics is true
and
2. the universe is a closed system
then perhaps the most basic stuff that makes up the universe simply exists necessarily.
If this is so, then I do not see how the PSR would apply to the question of why things exist at all.
Am I missing something?
"For a case of a straightforward mathematical problem that resulted in quite a lot of disagreement and ill will: Monty Hall."
ReplyDeleteI know, right? People really get angry about that one. In the course of a conversation about the problem, I witnessed a friend worked up to shouting that the probability in the end must be 50%.
No need to get in a shouting match. Just set up a mini-casino with a Monte Hall game: You each put $1 in the pot, the game is run and you switch your door to the other unopened one while he stands pat. Whomever chooses the correct door wins the pot, otherwise it stays in for the next round. Allow him to win every 10th pot where neither of you picks the correct door (so he will have an "advantage"). Keep playing the game until he either concedes your point or you empty his wallet.
@Daniel
ReplyDeleteYes, that's a typical modern exposition of the supposed
difference. I wouldn't trust both Lossky and Romanides on
anything in some way connected to the Latin West, though, for
both were extremely polemical to the detriment of their
understanding of the critised position, it would seem (in the case
of Fr. Romanides the rabid polemics against everything
"Frankish" is something he had to sacrifice both history and the
Fathers on the altar of, or so I've found), which testifies to a
certain lack of good will (mainly the misrepresentations, though
I could cite something like Lossky's dismissal of the idea of
the Holy Spirit being love between the Father and the Son as
"homosexuality", supposedly caused by the Latin "error" of the
Filioque, naturally).
And I can't even say Lossky is exactly representative of the
Graeco-Russian Church (to go with the traditional name for ROC
Russian Catholics like Fr. Alexander Volkonsky used): for
example, in Russian Orthodox dogmatics the so-called "juridical
theory of justification" was defended by, say, metropolitan
Macarius
and others, though not uncontroversially (and even the defenders
of it would make a point of ridding the theory of "excessive
scholasticism"). The point is that Lossky's system and his
Neo-Palamism (stress on the "neo" part) are certainly 'Eastern',
but not, at least not evidently, par excellence.
I'm not implying they are your chief source on the problem, of
course, as I don't think that's the case given your manifest
knowledge of Scholasticism.
But I can't see how their views of the West could have failed to
influence their perception of the differences.
Allow me to illustrate it with your exposition.
Yes, the "Western view" is that Adam had certain gifts (that are
not due to nature) which he could transmit to his descendants
but lost. But at this point there's no conflict that I can see:
for losing these gifts of original sanctity certainly frustrated
man's participation in the Divine order of creation and exposed
man to the power of darkness (for this order is a hierarchy, as
you well know, and certain elements in this hierarchy formed the
lowarchy instead). Then, when Christ died for us, paid for our
sins, He redeemed for us this opportunity to participate in
Divine order again, making the order of grace "visibly"
available. This is what is restored to us in baptism. The
original integrity is not restored by it (God clearly sees
suffering and struggle as a means of sanctification), but it
will be, and so will the entire Creation.
"Ut sit Deus omnia in omnibus."
So yes, He is the Christus Victor. And the events of His life do
have truly cosmic significance.
(Crucem sanctam subiit, qui infernum confregit).
There's nothing peculiarly 'Eastern' in any of this. Unless, of
course, you'd count St. Thomas and, say, Garrigou-Lagrange (who
in "Christ the Saviour" covers Christ's victory over sin, the
devil and death) as 'Easterners'. :)
Many Orthodox (at least the ones I discussed this with) now agree
that the difference is in emphasis (some still condemn
"excessive scholasticism, though). That's why I say I can't see
substantial disagreement here (at least in what is taught, I can
conceive of and do know of theologians who insist on there being
a huge difference and some even maintain contradictoriness, but
the views of some of these men are at times apparently at odds with the
position of the Graeco-Russian Church, so...).
*continued*
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I really don't see how the doctrine of original sin
amounts to "erecting a blockade". I think it confirms a distance, and distance there certainly is. I think original sin primarily deals with accessibility to the order of grace, which was manifest in Adam's case and is manifest now, after Christ's victory.
That is, the way for traversing this distance, and us "having a
map". And having a Guide.
Unfortunately I can't really comment about "until proven
otherwise" because I don't think I understand it fully, apart from stating the obvious: 1) God is just and punishes (!) only the guilty (of actual sin); 2) life allows for failure, but doesn't necessitate it; 3) having children is good; 4) the responsiblilty of parents and immense importance of them educating their children is clear.
Given that the doctrine original sin deals with the order of grace, there's no wonder one cannot deduce it philosophically (for the order of grace is not necessitated). I accept the doctrine as it is because it's taught by the Holy Roman Church(so I'd say one can deduce it indirectly).
I would say that what theology calls concupiscence and sin
generally, especially when it comes to "higher", intellectual
sins, does indeed point in the direction of the doctrine, though.
Regarding the drive and contradictions.
ReplyDeleteI'm with G-L on this one. I recognise that human reason is
directed at even the supreme truth as "mirrored in the world of creation", the same goes for our will with respect to the supreme good. The question is about the nature of this orientation towards Divine Ground. I don't see a reason for saying that human reason and will are aimed at Transcendence per se. It's logically possible, is in fact possible (I'm affirming it as a Catholic), but that is only known with certainty via revelation.
*This is followed by my obscure (and possibly wild) speculation.
Apologies in advance*
I'd say a "Platonism" about participating in the order of the
universe, the common good (no surprise the ancients viewed
politics the way they did), is more plausible.
That is theoretical, of course, as the universe as it is now doesn't strike us as being in perfect order, and according to Christianity it just isn't, and this is a clear, positive statement, not a guess.
So practically the lack of even "natural" order would stimulate this tension, even apart from the call of the Holy Ghost.
So I don't see how saying that this drive is not strictly natural, entails a contradiction.
Speaking of pointers and hints, though..
The order of grace is fitting (elaborating on excellent point
made by Dr. Feser in "Pre-Christian apologetics): given all the difficulties we have even with natural reason and morality, special revelation, and a specification of the way to commune with the Divine, is fitting. I even think there's more!..
For creation is a successive exnihilation of the "orders" of
inanimate existence, then that of plants, then animals, then rational animals..
I'm thinking of comparing the "order" of animals with that of transcendence (sorry if that reads as very silly or even blasphemous, in my defense: I very much like animals, and they are God's creatures): for I don't see a difference between plants and animals apart from the animal qualities (instinct, imagination etc.), that though not rational, have to do with the way their good is seen, pursued and achieved.
Our "order", that of rational animals, adds its own distinct
level of teleology, the intellect, and hence knowledge as good and good known as cause. Including the Supreme Truth and Good. I find the additional "order"of Creation, where the quality is added (akin to the "jump" between plants and animals) to the way good is seen, pursued and achieved to be very fitting: in it the the Supreme Truth/Good is not known/seen as the transcendent cause, effecient and final, but as God Is.
It seems to correlate nicely with the idea behind "ad maiorem Dei gloriam", that creation is good, though Perfection is not perfected by it.
Human nature, however, is not perfection absolutely. And as
Christian revelation states, man can be perfected beyond natural good.
*I don't know, perhaps this is just me.*
Anyways, to sum up: I believe the described elevation to be fitting. But it's not strictly necessitated by either the perceived disorder of creation nor our difficulties themselves, and my comparison certainly doesn't make it so.
Not even to mention the existence of this "order" being "distinctly known" or "known with certainty".
It could be "necessitated" by God's own plan of creation, known to us after the fact, but obviously this is known from revelation, and that, of course, is why Christians believe in it's institution by God.
P.S.
Sorry for mentioning things that served as matter for my speculation. I realise you know that.
The reason I did it is surely my infirmity.
Greg said...
ReplyDelete@ Alan Fox
Phlogiston was a hypothesis to explain an observed phenomenon.
Redescribing it does not really change the point... phlogiston was 'something unreal' in which people believed, not out of emotion, so it is not the case that "The tendency to belief in something (I would say) unreal is emotional."
Nope. Whilst we cannot know what people believed about anything, the point is "phlogiston" was just a name given to an explanation for why some things burn. "Look at the flame, something must be escaping. Let's call it phlogiston." the flames, the combustion, is real, the interpretation is faulty.
Actually, I am beginning to like the real Aquinas; his own writing gives a much better impression than, say, Feser's interpretation in "Scholastic Metaphysics". Of course, his "five ways" are pretty daft but that is a minor issue and the point that these arguments are unnecessary for the faithful and wasted on the faithless probably explains why he didn't put much effort into them.
Well, I'd be happy to hear your now-informed opinion on how Feser stumbles as an interpreter of Aquinas. (I'm also surprised you branched out. One would have to go beyond Summa theologiae to be able to make a substantial comparison of Aquinas's writing to Feser's Scholastic Metaphysics, since ST deals mainly with natural and dogmatic theology, whereas Scholastic Metaphysics deals with... metaphysics.)
I have other commitments, so my review of Feser's book, which will address the issue of how accurate Feser's understanding of Thomas is, will have to wait for a gap in my schedule, I hope within the next few weeks. Be assured I'll link to it when it's up.
As far as the five ways... all I can say, Alan, is that you are incapable of subtlety. But you try so hard.
Great effort was expended on trying to see what there is in Aquinas' five ways that anyone finds relevant today. I admit I failed. Sorry.
E. Seigner writes:
ReplyDeleteThe problem of evil never even made sense to me, but atheists generally seem to think it decisively refutes theism and some theists seriously struggle with their faith because of it. I guess I am simply not emotional enough to get it.
As far as atheists are concerned, "evil" (in the sense of bad stuff happening) is a fact of life that has to be dealt with. Atheists don't have to consider why an apparently good god created evil. They just wonder how theists reconcile the issue.
BTW
I enjoyed following your foray into Uncommon descent.
@ Jeremy Taylor
ReplyDeleteI believe we've once had a discussion about Eastern Orthodoxy (I remember reading your comments about Oriental churches as well).
What interests me, though, is why you name Eastern Orthodoxy as the direction of your leanings rather than Byzantine tradition in general, as that would include Eastern Rite Catholic Churches as well. For both philosophical and mystical traditions are preserved there as well.
But if these are the factors, you have to acknowledge them as indeterminate as to the matter between Eastern Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
I know the belief that Eastern Catholics are "not Eastern enough" or pseudo-Orthodox is widespread now even among the non-Orthodox, but I don't think this can be maintained without additional commitments, say, to the Orthodox ecclesiology, or positive objections to the Catholic position. It would be interesting to know your position on these.
As a Latin Catholic I "know the feeling" some Orthodox have - for I find Western Rite Orthodoxy offensive (I consider it to be an extra theft: the Eastern rites they took away on the occasion of schism, but this..). But it's just a feeling, and it's a consequence of me being a sinner (primarily) and a Catholic living in an Orthodox-majority (secondarily, per accidens) country, not rational grounds for objecting to the existence of Western Rite Orthodoxy. Aso, I can't say there's much hostility to Eastern spirituality in the West, whereas in the East it's somewhat different (the dubious status of Latin rite parishes in some Orthodox jurisdictions is proof of this, I think).
