Hartshorne on the project of natural theology

Process theism denies some of the key attributes ascribed to God by classical theism, such as immutability and impassibility.  Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) was among its chief representatives.  As a Thomist, I am the opposite of sympathetic to process theism.  However, I’ve always found Hartshorne an interesting thinker.  Many twentieth-century philosophers had a regrettable tendency toward overspecialization, and also often ignored all but a handful of thinkers of the past.  Hartshorne, by contrast, was a philosopher of the old-fashioned stripe.  He addressed a wide variety of philosophical problems, was deeply read in the history of philosophy, and that history informed his work on contemporary issues.  He was also old-fashioned insofar as his theism (flawed though it was from my point of view) was integral to his more general metaphysics and ethics.  Like the greatest thinkers of the past, Hartshorne knew that the question of God was at the very heart of philosophy, not something that could be ignored by any serious philosopher, or at best tacked on to an otherwise complete system.

Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part VI: Schopenhauer

Our series has examined how atheists of earlier generations often exhibited a higher degree of moral and/or metaphysical gravitas than the sophomoric New Atheists of more recent vintage.  As we’ve seen, this is true of Nietzsche, Sartre, Freud, Marx, and even Woody Allen.  There is arguably even more in the way of metaphysical and moral gravitas to be found in our next subject, Arthur Schopenhauer.  Plus, I think it has to be said, the best hair.  So let’s have a look, if you’re willing.

Schmid on the Aristotelian proof

A fellow named Joseph Schmid has written a number of articles and blog posts critical of various ideas and arguments of mine, such as the Aristotelian proof defended in chapter 1 of my book Five Proofs of the Existence of God.  Until this week, I hadn’t read any of this material, though for some time now I’ve been getting an increasing number of requests that I comment on it.  Many of these have been anonymous and weirdly insistent or adulatory toward Schmid, which made me suspect sock puppetry rather than genuine widespread interest.  My attention in recent months has, in any event, been focused on the book on the soul that I am working on and which is way behind schedule (as well as on other existing writing commitments, most of which have deadlines).  I also have an article forthcoming in Religious Studies responding to Graham Oppy’s objections to the Aristotelian proof, and after working on that I was inclined to give the topic a rest for a while.  Hence my neglect of Schmid.  But the squeaky wheel gets the grease.  So, in hopes of appeasing the Schmid enthusiasts, this week I read his recent article “Stage One of the Aristotelian Proof: A Critical Appraisal.”  Let’s take a look at it.

The idols of the mind

Thomas Harper is one of the great forgotten Neo-Scholastic writers of the nineteenth century.  I discussed his wonderful little book The Immaculate Conception in a blog post many years ago.  He is especially notable for his unusually rigorous and thorough treatment of abstract topics in metaphysics, in works such as the massive three-volume The Metaphysics of the School.  Harper will sometimes