What has to be kept in mind is that both the Catholics and the Orthodox adhere to the thesis of exclusivity and at least doctrinaly require their flock to believe this; and both make the same claim - to be the only infallible and indefectible Church founded by Christ.
* Now, as I've stated during our last discussion of the subject, I think that the Catholic claim can be sustained, whereas the Orthodox claim in the end cannot be supported(at least for the lack of an objective criterion for determining infallible statements) *
At any rate, I think both communions supporting the exclusivity thesis calls for a reasonable resolution of the relevant issues by the person attracted to Byzantine spirituality but undecided on the matter of where to embrace it before making this decision.
P.S.
Again, sorry for stating something you probably know well without me.
It's just that reading your comments over the years left me with an impression that you don't give much attention to questions of this sort.
I apologise if you find this intrusive.
@ Alan
ReplyDeleteNope. Whilst we cannot know what people believed about anything, the point is "phlogiston" was just a name given to an explanation for why some things burn. "Look at the flame, something must be escaping. Let's call it phlogiston." the flames, the combustion, is real, the interpretation is faulty.
So when people give a proper name to an explanation of a phenomenon, they don't actually believe that there is anything there? Oh, the lengths to which Alan goes to maintain his asymmetry.
(In any case, you concede my point even while trying to deny it. "Something must be escaping." Well, no, nothing was 'escaping' in any relevantly correct sense. But that false belief in a 'something' was not motivated or driven by emotion.)
I have other commitments, so my review of Feser's book, which will address the issue of how accurate Feser's understanding of Thomas is, will have to wait for a gap in my schedule, I hope within the next few weeks. Be assured I'll link to it when it's up.
I wait with bated breath.
@Vincent Torley:
ReplyDeleteWait, you undertook to lecture us about Fr. G-L's views on free will, and specifically referred to Vol. 2 of God: His Existence and His Nature (which is sitting about a foot away from me as I type this), and you not only don't have a copy at hand yourself but you haven't read it (or any of Fr. G-L's other works) for thirty years?
Get a copy of Predestination (or browse samples here) and find your own "quotes," ya lazy thing.
"Phlogiston was 'something unreal' in which people believed, not out of emotion, so it is not the case that "The tendency to belief in something (I would say) unreal is emotional."
ReplyDeleteExactly. If Alan were rational, that would be the end of the conversation. Instead, we get to watch him to wriggle his way out of this counter-example by any means necessary.
He's clearly not prepared to recognize that he might be wrong about anything whatsoever, even something unimportant like this.
My point is simply that God cannot make me do everything I do and then hold me responsible when I sin. I marvel that you cannot see this point: a child could grasp it.
ReplyDeleteWhy, it's so simple even Johnny, who rumor has it can't read, can grasp it:
Teacher: "Johnny, I know that you cheated when taking the test."
Johnny: "My parents made me do it."
Teacher: "Come again?"
Johnny: "They wanted me to pass the test."
Teacher: "No, that doesn't cut it. I'll be informing your parents that you cheated."
Father: "Johnny, I received a phone call from your teacher. She tells me that you cheated when taking the test. Is that true?"
Johnny: "Yeah, I cheated."
Father: "Your honesty is in your favor. Even so, there must be a consequence, so you're grounded for a week."
Johnny: "But that's not fair."
Father: "Why not?"
Johnny: "You wanted me to pass the test."
Father: "Yes, I wanted you to pass the test. But haven't I also taught you that cheating is wrong?"
Johnny: "Sure you have. But you also taught me that getting good grades is important to getting ahead in life. Come on, dad, stop playing games with my head. It's your fault I cheated, and I don't see why I should get in trouble for what you made me do. It's not fair."
Father: "Johnny, Johnny... You did wrong by cheating. And in cheating to pass the test, not only have you gone against what I have taught, you failed a higher test."
Wait, you undertook to lecture us about Fr. G-L's views on free will, and...
ReplyDeleteAnd then:
a) he said to Brandon: "You seem to be using the word 'determine' in a different way from the way I use it"; and,
b) went on to say, "[T]he fact that G-L uses 'determine' differently in his book (a point which I'll concede as I can no longer check his work) is of no concern to me."
Some people just have the knack, I guess; and I confess to being envious. (It really is a great struggle for me to come up with, e.g., those faux conversations above.)
@David T
ReplyDeleteas I recall, I and another person there endeavored to demonstrate the proper resolution to the problem by various means (playing it out, making a table of the various arrangements of doors and player choices). It was his insistence throughout all of these proofs that led to the yelling, since it seemed obvious to him in the beginning that the only real question was what the likelihood was of the prize being behind one of two doors. He was convinced that we making more out of the host's role than was there.
Fortunately, there were no pokers in the vicinity.
but, I like your idea. At least someone profits in that scenario!
ReplyDeleteMr. Green:
ReplyDeleteWith regard to Bayes, you said that you "question the foundation for making such calculations in the first place."
Well, yes, of course you would. If you don't start with experience (Hume), but with non-empirical metaphysics, anything goes. Turn the works of Yeats or Blake into the foundation of your metaphysics. Let your imagination go anywhere it wants. You're free. Set your consideration of alternative hypotheses and evidence at zero and just focus on the coherence of your own system, and you're done.
In other words, behave like a cook whose confidence in his own cooking abilities is at 100%, and who places a value of zero on any incoming data from customer complaints or restaurant reviews. Such a cook's cooking becomes out of this world--metacooking--impervious to the reports of experience concerning it. Not even in principle could his metacooking ever be evaluated by the mere reported experience of it.
But if you start your reasoning tethered to experience, acknowledging your empirical existential situation (that you're a limited and evolved primate on a tiny planet that is drifting in a vast and ancient cosmos), it makes sense to be in the habit of grayscaling your beliefs (as opposed to assigning them the probabilities of 1 or 0).
Once we acknowledge our embeddedness in a body and environment, we'll listen to the incoming data from our bodies and environment. And bodies and environments are fluid. They vary from moment to moment. They're not monochromatic (black and white), but tonal, moving across a range from black to white. They're embedded in history. They have nuance. They can surprise us. They're less like sculpture and more like music; less like Apollo and more like Dionysus.
Our lives in history are more hybridity than unvarying essence, and our reasoning should aspire to track that.
That means we'll be open to adjust our levels of belief from, say, one week to the next. We'll adapt to new data. We'll keep Galileo's telescope pointing to the sky, prepared to adjust our beliefs to the incoming light. (I think the new Pope may be trying to do this with regard to moderating Catholic views surrounding homosexuality.)
So whether we intuitively assign numbers to our beliefs on a scale of 0 to 100, or simply make use of qualifier words a lot (plausible, probable, less likely, more likely, perhaps), we'll be in the habit of staying open to our own evolution away from where we are now.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteYou're right that some people can't be brought to see the correct answer... I'm merely suggesting that you make some money off the situation.
And the fact of losing all his money might bring the obstinate to reconsider his resistance.
By the way, the best way I've found to convince people of the true answer (other than winning all their money), is to consider an alternative but equivalent game. In this game, Monty gives you the choice of keeping your original door, or switching to both the other doors - i.e. you win if it is behind either of the the other two doors. Even the most statistically dense can see that it is better to switch to the two other doors. But this game is statistically equivalent to the original Monty Hall game
@Glenn:
ReplyDelete(c) …and then he went on to tell Brandon what "logically follows" about "G-L's view," after admitting that he didn't know what that view was and had no way to find out.
According to the statement you quote under (b), he also seems to think Fr. G-L wrote about this subject in only one book, so I have to wonder how familiar he ever was with the man's work. Why, if I didn't know better, I might suspect that his reference to Fr. G-L was a red herring and he just has an axe to grind with Ed!
But if you start your reasoning tethered to experience, acknowledging your empirical existential situation (that you're a limited and evolved primate on a tiny planet that is drifting in a vast and ancient cosmos),
ReplyDeleteVery little of this is directly experienced. Evolution is a sophisticated scientific theory only arrived at a century and a half ago. Same with the "vast" cosmos, the size of which is a scientific deduction, as is its age ("ancient") or the fact that it is "drifting." Nor are our "limits", whatever they are, directly read off experience.
If your thinking, as you say, starts with these principles, then you are merely dogmatically asserting with the 100% certitude you deny others certain facts that strike you as true and important. Why should your thinking start with these facts rather than others? (A question that can't be answered, of course, since thinking starts with them). This puts you in an even worse position than the metaphysicians, since they are at least willing to allow someone to dispute their principles, while you insist that thinking start with yours.
'If you don't start with experience (Hume), but with non-empirical metaphysics, anything goes.'
ReplyDeleteSanti, are you actually aware that metaphysics begins with noticing change, which is empirical? I've mentioned it before, but you still seem to be unaware of this.
Likewise, you don't seem have anything to say about counter-examples to your belief that all reasoning must start with experience and can only legitimately be about 'matter'. (If you need to ask what those 'counter-examples' are, you haven't been paying attention. Hint: It was our knowledge of rational principles.)
Surely 'pay attention to other people's objections to your views' is somewhere on that epistemelogical list of yours?
Santi said,
ReplyDelete"If you don't start with experience (Hume), but with non-empirical metaphysics, anything goes."
Except that's not the case. Metaphysics is determined after experience. Think of it this way, metaphysics is about determining what must be the case in order to understand your experience. You simply can't speak of probability without laying down some metaphysical grounding.
Aristotle himself explicit points out that metaphysics is to be determined after physics. You can't know what must be true about physics, which is what metaphysics is about, unless you first do physics.
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteIf you don't start with experience (Hume), but with non-empirical metaphysics, anything goes.
But of course, that is not really your complaint. If you want scientifically responsive Aristotelian realism, pick up James Ross's later work.
What you are interested in is that specific examples affect the theory you don't like in specific ways, while what is disputed is whether they count as evidence against the theory (and that is a theoretical matter). In 'non-empirical metaphysics' it is plainly not the case that 'anything goes' in the sense that one can make one's metaphysics whatever one wants, and there is no objective way to adjudicate between competing claims. That is a complete farce. Just consider the way that scientific reasoning factored into Kripke and Putnam's revival of natural kinds.
When push comes to shove, it is Santi's exclusive disjunction between "experience" and "non-empirical metaphysics" that lacks grayscaling.
As to where the idea of grayscaling beliefs got started in the first place, I think I can point to ground zero.
ReplyDeleteThat would be Hume. In his "Of Miracles" he writes in the fourth paragraph of Part I, "A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."
He also writes at the bottom of the third paragraph: "[I]n our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence."
In the fourth paragraph, he anticipates Pierce's abduction: "He weighs the opposite experiments: He considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments: to that side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation ..."
In other words, Hume promotes in the fourth paragraph both grayscaling and keeping competing hypotheses in play.
He also speaks of attaining "a pretty strong degree of assurance."
We go through an exercise of hypothesis comparison, Hume writes, so that we can get a sense of "the exact force of the superior evidence." Hume thus appears to recommend listening to one's holistic and bodily response to evidence, judging the degree of belief the evidence compels in him.
And even when a person at last "fixes his judgement," Hume says, "the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability."
Hume's metaphor is placing theories in a scale and weighing them: "All probability then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence ..."
And at the end of Part 1 of "On Miracles," Hume also speaks of weighing probability: "When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact which he relates should really have happened."
So the outline of Bayes' Rule is basically in utero in Part I of Hume's "Of Miracles."
If you can't reality test--if, for example, the Holocaust or neuroscience can never inform the probability of Thomism being true even in principle--then you can't really know if your system is truly out there in the world or just in your head.
Er, Santi, I think everyone here understands your epistemology, they just disagree with it. They keep telling you why but you're clearly not interested. You just keep pontificating about your own views as though nothing happened.
ReplyDeleteShow us that you can listen as well as talk. Like I said, surely your gloriously rational epistemology would encourage you to do that.
Let's see you respond intelligently to even one of the objections people are raising here and you'll be a lot more convincing.
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteIf you can't reality test--if, for example, the Holocaust or neuroscience can never inform the probability of Thomism being true even in principle--then you can't really know if your system is truly out there in the world or just in your head.
As I said, "What you are interested in is that specific examples affect the theory you don't like in specific ways, while what is disputed is whether they count as evidence against the theory (and that is a theoretical matter)." Can the Holocaust inform Kripke's theory of natural kinds? No, so one can't really know if his system is truly out there in the world or just in his head.
Oops. What is at issue is whether the examples are relevant. If your pet examples are not actually relevant--which cannot be decided without engaging the theory on its own terms--then this is a hopeless exercise of asserting that your impressions about the theory are correct.
And even when a person at last "fixes his judgement," Hume says, "the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability."
Someone of a Wittgensteinian bent might here press Hume, along the lines of On Certainty, that it is impossible to believe everything only probably, for any such language game is semantically equivalent to another language game in which certain statements are beyond doubt. But I suppose you just appeal to Wittgenstein when he can be construed as supporting Humean empiricism.
Santi asserts:
ReplyDelete"If you don't start with experience (Hume), but with non-empirical metaphysics, anything goes."
Rather than actually bother giving a historical exegesis on the Phenomenalism and Solipsism which followed from the traditional Positivist understanding of Hume I think I’ll just post this video:
Esse est percipi
Santi Tafarella writes:
ReplyDelete"[B]ehave like a cook whose confidence in his own cooking abilities is at 100%, and who places a value of zero on any incoming data from customer complaints or restaurant reviews."
I think we owe Santi our thanks for having been kind enough to demonstrate by his own personal example just how badly awry this approach can go.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteI know how to chip away at a scientist who may be engaged in ad hoc behavior. Bring in more evidence, introduce a theory that accounts for the data in a simpler, more plausible, more fruitful manner. The change might be slow, but it won't take forever.
I don't know how to chip away at Thomism. In Feser's mind book (pages 25-28), for example, when the idea that the mind is simple and not capable of being broken into parts comes up against, you know, multiple personality disorder and neuroscience's split-brain experiments, Feser's response is to put in play demonic possession.
He also introduces doubts concerning the conclusions of the scientists themselves. He suggests that it's possible they've interpreted the split-brain experiments wrong (not that he would know, of course).
What does one say after that? In the 21st century, demon possession is as ridiculous a proposal as anything a young Earth creationist might make. If you're going to reason like this, why not, while you're at it, organize an expedition to climb Mt. Ararat in search of Noah's Ark?
It's logically possible that devils take over the minds of split-brain patients and those with multiple personality disorder. And it's logically possible that the scientists could be drawing wrong conclusions about split-brain experiments. But what evidence should compel me to actually think these things are true?
And if Thomism is comfortably open to being informed by scientific consensus, why would Feser ever play the doubt-the-experts game on split-brain experimenters? That's the sort of argumentative move more characteristic of Fox News hosts, not an intellectual. I might expect it from, say, an evolution or climate change denialist on Hannity, but not from Feser.
And science has a good deal to say about homosexuality that Thomism is obviously taking zero account of. Perhaps you can tell me why this is.
It's wonderful that Kripke and Putnam are open to science informing their systems, and you say they have actually adjusted them to incoming data.
Great. But is there a specific example you can provide over the past 700 years of Thomism ever doing the same?
"[I]s there a specific example you can provide over the past 700 years of Thomism ever doing the same?"
ReplyDeleteSure. Contrary to what Aquinas himself thought, modern Thomists now agree on biological grounds that human life begins at conception.
'He also introduces doubts concerning the conclusions of the scientists themselves. He suggests that it's possible they've interpreted the split-brain experiments wrong...'
ReplyDeleteWell, yes, that's perfectly possible. Whether Feser is wrong about that or not depends entirely on the details, whereas you just move blithely on in your pontificating.
@Arthur:
ReplyDelete"Well, yes, that's perfectly possible."
It's not only possible but certain. As Ed points out in the very passage Santi seems to be unable to read responsibly, the experts themselves don't agree on the multiple-mind interpretation.
Golly, are you suggesting that even the experts themselves 'play the doubt-the-experts game'? Things are worse than we thought!
ReplyDelete;)
I suggest that Santi displays a typical weakness of Empiricists. He's very keen on empirical evidence (which is fine by itself), but shows little understanding of how to interpret it.
ReplyDeleteI think Francis Bacon, one of his inspirations, said something along the same lines.
The hilarity of this whole discussion is that Santi obviously doesn't take into account the information that others give him. If he did he would stop consistently making the errors people point out, or would at least adjust his calculations accordingly...
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I wonder if there might actually be a connection between constantly talking about the need for empirical evidence and not actually paying much attention to the empirical evidence.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, here's a better formula.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there might actually be a connection between constantly talking, period, and not actually paying much attention to the empirical evidence.
@Arthur:
ReplyDelete"Golly, are you suggesting that even the experts themselves 'play the doubt-the-experts game'? Things are worse than we thought!
;)"
Indeed they are! As a matter of fact, any genuine scientist would be appalled at Santi's implication that Ed should Just Lie Down And Do Everything The Nice Scientist™ Tells You. And so would Santi, if he actually believed any of the gas he emits.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteWhen you insist that one engage Thomism on its own terms to determine the relevance of an argument against it, how is that not stacking the deck?
A Mormon could say the exact same thing. You have to take The Book of Mormon on its own terms, then evaluate it from inside the system proposed. Only then can you determine whether it makes sense, and should be believed.
And young earth creationists have a perfectly coherent system on their own terms, and routinely insist that the reason university geologists are not young earth creationists themselves is because they begin with different metaphysical starting points.
Well, of course anything can make sense on it's own terms.
Islam is perfectly coherent on its own terms. It has an explanation for every objection on its own terms. It claims to know exactly the way the world is, and it knows it solely on its own terms.
But does Islam have any contact with reality? That's where you have to bring in procedures that might not be favorable to it on its own terms.
How, after all, could one ever know, apart from bringing evidence and empirical principles to bear upon it from the outside (Occam's razor, standards of evidence gathering, etc.), whether Thomism appears to have contact with experiential reality?
If Thomists deny the value of Occam's razor in principle and various other empirical procedures for getting at the truth of matters, and these procedures must be surrendered at the door, how is this different from the requirements for joining any other cult?
Why not start anywhere? You say there are objective ways of coming at these issues. You say you're not just starting from a random dart throw. But what is that axiom that gets the ball rolling for you, and then how do you know your next move is not flawed? And the next one? How do you know the Thomistic system is in contact with reality at all?
It's all question begging and insularity. It's what every religion does. It's what Pascal's wager does. Take the gamble. Get with the program, stay with the program--and before long, you'll start seeing the exquisite sense of the program!
Oh, and don't start doubting the program (because then we'll have to kick you out). Believe it 100%. It's about 1 or 0. No in-between. The system's logic is too compelling and transcendent to be doubted (once you wholly understand it).
This is how you make Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Christians, Mormons. Play Pascal's wager with any religion or metaphysical system, and you'll have a believer a year later. Start with meeting an emotional need. Then "practice makes perfect." Fake it till you make it. Self-convince yourself by getting in and participating fully.
It's all self-deception if experience, Occam's razor, and empiricism can't inform what you're falling into along the way.
Hume's starting point at least has a bit of terra firma beneath his feet (adjusting to day-to-day experience and conducting ongoing experiments). Hume doesn't ignore his actual existential situation.
In the 21st century, whenever somebody pretends to have access to a transcendent, ahistorical system of truth a priori, eyebrows ought to be raised.
'In the 21st century, whenever somebody pretends to have access to a transcendent, ahistorical system of truth a priori, eyebrows ought to be raised.'
ReplyDeleteI know, right? It's just like those silly so-called 'logical laws' logicians claim to have knowledge about. They claim to have access to transcendent, ahistorical truths a priori, and in the 21st century no less! Surely eyebrows ought to be raised.
And yes, I wasn't being serious.
I notice that nobody here is actually defending Feser's enlisting of demons to save the indivisibility argument.
ReplyDeleteAnd if "life begins at conception" is the best adjustment Thomism can make in 700 years to science, then Scott has made my point. The exception proves the rule.
And as for homosexuality, I notice that nobody here is saying why Thomism obviously takes zero account of what science says about the subject. Perhaps someone can tell me why this is?
If "life begins at conception" can inform Thomism, then why can't science inform Thomism on homosexuality?
The split brain experiments don't show anything to demonstrate that the mind is split as well, unless you already believe that the mind just is the brain.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, a multiple personality disorder does not tell against the simplicity of the would, unless you already reduce the soul to one of its powers. Or if, as before, you take "soul" and "mind" to be interchangeable terms - a Cartesian mistake, methinks, and/or reduce the soul/mind to the brain or some part of it.
"And as for homosexuality, I notice that nobody here is saying why Thomism obviously takes zero account of what science says about the subject. Perhaps someone can tell me why this is?"
ReplyDeleteWell, not so fast, I think most of us are, when it comes down to it, pretty A-T when it comes to what the organs are for. It's the ethical conclusions that Thomists derive from the rather uncontroversial purpose of the organs in question that are the source of disagreement. Science can't tell you much about that.
Santi seems to be dropping an unusually high number of horse apples, even for him.
ReplyDelete"Well, of course anything can make sense on it's [sic] own terms."
Sure, if we drop the requirement that in order to "make sense" (even on "it's" own terms), something must at least be internally consistent.
"In the 21st century, whenever somebody pretends to have access to a transcendent, ahistorical system of truth a priori, eyebrows ought to be raised."
But not because it's any sort of transcendent, ahistorical, a priori (ethical?) truth that we "ought" to apportion our beliefs to the available evidence. No, no, of course not.
"I notice that nobody here is actually defending Feser's enlisting of demons to save the indivisibility argument."
Only because he can't read. Anyone who can read can refer to the passage in question and find out what Ed's actual point was. Hint: it had something to do with the fact that certain enomena-phay don't interpret-way emselves-thay. (I also missed the day of Empiricism Class when the idea of demonic possession was shown to be unworthy of serious attention, but I'll let that pass.)
"And if 'life begins at conception' is the best adjustment Thomism can make in 700 years to science, then Scott has made my point. The exception proves the rule."
Aaand plop goes yet another apple. I didn't say that was the only example; I could as easily have selected examples from fields ranging from cosmology to evolutionary theory. I just deliberately chose something I thought would get his hackles up.
'if "life begins at conception" is the best adjustment Thomism can make in 700 years to science, then Scott has made my point. The exception proves the rule.'
ReplyDeleteOh, please. I can bet that if Scott didn't give you an example you'd be claiming victory on those grounds instead. But since he did, you have to say that 'the exception proves the rule.' And no-one is saying that that's the best 'adjustment Thomism can make in 700 years'; you asked for just one 'specific example' and you were given one. How about asking for more?
Wasn't positivism discredited years ago?
ReplyDeleteYes, it was, on the grounds that it was self-defeating. Too bad Santi will never know.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you carry on attempting communication with this buffoon?
ReplyDeleteOh, and can anybody else think of one more thing--just one more thing--besides Scott's "life begins at conception" that science has informed Thomism on over the past 700 years?
ReplyDeleteScience says (for example) that Adam and Eve never existed in a Garden in Mesopotamia. That means that Eve did not come from Adam's rib. Indeed, Adam and Eve never existed at all. There never was a first man and first woman who coupled and brought all the existing humans on the planet into existence. "Adam" and "Mitochondrial Eve" lived something like 50,000 years apart. Has Thomism adjusted to that?
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteGiven that you seem to have made up your mind about continuing to plague this combox with your silliness, perhaps you'll be courageous enough to actually read the blog you're on? You know, to grayscale the eventuality of you saying anything of worth at all?..
Here: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ru/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-i.html
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ru/2011/09/monkey-in-your-soul.html
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ru/2011/09/modern-biology-and-original-sin-part-ii.html
@Santi
ReplyDelete"
Science says (for example) that Adam and Eve never existed in a Garden in Mesopotamia. That means that Eve did not come from Adam's rib. Indeed, Adam and Eve never existed at all. There never was a first man and first woman who coupled and brought all the existing humans on the planet into existence. "Adam" and "Mitochondrial Eve" lived something like 50,000 years apart. Has Thomism adjusted to that?"
How does this fit into Thomism? I am not, really, a Thomist, though I find Thomism attractive, but I don't think these concerns about the historicity/scientific viability of a literal Adam and Eve fit into the discussion.
BUT, regardless, if you think this is some religious hangup or defeater it just goes to show how the contemporary new atheist is just completely out of touch with: current scholarship regarding theology/biblical studies and ancient writings and scholarship in regards to those fields.
You, and those like you, are sadly in deadlock with your alter egos, who are the other fundamentalists (YECers, biblical literalists, etc).
Seriously, you and yours need to read some books about the subjects you critique. It's why no one on here is really taking you seriously. The butchering of Blake, Wittgenstein, and the ungenerous misreadings of Feser make you look quite silly.
"Oh, and can anybody else think of one more thing--just one more thing--besides Scott's 'life begins at conception' that science has informed Thomism on over the past 700 years?"
ReplyDeleteActually what I said was that human life begins at conception, but I don't expect Santi to understand the distinction or its importance to Thomism.
But I could equally well have chosen that the Earth moves or that evolution occurs, and that's without even getting into the real nitty-gritty of any particular science.
For the record, I mention these things not because I expect any of them to get through to Santi but just in case there are lurkers who might still be inclined to take him at all seriously.
The fact is that Feser wouldn't resort to doubting expert consensus on split brain experiments if he wasn't reaching for a reason--any reason--to keep his favored thesis (the indivisibility argument) in play. He's reaching with this argument, and with the devils argument, because if the mind isn't "simple," and is in fact capable of being divided into parts, the whole edifice of Thomism comes crashing down. It undermines the argument about God's simplicity because minds, it turns out, are not as a matter of course "simple," and it undermines the soul hypothesis. It goofs up everything.
ReplyDeleteThe solution? Think of some logically possible outs, then insist on evaluating Thomism solely on its own terms, according to its own internal logic.
See the mice scurrying.
"The fact is that Feser wouldn't resort to doubting expert consensus on split brain experiments if he wasn't reaching for a reason--any reason--to keep his favored thesis (the indivisibility argument) in play. He's reaching with this argument, and with the devils argument, because if the mind isn't "simple," and is in fact capable of being divided into parts, the whole edifice of Thomism comes crashing down. It undermines the argument about God's simplicity because minds, it turns out, are not as a matter of course "simple," and it undermines the soul hypothesis. It goofs up everything.
ReplyDeleteThe solution? Think of some logically possible outs, then insist on evaluating Thomism solely on its own terms, according to its own internal logic.
See the mice scurrying"
What a beautiful little psychologizing piece you have written up here! I am so glad we have someone writing posts that is able to so convincingly inform the rest of us the (un)conscious intentions of another human.
So, your gazing into Ed's inner reasons: What probability would you paste on? 85%? 90%? 10%? 100%?!?!
ReplyDeleteScience says (for example) that Adam and Eve never existed in a Garden in Mesopotamia. That means that Eve did not come from Adam's rib. Indeed, Adam and Eve never existed at all. There never was a first man and first woman who coupled and brought all the existing humans on the planet into existence. "Adam" and "Mitochondrial Eve" lived something like 50,000 years apart. Has Thomism adjusted to that?
It has, in fact.
Scott wrote, "I also missed the day of Empiricism Class when the idea of demonic possession was shown to be unworthy of serious attention, but I'll let that pass."
ReplyDeleteHe'll "let that pass" because obviously he can't defend it. Demonic possession is a Noah's ark level absurdity--a pre-scientific ghost tale about angels fallen to Earth after warring with God and his good angels in heaven, and who now are lurking about the Earth seeking to wreak havoc.
The story can't be defended any more than a Hindu can seriously defend the notion that Hanuman really and truly led his monkeys in the building of a bridge between Sri Lanka and India.
But Feser et al won't take the spooks-that-fell-from-heaven thesis off the table because, well, he can't think of much of anything else to save the indivisibility argument against split brain experiments and multiple personality disorder.
Science, unfortunately, has intruded in this instance a bit too far into the dubious Thomistic territory, and you've got to defend the ramparts with whatever is left at hand (in this case, devils and casting unwarranted doubt on the scientific consensus).
It's all motivated reasoning. It's what the prejudiced do. You can reach any conclusion you want if you're creative enough.
So here's the game: grab a medieval thesis 700 years old; declare it a metaphysical system inaccessible to outward experience, empiricism, comparison, and scientific scrutiny (even in principle); cordone it off from the deliverances of the scientific consensus; call science itself a metaphysical system; act confident about your beliefs; call your beliefs 100% certain; and run with it, baby, run.
It's Icarus flying with wax wings into the sun.
Taylor,
ReplyDeleteWhat's your explanation for Feser positing angels fallen from heaven as an explanation of multiple personality disorder and the results of split brain experiments?
When Feser posits as a solution to split brain experiments and multiple personality disorder that devils exist, the whole Wizard of Oz curtain drops from his project.
ReplyDeleteHe wants to defend Thomism intellectually, but then all this superstitious baggage from primitive religion has to come to the rescue of a central idea in the system (the indivisibility argument).
Think about it. Neuroscience has closed in on upending the indivisibility argument. So much rides on it that Feser has to resort to demonology (or discrediting the science) to save it. It's crazy.
Suddenly, you've got to believe that angels went to war in heaven (wherever that is), and that a third of them were cast "down" to Earth, and that the vast majority of human beings who are ever going to live will join these bad angels in hell for all of eternity.
We're talking Auschwitz forever for billions upon billions.
How does one contemplate being happy in heaven knowing the torment of others is ongoing forever? It's ludicrous.
But this is how far your metaphysics can stray from reality when you don't grayscale your beliefs and keep them tethered to experience and evidence.
Brandon,
ReplyDeleteI will make this as clear as possible. Here's a diagram of what I take to be the Banezian view of how I make choices:
God------->(My intellect & will)====>X [the choice that I make]
The first arrow means "God infallibly ensures that I will choose something, as a primary agent." The second arrow denotes the fact that God and my intellect & will co-operate together in the actual making of the choice.
My objection to this diagram is simple. Sometimes I sin. On the Banezian view, whenever I do so, God infallibly ensures that I will do so. A God who infallibly ensures that I will sin cannot claim that He is not the author of sin. Nor can He blame me for sinning, when I do sin.
You claim not to be able to understand the word "makes", as it is (you say) ambiguous, so I've used the more precise term, "infallibly ensures."
Please use short, simple sentences in future. Your syntax is almost incomprehensible to read.
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteIt's logically possible that devils take over the minds of split-brain patients and those with multiple personality disorder. And it's logically possible that the scientists could be drawing wrong conclusions about split-brain experiments. But what evidence should compel me to actually think these things are true?
I don't know; I do not have the book on hand right now. You are referring to a section on Cartesian dualism, though, which (if I recall correctly) Feser distances himself from by the last section of a book, particularly on account of the indecisive nature of its conceivability-implies-possibility arguments. (And if he is presenting the Cartesian dualist argument, then he may be stating it from the position of foundationalist, skeptical epistemology.) In any case, the indivisibility argument is not an argument for any Thomist position.
And science has a good deal to say about homosexuality that Thomism is obviously taking zero account of. Perhaps you can tell me why this is.
What is science now saying about homosexuality that people have not known for millenia? That people are born with or acquire non-culpably desires to act in ways that traditional moralists would not like?
But is there a specific example you can provide over the past 700 years of Thomism ever doing the same?
As mentioned, Thomists now believe that life begins at conception. I also cited James Ross's work. There is also the abandonment of Aristotelian natural science.
Scott said, "I could equally well have chosen that the Earth moves or that evolution occurs, and that's without even getting into the real nitty-gritty of any particular science."
ReplyDeleteAh yes, how quickly we forget the ordeal that these ideas generated when first introduced precisely because theologians couldn't readily figure out how to reconcile them with the scholastic tradition and the Bible.
But poor Giordano Bruno, tied to a stake in Rome in 1600, fire about to touch the straw at his feet, wouldn't think your forgetfulness was terribly amusing.
Try again.
Santi wrote:
ReplyDeleteFeser has to resort to demonology (or discrediting the science) to save it. It's crazy... [blah blah blah]
The advantage of being too busy to follow this thread anymore is that I don't have to read imbecilic crap like this, except when I accidentally hit upon it like I did just now while moderating comments.
First of all, the particular argument you're talking about in Philosophy of Mind is not one I even endorse, either in that book or elsewhere. Perhaps you didn't notice, but the book is primarily an introduction to the subject of philosophy of mind rather than a book about my own views. Thus I rehearse various arguments that have been given for and against different positions, and what might be said in criticism or defense of said arguments, without in every case agreeing with them. In the particular case at hand, I was discussing -- without endorsing -- an argument from Descartes. (It's true that, like Descartes, I'm a dualist of a sort, but it doesn't follow that I am a Cartesian dualist. In fact I am very critical of Cartesian forms of dualism, as any longtime reader of this blog knows.)
Secondly, what you absurdly characterize as a "resort to demonology" is nothing more than a logical point about the evidence MPD cases provide, viz. that the evidence is susceptible of a wide variety of interpretations, so that the MPD evidence by itself is not a refutation of the indivisibility argument. I did not actually endorse any interpretation according to which demonic possession accounts for it. As to "discrediting the science," I don't know what the hell you're talking about, and neither do you. Nowhere do I "discredit" or reject any scientific evidence, but merely point out how the evidence re: split brain phenomena is also susceptible of alternative interpretations (as any neuroscientist would agree), and that there are no philosophical results to be read out of it without first reading philosophical assumptions into it.
I mean really, this is an argument I wrote about once, almost ten years ago, briefly and in a non-committal way, and you are, absolutely bizarrely, treating it here as if it were some major component of my "project" in defense of Thomism when in fact it has absolutely nothing to do with that "project."
Your trouble, Santi, is that you don't know how to read carefully, don't know how to reason carefully, don't have a very good grasp of philosophical ideas, but also don't let any of that stop you from bloviating dogmatically and confidently -- even as you chide me for my purportedly excessive confidence and dogmatism!
Again, what's up with that?
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteWhen you insist that one engage Thomism on its own terms to determine the relevance of an argument against it, how is that not stacking the deck?
Santi, you seem to have trouble following my arguments. My arguments against your epistemology have little to do with its stacking the deck against Thomism per se. The example I used was not Thomism; it was Saul Kripke's theory of natural kinds.
The obvious response is that if one considers Kripke's theory, the Holocaust is not relevant to it. Sure, you could take it as a data point, but P(Kripke's theory)=P(Kripke's theory|the Holocaust).
The reason you have to consider theories on your own terms is that whether the Holocaust counts as evidence against them depends entirely on what they say, qua theories, and that is a theoretical assessment. It's like if I suggested that one should judge atheistic morality by the tragedies of the 20th centuries. Is P(atheistic morality|the Holocaust) much less than P(atheistic morality)? Maybe, maybe not. Some people, atheists of an existentialist bent as well as theists, have thought so. If I just insisted that I'm not sure how anyone could take atheistic regimes seriously after the Holocaust, it would not be a very good argument. Others would insist that there are good reasons that the Holocaust should not be taken as evidence against the possibility of a moral atheistic regime.
It's like someone insisting that someone's philosophy of mathematics is impossible after Goedel. Whether we should be more or less inclined--or equally inclined--to accept the theory before Goedel or after Goedel cannot be seriously decided without considering the theory on its own terms. It might seem "obvious" to someone who does not know much about the theory that Goedel is relevant--who could believe that philosophy of mathematics could be the same after Goedel? But then you're judging theories by the intuitions of people who are unfamiliar with them.
This has nothing to do with theism or metaphysics (as was kind of obvious from the original example, but apparently needs to be spelled out since you've become unhinged in your last several posts).
This is how you make Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Christians, Mormons. Play Pascal's wager with any religion or metaphysical system, and you'll have a believer a year later.
Well, I guess Kripke is a Jew.
Sorry Dr. Feser, but by the time Santi comes back, I think you'll find the goalposts are 10 yards further on.
ReplyDeleteGreg,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "What is science now saying about homosexuality that people have not known for millenia?"
For one, that homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom and is natural.
For another, that genes, hormones, and specific brain areas influence same sex attraction.
If nature produces it, then on Thomistic grounds one would think it ought to be given space for expression, right?
This whole notion that the penis is "for" vaginas only is silly, especially in the light of recent science, don't you think?
Feser said some bitterly obnoxious and dismissive things about gays in his anti-atheism book. I recall thinking it was ugly.
When I read that book a few years back, I also recall thinking he was really coming off the rails on the subject. He was very aggressive about it.
I don't know if he's ever repented of his sin of insensitivity toward gay people in that book, or if he's going to let science inform a shift in his Thomistic view of the matter.
The treatment of gay people throughout history has been a historic injustice, and if Thomism can't figure out a way to right this wrong philosophically (the wrong of gay inequality), then it has no robust ethical content at all. If it can't usefully help you think your way to a greater circle of love, in the end of what value is it?
If an ethical system in the 21st century can't declare gay people as neighbors and equals, and promote for them the right to marry like everyone else, there's something deeply, deeply flawed and dark about it.
I wait with bated breath for Santi's application of Bayesian probability to Euclid's Geometry. Surely a Nobel Prize is in the offing.
ReplyDeleteSome people need to learn that not everything is a problem to be solved by empirical means.
Shorter Santi:
ReplyDelete"All of metaphysics must be re-written, if need be, to make the world safe for 'same-sex marriage.' Oh, and it's people who disagree with that who have an emotion-based agenda they're trying to rationalize."
For one, that homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom and is natural.
ReplyDeleteUtterly, utterly devastating. Ed and Greg, I think it is time you pack up your bags and go home. We have now confirmed, through science, the homosexuality is natural, and not unnatural as you evil men claim. See?! It happens in nature, therefore, your arguments are WRONG!!!
For another, that genes, hormones, and specific brain areas influence same sex attraction.
Heh, heh. Got 'em good there, since they must have believed that it used to be influenced by Demons! After all, wasn't Feser rambling on about how demons falsified science or something like that?
If nature produces it, then on Thomistic grounds one would think it ought to be given space for expression, right?
Excellent observation. It's just that bigoted, evil men like Feser & co. are inconsistent with their weird worship of "nature" and stuff like that.
This whole notion that the penis is "for" vaginas only is silly, especially in the light of recent science, don't you think?
I don't know whether you mean it is for things like the rectum as well or if you are trying to say science has refuted teleology, but you are absolutely right on both counts. Recent science has indeed shown that:
a) There is no teleology, and
b) that the penis has the inherent directedness for being used, not only for a vagina, but also for the rectum and all body parts in that general vicinity.
Feser said some bitterly obnoxious and dismissive things about gays in his anti-atheism book. I recall thinking it was ugly.
And I am sure that in your totally righteous and justified indignation, you have accurately remembered all he said in the few years since you have read it.
When I read that book a few years back, I also recall thinking he was really coming off the rails on the subject. He was very aggressive about it.
Yes, we heroes on the right side of history have been entirely fair and level headed on our side of the discussion and deserved none of the coarse language Feser served in his book.
I don't know if he's ever repented of his sin of insensitivity toward gay people in that book, or if he's going to let science inform a shift in his Thomistic view of the matter.
Of course not, since men like Feser are the locus of all evil. Insensitivity is the second-greatest sin, right after judgment, so you know Feser's got to be bad (not to mention he has shown copious amounts of the third-greatest sin, not going along with materialistic dogm...oops, I mean, science).
The treatment of gay people throughout history has been a historic injustice, and if Thomism can't figure out a way to right this wrong philosophically (the wrong of gay inequality), then it has no robust ethical content at all. If it can't usefully help you think your way to a greater circle of love, in the end of what value is it? If an ethical system in the 21st century can't declare gay people as neighbors and equals, and promote for them the right to marry like everyone else, there's something deeply, deeply flawed and dark about it.
Ya hear that Feser?! If you can't make gay sex (and all that it entails) pure and holy, your ethical system is obviously a wreck and needs to be overhauled
/Poe
*Normally, I tend to avoid such overt and (as Santi says) "off the rails" mockery, but at this point, Santi's refusal to listen coupled with no shortage of weak psychoanalysis on his part leaves me with a pretty untroubled conscience over the whole thing.
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteFor one, that homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom and is natural.
For another, that genes, hormones, and specific brain areas influence same sex attraction.
If nature produces it, then on Thomistic grounds one would think it ought to be given space for expression, right?
This was never the sense of 'nature' relevant to natural law arguments. And as I implied, no Christian from the Middle Ages would have been surprised that people were born with an inclination to sin.
See, I start suspecting that when you insist upon scientific evidence, it is robustly relevant and bears importantly on the theories against which you raise it. But then the scientific data that you propose is something that anyone defending Christian sexual morality has in fact responded to. In the end your appeals are just ways to insist that what you regard as prima facie objections still can count as evidence against the theory, even if using them as objections formally would not be possible since they rely on equivocations.
This whole notion that the penis is "for" vaginas only is silly, especially in the light of recent science, don't you think?
Yeah, just hilarious. Science has shown that there are many, many ways to use a penis.
The treatment of gay people throughout history has been a historic injustice, and if Thomism can't figure out a way to right this wrong philosophically (the wrong of gay inequality), then it has no robust ethical content at all.
'A way to right this wrong philosophically'? Like philosophical reparations?
'Being gay' was not considered constitutive of identity until the last couple hundred years. To be defined by one's desires is a modern phenomenon; presumably within the next half century people will 'identify' with fetishes and the like as well. (Speaking of language games and fields free of self-criticism--crack open a gender studies textbook and have a field day.)
Santi, I think you fail to understand what metaphysics actually is.
ReplyDeleteTake this example, you see a train on a track chugging away. You continue to focus on this for 10 seconds, and through that 10 seconds, a train is there at all times and at the end of 10 seconds a train is 100 metres further on the track than your initial judgement.
How can you guarantee that it is the same train you saw 10 seconds earlier? If you say so, you are making a metaphysical claim, and then any attempt to justify that claim will be a metaphysical argument.
@Edward Feser:
ReplyDeleteWhether you're conscious of it or not, your mind book reads like an apologetic text for dualism. You deal with the issues in a measured fashion, but it's always clear what side you're on, and why you're raising the issues you do (and why you're framing them the way you are).
Demons don't show up in a straight introductory text to the philosophy of mind. They showed up in yours. What's your reader to think? Obviously, that you're trying to keep dualism in play even where the scientific evidence runs so blatantly against it. You never see devils mentioned in a neuro-biology textbook, or in a textbook of abnormal psychology.
And you're very, very coy here. Could you please just tell us directly whether you think that multiple personality disorder and split brain experiment results might be the result of demon possession?
And do you really believe the angels-fell-from-heaven story literally, and think these disembodied spirits are roaming earth, sometimes interacting with the brains of human beings, making them do things?
And since I have your attention, let me say I'd look forward to you reviewing Michael Graziano's book.
And I thought you were rough on gay people in your atheism book. Are you in the process of rethinking a Thomist response to gay issues?
And one last thing. Everybody here has sassed me about Bayes' Rule, Hume's "proportion your belief to the evidence," and grayscaling. If you have the energy to say something about those things, I'd appreciate your thought. I do greatly respect your intelligence, and wouldn't read your books if I didn't think you are good for the agnostic's (probably non-existent) soul.
And if you feel you have to sass me as well, recall that I used to defend you pretty vigorously against Coyne et al at my blog. I think you are an excellent and patient teacher. I've learned a lot from reading you (though you might not think so).
@Greg:
ReplyDelete"'A way to right this wrong philosophically'? Like philosophical reparations?"
Yes. You were joking, but I think that is exactly the right response to this moment in history (if you're a philosopher). It's how a philosopher might contribute to the greater dignity of all human beings on this planet: generate robust intellectual arguments for gay marriage and equality (in this instance, within a Thomistic Catholic framework).
This sort of writing has been done by philosophers during slavery on behalf of slaves, and philosophers made arguments for women's equality when the ground was hard there. It needs to be done for gay people, and Feser is smart enough to do it (were he so inclined). It would be a legacy moment for Feser, to write that book: "A Thomistic Case for Gay Marriage." You bet.
Santi, you cannot be seriously berating Thomism for its slight to human dignity, while at the same time berating it for a commitment to airy fairy metaphysical claims. The notion that human beings have dignity is itself just such a claim, and one that, I think, events like the Holocaust just might maybe, on your way of thinking, lend some points to the proposition that dignity is an emotivist term, bereft of any real meaning.
ReplyDeleteor, I should say "... berating certain Thomists for what you perceive to be their affronts to human dignity, while at the same time berating them for commitments to airy fairy metaphysical claims"
ReplyDeleteEverybody here has sassed me about Bayes' Rule, Hume's "proportion your belief to the evidence," and grayscaling
ReplyDeleteActually everyone here has made measured arguments against your assertions, which you simply ignore and move on to your next raft of unsupported assertions.
How about doing us all a favor and simply stand and defend just one of your claims. Like this one for instance:
But if you start your reasoning tethered to experience, acknowledging your empirical existential situation (that you're a limited and evolved primate on a tiny planet that is drifting in a vast and ancient cosmos), it makes sense to be in the habit of grayscaling your beliefs (as opposed to assigning them the probabilities of 1 or 0).
@Ed Feser:
ReplyDelete"All of metaphysics must be re-written, if need be, to make the world safe for 'same-sex marriage.'"
Yes, I think that's a fair summary of what I'm saying, and YOU are the person to write that book. I'm not joking. You need to pray about that one, Ed. God (if God exist) might have brought me to you in this thread to tell you that. To think about it. God loves you, and God loves gay people. And you can say that in a book probably better than just about anybody alive. And maybe God wants you to write that book.
"[P]oor Giordano Bruno, tied to a stake in Rome in 1600, fire about to touch the straw at his feet, wouldn't think your forgetfulness was terribly amusing."
ReplyDeleteIf Santi really thinks Bruno's views about astronomy played anything more than, at most, a very minor role in his trial, then his understanding of history is as impoverished as his understanding of philosophy. (Or of Ed, who I see has replied with a longer version of the same point I made a few posts back about the point of the infamous "demonic possession" passage.)
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteYou were joking, but I think that is exactly the right response to this moment in history (if you're a philosopher). It's how a philosopher might contribute to the greater dignity of all human beings on this planet: generate robust intellectual arguments for gay marriage and equality (in this instance, within a Thomistic Catholic framework).
Well, I was joking, but what is funny is that under this conception philosophy is entirely instrumentalized for some end other than considerations of truth (like today's mandatory ontology of sexuality).
[P]oor Giordano Bruno, tied to a stake in Rome in 1600, fire about to touch the straw at his feet, wouldn't think your forgetfulness was terribly amusing.
ReplyDeleteIf as Scott said, this is in reference to his astronomy, may I point out that the Ptolemaic system had overthrown (literal) Biblical cosmology long, long before Bruno and yet his theories were still upheld until their falsification. If the Church was such a safeguard of the literal astronomical model provided to us in the Bible, why were they so tolerant of the Ptolemaic system for over a millennium?
@Vincent Torley:
ReplyDelete[to Brandon:] "Please use short, simple sentences in future. Your syntax is almost incomprehensible to read."
I haven't had any difficulty at all understanding anything Brandon has written. I think the problem here is yours.
And if you're having this much trouble understanding Brandon, that might help to explain why, despite your previous claim of familiarity with Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, you can't get seem to your mind around the most basic and essential points of his views on free will.
I suspect Santi got the Giordano Bruno example from the Cosmos rerun.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think, with all of the scientists that the Church murdered in the 17th century to prevent the edifice of Thomism from giving way, that they would used an example of, you know, an actual scientist.
Oh, sorry to say, but I think Santi failed miserably at grayscaling his ethical beliefs.
ReplyDeleteThe gall to think all these cultures throught history were wrong to treat homosexuals the way Santi thinks is "unjust". To spit on the experience of all these cultures!
Yes, they didn't have access to all the science we have (poor souls), and they were certainly courageous, so you can't blame them. I mean, all views must be falsifiable, right?.. You never know! What if (the favorite argument of a truly courageous and open mind) tomorrow science will tell us to kill all the homosexuals along with their grannies (and possibly all the kittens)?
Again! The arrogance of a language-gambler is manifest when it comes to the Holocaust.
Now, I know some so-called metaphysicians here will object to some of the things the Nazis did, admittedly, it wasn't all nice..
I guess one can say that there's something dark about them. Yes, certainly not nice, but whatever works, eh?.. De gustibus non disputandum est, or whatever.
Doesn't the fact that your ethical system is a closed one bother you?.. Did you actually have experience of genociding? Huh? To think, to be so certain, that the Nazis, who had their science, alright, WERE WRONG to kill all these people?..
I mean, doesn't the fact that the Nazis went on after slaughtering, say, a thousand, then ten thousand people and didn't stop then, at least lower the probability of them being wrong (they had plenty of time to consider what they're doing, many of them were educated people, actual SCIENTISTS)? And therefore you being right to condemn the Holocaust?... Germany was a very successful nation in terms of science and industry.
Besides, Germany got many things that Science and Experience now tell us are right: euthanasia, for example. Unfortunately, they failed to extend the right to abortion enjoyed by women living in occupied territories to German women, but, you know... Sometimes mistakes happen along the way.
And yet you fail to remember that moral grayscaling is key.
Such bad faith!
What a lack of epistemological modesty!
I'm astounded.
Hoo-boy, the horse apples have been dropping fast and furious.
ReplyDelete"For one, that homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom and is natural."
And the ethical implication of this factoid is…?
"For another, that genes, hormones, and specific brain areas influence same sex attraction."
And the ethical implication of this factoid is…?
"If nature produces it, then on Thomistic grounds one would think it ought to be given space for expression, right?"
Sure, because Thomism holds that any "natural" desire should be indulged, right? Like the desire to kill, or the desire to commit adultery, or the desire to steal someone else's rightful property?
The levels of both ignorance and bad faith here are just stunning. I certainly hope there's no one left who's taking this jackass seriously.
The stuff and nonsense about demons is reminding me of a story I read some years ago. There was a witch doctor who believed diseases were caused by demons, and a group of scientists decided to show him up by letting him look through a microscope at some microbes. They were sure that when he saw them, he'd be embarrassed and ashamed that he'd ever held such primitive and superstitious beliefs.
ReplyDeleteThe great day came, and the scientists led the witch doctor into the laboratory to look through the microscope while they awaited his response. It came very quickly: "Oh, so that's what demons look like!"
@Vincent Torley:
ReplyDelete"I will make this as clear as possible.…On the Banezian view, whenever I [sin], God infallibly ensures that I will do so."
I will make this as clear as possible: this is not the Bañezian view.
@ Georgy
ReplyDeleteOh, sorry to say, but I think Santi failed miserably at grayscaling his ethical beliefs.
I know right. Earlier, some people were criticizing him for endorsing the argument from evil while stating that he was 99% sure that "nature is completely without purpose or value." I don't think there is too much wrong with that, since one can conditionally consider the possibility that values are objective in assessing theism. But on a non-cognitivist understanding of morality, one can hardly speak of "historic injustice" and "equality of persons" in anything more than a stipulative sense.
On most justifications of homosexual behavior (i.e. the principle that consent is a sufficient condition for sexual behavior to be permissible), adult incest is also permissible. And while one might insist that there is in fact nothing wrong with adult incest, it is difficult to villainize someone for holding the view that there is (and consequently, difficult to villainize someone for taking it to be a reductio of the permissibility of homosexual behavior).
Feser: "Nowhere do I "discredit" or reject any scientific evidence, but merely point out how the evidence re: split brain phenomena is also susceptible of alternative interpretations (as any neuroscientist would agree), and that there are no philosophical results to be read out of it without first reading philosophical assumptions into it."
ReplyDeleteSanti: "Obviously, that you're trying to keep dualism in play even where the scientific evidence runs so blatantly against it."
Here we have empirical evidence that Santi's reading comprehension is questionable. I am 99.999999999999% sure of the above statement.
The first arrow means "God infallibly ensures that I will choose something, as a primary agent."
ReplyDeleteAgain, Vincent, 'ensures' most commonly indicates a kind of necessity. Are we really going to have to go through the thesaurus here, as both Scott and I end up having to tell you repeatedly, "No, that synonym doesn't work either"?
Of course, you might mean it in a correct sense, if what you really mean here is (e.g.) that 'God, as primary agent, infallibly actualizes my will so as to ensure that in willing I am freely and effectively choosing something in an act of self-determination.' But if so, nobody would guess it from your comment.
There are certainly obscurities in Garrigou-Lagrange's account of premotion -- he admits it himself, so it's no secret -- and one could very well hold that some such obscurity was a fatal flaw. But nobody should be having this much difficulty with this particular point.
Santi has got to be a put-up job but you just never know on the internet.
ReplyDeleteFeser: "First of all, the particular argument you're talking about in Philosophy of Mind is not one I even endorse, either in that book or elsewhere."
ReplyDeleteSanti: "And you're very, very coy here. Could you please just tell us directly whether you think that multiple personality disorder and split brain experiment results might be the result of demon possession?"
More evidence, Anon.
In light of which evidence, you should probably update your confidence in your belief to 99.99999999999999999999%.
ReplyDeleteGreg:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote the following regarding my proposal that a Thomist philosopher (ideally Feser) should write a pro-gay marriage book: "[W]hat is funny is that under this conception philosophy is entirely instrumentalized for some end other than considerations of truth..."
That's exactly why I think the book can be written. Metaphysics already works this way (but pretends not to). But if God exists, the truth will out. God will guide the pious metaphysician listening to God's will to write a book that finds in the Thomistic system a way to justify a dignified and equal place within the Catholic Church for people with same sex desire and a desire for marriage.
If God exists, God loves gay people. If you don't love gay people, you don't know God. God wants the violence and indignities brought upon gay people to stop in the same way (S)he wanted slavery and women's inequality to stop. This is a heart thing, and this is a historical moment for gay rights. And this means it's an existential moment for a philosopher of the talents of Ed Feser. He could make the lives of perhaps millions of human beings better over the coming centuries by writing the book that shifted Thomism in the direction of drawing a larger circle of love.
If you can use Thomism to imagine God wanting you to burn people at the stake (something Thomas approved of for heretics, and justified in his writing, to his shame), you can imagine God loving gay people, and wanting them treated with the utmost dignity, allowing them marriage equality. Thomism has been used for evil and good through the years, and it can be used for good here, now, with Feser's gift for justification and explanation.
Georgy Mancz,
ReplyDeleteMaybe I have it wrong, but I thought it was hard for an Englishman like me to join an Eastern Catholic Church in a Western country? I thought that you were generally pushed towards the Latin Rite.
Apart from that, I simply have misgivings about the post-Vatican II Roman Church.
I recall our past conversation. You seem very knowledgeable on the subject, far more than me, but I still don't really buy the idea that a Christian must endorse the Catholic view of the Papacy (though I don't disagree with the Roman Church maintaining their ecclesiology.
Can we please stop feeding the troll.
ReplyDeleteJeremy Taylor,
ReplyDeleteThe rule is that if you are already a member of a sui juris Church you have to go through an official process to change; but if you are not, you can enter any of them.
Brandon and Scott,
ReplyDeleteSince you doubt me, here's what Garrigou-Lagrange himself says. (By the way, Scott, the online link to "Predestination" only brings up the first third of the book. And I can't buy books any more because I can't afford to.)
"God is either determining or determined, there is no other alternative.... The
knowledge of God is the CAUSE of our free determinations, or else it is CAUSED by
them.... The knowledge of God either measures things or is measured by them. Only anthropomorphism can admit the second term of the dilemma and therefore, from sheer necessity, we must keep to the first. There is no other solution.... If the divine causality is not predetermining with regard to our choice, ... the divine knowledge is fatally
determined by it.... It becomes consequently quite clear for one who speaks seriously and does not wish to trifle with words, that the foreknowledge is passive when one positively asserts that this difference does not come from God." (God: His Existence and His Nature (St Louis MO: Herder, 1955), 546f
and 538.)
Here's another quote, in which G-L rejects the Molinist view because it makes God a passive spectator:
"If, in fact, the divine motion does not infallibly ensure the execution of a divine intrinsically efficacious and predetermining decree, it follows, as Molina and his disciples maintain that, of two men tempted and equally helped by God, it happens that one consents to co-operate with the grace and the other does not. And then the difference, which distinguishes the good from the bad consent and this man from that other, does not come from God but solely from man's free will... It becomes consequently quite clear that for one who speaks seriously and does not wish to trifle with words, that the foreknowledge is passive when one positively asserts that this difference does not at all come from God; just as I am a passive spectator when I see that this man, independently of me, is seated whereas that other is standing."
I may have read G-L 30 years ago, but I spent literally hundreds of hours poring over that book. Reading it was the single biggest cause of my decision to leave the Catholic Church in 1989. I didn't return back for 15 years. By then, my outlook had changed: I now hold a Boethian view of free will.
My objection to G-L: If the knowledge of God is the CAUSE of our free determinations, then they are no longer free.
A CAUSE of X may be a necessary condition for X, or a necessary and sufficient condition for X. G-L cannot mean the former, as this alone would not give God knowledge of X. The mere act of supporting me in existence while I choose between X and Y does not yield knowledge of how I make use of that support; did I choose X or Y? If God is merely a necessary cause, then G-L's view would be equivalent to open theism. In fact, it would be worse, God would be unable to know any of our past, present or future choices.
Consequently, G-L must mean a necessary and sufficient condition, because G-L speaks of God's causality as "predetermining" our choices, and of "a divine intrinsically efficacious and predetermining decree". Thus on G-L's view, God's decreeing that I shall do X is a necessary and sufficient condition for my (freely) doing X. And this is precisely what I object to. If God's decree is a sufficient condition for my doing X, then God cannot hold me responsible for X, if X is a sinful act. Thus G-L must hold that God is the author of our sinful choices.
To be continued...
Brandon and Scott,
ReplyDeleteBack again. The last sentence in the post above should read:
"If G-L holds that God's decree is a necessary and sufficient condition for our choices, then He must hold that God is the author of our choices."
Ed himself says the same:
"Hence to say that God is the ultimate source of all causality is not like saying that He is comparable to a hypnotist in a story who brainwashes people to do his bidding, or a mad scientist who controls them via some electronic device implanted in their brains. He is more like the writer who decides that the characters will interact in such-and-such a way. And so His being the ultimate source of all causality is no more incompatible with human freedom than the fact that an author decides that, as part of a mystery story, a character will freely choose to commit a murder, is incompatible with the claim that the character in question really committed the murder freely."
But if God knows our choices in the way that the author of a book knows what his/her characters are doing, then that would entail that God is the Ultimate Author of all of the following:
every human perversion ever dreamed up by twisted human individuals – for the ideas that these people had originally came from God;
every argument for atheism that any philosopher has ever formulated;
every fallacious argument that any philosopher has ever made;
every evil plan that anyone has ever had;
every badly thought-out plan that anyone has ever had;
every immoral work of literature;
every second or third-rate work of literature (including every rejected novel and every unfinished one);
every dirty joke and every sick joke;
every corny or unfunny joke, and every bad pun;
every cruel or unkind word ever uttered by one human being to another;
every foolish word ever uttered by one human being to another;
every bad deed that anyone has ever done; and every stupid thing that anyone has ever done.
And as I've said earlier, authors do not get angry with the characters in their books. Nor do they blame them for what they have done.
To sum up: I think the Banezian view of God is positively diabolical.
Vincent,
ReplyDeleteIt is simply unclear what any of this has to do with my argument. Is this you starting over, or are you still defending the old argument? I'm really, really hoping, though, that you aren't pinning your entire argument on how Garrigou-Lagrange uses words like 'determine' and 'predetermine', because we've been here before.
However, it is clear that you have yet again shifted course. Having previously denied that you were claiming that Garrigou-Lagrange holds that God necessitates choices, you claim now that he must mean that divine premotion is a necessary and sufficient cause. Causes that are sufficient conditions necessitate. Thus you have confirmed the point I have made from the beginning, that you keep dragging necessity into the description of Garrigou-Lagrange's view, despite the fact that Garrigou-Lagrange repeatedly denies that divine premotion necessitates our choices.
Incidentally, although I know that I'm going to regret pointing this out, "A CAUSE of X may be a necessary condition for X, or a necessary and sufficient condition for X" is an obviously false dichotomy. There are causes that are INUS conditions; there are adequate-but-not-sufficient causes (as when causes are defeasible); there are causes that are not necessary conditions (e.g., in cases of overdetermination); there are probabilistic causes; and any number of others.
@Scott
ReplyDelete"The levels of both ignorance and bad faith here are just stunning. I certainly hope there's no one left who's taking this jackass seriously. "
Well I am not, that much is true.
@Santi
Have I missed your answer to my very pointed questions?
Again, it is pointless trying to engage in philosophical dialogue with someone who has their fingers in their ears, and who seemingly contradicts themselves with impressive regularity, yet pontificates in such a way as to 'school' others (inspite of their blatant lack of philosophical acumen). The lack of humility is astounding!
ReplyDeletePhilosophy is such a wonderful discipline but some of the sophisticated contributors to this com box (and there are clearly many of these)are seriously wasting precious minutes engaging with this pontificating, inconsistent and sanctimonious buffoon.
There are so many more worthy adversaries out there to dialogue with and life is short.
regarding heretics and execution...
ReplyDeleteI think it is worth noting that Aquinas argues for capital punishment for heretics by reference to other, ostensibly more mild crimes that were also punishable by death, namely forgery. He says that if such crimes as these are punishable by death, so then should heresy be. Nowadays an argument like that doesn't make much sense, but, at the risk of sounding callous, I think he has a point insofar as he emphasizes the harm that is caused by too much indulgence of harmful ideologies. It's one thing to think of Galileo as a heretic, and recoil then at Thomas' harsh injunction. On the other hand, if when you think of "heresy", something like scientology comes to mind or modern-day gurus like Chopra, or even the average televangelist, I think it becomes possible to see Thomas' concern in a more sympathetic light (even if it is no longer possible to sympathize with the severity of the recommended punishment).
On the other hand, if when you think of "heresy", something like scientology comes to mind or modern-day gurus like Chopra, or even the average televangelist, I think it becomes possible to see Thomas' concern in a more sympathetic light (even if it is no longer possible to sympathize with the severity of the recommended punishment).
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm pleased at least you don't think burning at the stake is now an appropriate punishment for thought-crime such as that committed by Tom Cruise and Deepak Chopra. Perhaps a hand chopped off or a tongue extracted?
When people like you start talking about punishing those who express a differing view, I see that my concerns about traditional Catholicism are not unfounded.
What might keep charlatans like Chopra in check is a law (somewhat like consumer law) where religious promises that turn out false can be the subject of claims for monetary compensation.
Vincent,
ReplyDeleteBut if God knows our choices in the way that the author of a book knows what his/her characters are doing, then that would entail that God is the Ultimate Author of all of the following:
every human perversion ever dreamed up by twisted human individuals – for the ideas that these people had originally came from God;
every argument for atheism that any philosopher has ever formulated;
every fallacious argument that any philosopher has ever made;
every evil plan that anyone has ever had;
every badly thought-out plan that anyone has ever had;
every immoral work of literature;
every second or third-rate work of literature (including every rejected novel and every unfinished one);
every dirty joke and every sick joke;
every corny or unfunny joke, and every bad pun;
every cruel or unkind word ever uttered by one human being to another;
every foolish word ever uttered by one human being to another;
every bad deed that anyone has ever done; and every stupid thing that anyone has ever done.
And as I've said earlier, authors do not get angry with the characters in their books. Nor do they blame them for what they have done.
To sum up: I think the Banezian view of God is positively diabolical.
If one or more of the ("every...") above qualifies as a morally bad act, then one or more of the following must be true:
1. St. Thomas was wrong in stating both a) and b):
a) "[W]ill is said to be in God, as having always good which is its object[.]" ST I Q 19 A 1 ad. 2
b) "[A] good will does not produce a morally bad act[.]" ST I Q 49 A 1 ad. 1
2. The Catholic Encyclopedia (CE) incorrectly reports that Banez was wont to say, "By not so much as a finger-nail's breadth, even in lesser things, have I ever departed from the teaching of St. Thomas".
3. The CE correctly reports what Banez was wont to say, but Banez himself incorrectly stated what he never did.
4. Banez correctly stated what he never did, but his speech was such as allowed for an impression to the contrary.
5. You lack an adequate understanding of what Banez had to say.
6. You have an adequate understanding of what Banez had to say, but misconstrue its import.
@ Jeremy Taylor
ReplyDeleteI don't know the praxis of diocesan adminitration in the UK, but the closest thing I can think of that can be said to resemble "a push" is the fact that upon joining the Church you'll be canonincally regarded as a Latin.
In Russia most converts, as the majority of them were baptised in the Orthodox Church, but choose to join the Latin Rite, are regarded as Byzantines and write to Rome in order to become formally Latin. These permissions are given rather liberally. *We do have Byzantines, though. And Armenians!*
Belonging to a Rite does not preclude one from attending liturgies of other Rites, of course. A Catholic can attend Mass celebrated in any Catholic rite. So I think you can effectively practice the Faith as an Eastern Catholic if English bishops for some reason refuse to agree.
Come to think of it, perhaps there's an Eastern parish with Cathecumenate classes there?
Your misgivings are understood. Personally, I think Vaticanum II was (and still is) a tragedy. Modernism did win itself a place within the ranks of the Church previously denied to it, when it was fought. (Personally, I think the closest thing you can compare it to is a healthy man shooting himself in the foot with a shotgun because of some odd fashion).
What has to be kept in mind, though, that there's nothing specific in Vaticanum II that you as a Catholic would have to owe assent to. It features no dogmatic pronouncements, not a single anathema (these are two ways, positive and negative, for proclaiming doctrine). Given that Vatican II does not belong to extraordinary Magisterium, for it makes no solemn pronouncements, in this case the statements in themselves are not infallible, only in proportion to the common agreement with that which has always been taught in the Church.
And with Vatican II it's just too vague.
So you don't have to worry about the doctrine of the Church. That, and she's indefectible. I think that arguments ab Ecclesiae furore are valid. No matter what happens, the Church is still around, and so is its teaching, unchanged (Something the EO simply cannot cite, for example, when it comes to morals (divorce and remarriage, some if not most do not condemn contraception). There are EO who understand this, and it breeds schism, like that of ROC with some groups within ROCOR. And yes, sadly, factionalism is now everywhere at least to some extent).
And practically it's possible to stay clear of all things new (I was even baptised according to the "old" rite). Even in Moscow, where Catholics are few, it's possible to attend the Mass of St. Gregory the Great exclusively (a better name than "Tridentine", I think, and informative, too).
I think that ultimately to coherently hold historic Christianity (and there's no reason to do otherwise that I know of and many reasons to do so) one would have to acknowledge the Catholic teaching on the Papacy. It is biblical, the Fathers and the practice of the Chuch pre-Schism testifies to it. Again, please note that the branch theory, say, was definitely an innovation. All ancient Churches taught and do in fact teach ((with the possible exception of some Orientals and certain liberals everywhere) that the Church is one and visible, and outside of it ordinarily (!) there's no salvation (apart from cases of invincible ignorance), that is, they teach the duty of a man
to be visibly a part of the Church Christ founded. Not just the Catholics.
Is there something particular about the Papacy you object to?..
One has to keep in mind that Catholic ecclesiology does not prescribe specific administrative arrangements, by-laws, if you will, like the laws of appointment of bishops. It describes it's God- given constitution, something essential to the Church.
@ Santi
ReplyDeleteIf God exists, God loves gay people. If you don't love gay people, you don't know God. God wants the violence and indignities brought upon gay people to stop in the same way (S)he wanted slavery and women's inequality to stop.
God does love gay people. God also loves masturbators, blasphemers, and those who defraud laborers of their wages. The Church already teaches, and has for many years, that those with homosexual desires should be treated with dignity and respect, and certainly that violence should not be brought against them. Extending dignity and respect to gay people implies 'marriage equality' about as much as extending dignity and respect to masturbators implies that the Church should endorse the nutty proposals that allow people to marry themselves.
In Catholic Christianity, marriage does actually have a point. In liberal imperfectionism, marriage should be 'extended' to whomever wants it (i.e. whoever wants to be called 'married' and to legally require the world to hold them that way) because sexual relationships are inherently meaningless. As you say yourself, it's about whether people have "a desire for marriage." From the Catholic perspective, marriage is a pre-political and pre-ecclesial institution directed toward the raising of children--the only thing that can warrant 'gay marriage' is a concern for political correctness that overrides the only relevant distinctions that made marriage more than any old contract to begin with.
Also, Santi, a disjointed comment about sexual ethics.
ReplyDeleteA dispassionate truth seeker like yourself should attend to the cognitive biases inherent on your own side of this debate. The FDA website says that there is still a risk of AIDS and other sexually-transmitted disease if one engages in sodomy while using a condom. Until recently, the website also recommended against such behavior, even when using a condom. The latter admonition--based purely on the fact that the majority of new AIDS cases in the United States are among gay men, who are constitute no more than 2% of the population--was removed. But of course nothing overturned the finding of the prevalence of AIDS in those who practice sodomy; pointing out the health risks is simply not politically correct. I do not suggest that this on its own implies that homosexual behavior is immoral (though in the individual case, it may be sufficient to judge that it is imprudent, given that people are sufficiently aware of the consequences of their actions), but it is illustrative of the extent to which purveyors of liberated sexuality will go to ensure that people feel affirmed--even to the detriment of those they are trying to 'liberate'.
Alan Fox,
ReplyDeleteYour last comment exhibits:
1. Dishonesty: Where did Matt suggest anything comparable to hand chopping or tongue extracting would be appropriate? That's right! Nowhere! Other than in your twisted mind.
2. Bigotry: That "people like you" always gives it away, doesn't it?;) Actually this helps to explain the dishonest reading mentioned above. I note too that while physical mutilation may be too harsh for Cruise and Chopra, you pass over the "average televangelist" that Matt also included. Perhaps for those Xians tongue extraction might be OK? Or perhaps your fixed neuronal firing patterns simply didn't allow you to see it.
3. Self-contradiction: First you express your righteous horror at the idea of "punishing those who express a differing view." In the very next sentence you propose a law that might be used to punish those same people.
I admit I'm impressed you were able to fit all of those into such a short comment. Most trolls could only manage one, or at most two, at a time.
By the way, in a thread not long ago you were strangely reluctant to put forward any actual objections to the Five Ways, despite expressing great confidence that they were nonsense. Since you've now mastered Thomas to the degree that you're able to assess how accurate Feser's reading of him is, perhaps you would like to raise some objections now? There tend to be a few genuine Thomists around here most days, and having an actual discussion with them might be helpful before you attempt your promised review. Because to be honest, going by the comments you've posted on this blog, my sense is that you're heading for a faceplant so hard it might kill you.
Greg,
ReplyDeleteYou write, "[T]he only thing that can warrant 'gay marriage' is a concern for political correctness that overrides the only relevant distinctions."
Now, Greg, surely you can be more creative than this. The relevant distinction--the one that is supreme in any hierarchy of value--is LOVE. Paul said it in I Corinthians 13. If you have a metaphysical system that constrains the circle of love, that system has missed something that is significant (just as Thomas goofed up in his reasoning about heretics).
A metaphysical system not capable of incorporating gay marriage into it is a clanging cymbal. It's not oriented toward love in the right way.
If gay marriage can't be incorporated into Thomism, it's not that gay orientation is a problem, but that Thomistic metaphysical orientation is a problem (which is that it is not oriented toward love).
So the outlines of a Thomistic-style argument shouldn't be hard to generate from this premise.
I think Feser should be making this argument (because he could do it in a tighter and more nuanced way), but I'll try in my rough, unsophisticated, and "stupid" fashion: God is love. God made people for love. Science tells us that there are biological determinates that drive same sex attraction. If you give a bird wings, but denied it flight, that would be cruel. If you gave a bird an inner drive to build nests, and denied it access to nest-building materials, that would be cruel.
God made gay people with certain sorts of wings of desire, and desires to build nests with other individuals. It's consistent with God's bringing people into union in love. God wants us to orient toward love, and made creatures with instincts to orient toward love.
It is cruel to stop the human flourishing of natural love, and gay attraction is a natural form of love. This is not an "evil" to be stopped (unless love is an evil).
There's nothing shameful about gay marriage (unless birds building nests is shameful, and birds using their wings is shameful, and heterosexuals coupling is shameful). The birds do it, the bees do it, and God made Mike and Steve to do it.
Because the highest thing in God is (1) love, (2) no cruelty, and (3) the creation of beings with impulses to love, there's no good reason Mike and Steve shouldn't flourish together in love and matrimony. None.
Feser wrote to me that what I was saying is that "All of metaphysics must be re-written, if need be, to make the world safe for 'same-sex marriage." And that is exactly right.
Gay marriage puts Thomistic metaphysics at a crossroads. In the light of contemporary science, and knowing that the highest thing about God is love (1 John 4: 7-8 says GOD IS LOVE), if Thomistic metaphysics can't incorporate gay dignity, equality, flourishing, and marriage into its system, it is what Paul called in Corinthians a big nothing (a noisy gong or clanging cymbal).
Irish Thomist:
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: "Have I missed your answer to my very pointed questions?"
Sorry, I got so much incoming, that I couldn't respond to everything, and now I can't seem to locate your comment.
If I recall, was it you that asked me about my metaphysical starting point (existentially lost in space)? Why do I start there, etc?
If so, let me answer that quickly, and perhaps with more detail if you retort back.
When we first blink into awareness in this cosmos (I'm talking about the first 20 years of life), we rather quickly discern that we're not God, that we're limited in extent in a vast and old cosmos. We also can pretty obviously determine that we're evolved social primates with a lot of batshit crazy and contending notions about God, who we are, and what we should be doing.
With no obvious outside guidance, we're like the maze-runners in that new movie that is out. We've been plopped in a maze with no maps by someone or something that ain't talking.
The result: start with experience (as Hume suggests). That means probability thinking, grayscaling beliefs, empiricism, and tethering oneself to that.
The reason I would do that, as opposed to taking Pascal's wager to leap into a faith tradition with both feet, is because it's less likely to drop me into a rabbit hole of self-deception.
It's logically possible that one of the non-empirical metaphysical/religious systems on offer is right, but given my existential situation, and given how well science has worked over the past several centuries, I think it would be foolish to jump to something that looks superstitious and ethically icky (so much of religion is not just woo, but ethically repugnant to me).
If science is a metaphysical starting point akin to a religion (as so many in these threads want to insist), it's hard to argue with success. It seems to be on the right track.
If this wasn't your question, let me know what they were. Sorry I got buried trying to answer others before yours.
Santi, the challenge in making that sort of argument is that you would have to avoid the conclusion that desires, by virtue of being desires, ought to be permitted and satisfied, and that that is in some way constitutive of Christian love. Neither Aquinas or Paul would hold to that principle; in fact they would probably both laugh about it, although neither of them had substantial ideological reasons to suppress sexual minorities. (The same insistence on satisfying people's desires would justify single-person marriage, drunkenness, marriage between adult siblings, etc..) As in the case of Wittgenstein, you appear to be appealing selectively (to Aquinas, Paul, the understanding of Christian love), quoting out of context, etc. etc. i.e. the Santi philosophical method.
ReplyDeleteAs was mentioned before, the argument you'd like Feser to make would require him to equivocate on the sense of 'nature' relevant to natural law. Those concerned with having a consistent ethical system might worry about that; those who believe there is no objective value but still have emotional attachments to (subjective?) feelings of 'historic injustice', I suppose, do not worry about consistency. They figure that, like themselves, everyone else just philosophizes to justify their political intuitions.
You did so well, in your first many posts on this comment thread, in feigning dispassion. Then more recently you became unhinged, and now you are leaving no doubt that, for you, philosophy is an instrumental pursuit to justify propositions that you place beyond doubt (in spite of all of the intelligent people throughout history who have not agreed with you).
@Gottfried:
ReplyDelete"Since you've now mastered Thomas to the degree that you're able to assess how accurate Feser's reading of him is, perhaps you would like to raise some objections now? There tend to be a few genuine Thomists around here most days, and having an actual discussion with them might be helpful before you attempt your promised review."
May God have mercy on us and spare us such a punishment.
If you give a bird wings, but denied it flight, that would be cruel.
ReplyDeleteAll men are born with sinful inclinations. I admit I delight a bit too much in wittily sniping at you; I would be surprised if such feelings had no biological basis. How cruel it is that I ought to hold my tongue sometimes.
If you give a bird wings, but denied it flight, that would be cruel.
ReplyDeleteCruel, cruel world with ratites and penguins and unloved kakapos in it.
@ Brandon
ReplyDeleteI hope you didn't imply that ratites are not loved universally as we speak.
Such an injustice utterly demolishes any metaphysical system or any scientific theory, for that matter, that fails to explain the precise reason how this absurdity can ever obtain in reality. Calling -this- a brute fact will not do, will not do at all.
Or at least provide us with an objective imperative - clear to everyone, mind you - that ratites MUST be loved.
@grodrigues
ReplyDeleteI don't think you need worry. By careful Bayesianistic calculations I've determined that the probability of Mr. Fox ever actually attempting a serious discussion of these matters is significantly less than 1 percent.
@Vincent Torley:
ReplyDelete"I now hold a Boethian view of free will."
Completely aside from the fact that, like Brandon, I'm no longer able to keep track of exactly what it is you're trying to argue, I'm also puzzled by your apparent belief that a "Boethian view of free will" is an alternative to that of Aquinas and G-L. Where do you think Aquinas departs from Boethius on this subject? Or is it rather that you think G-L departs from Aquinas?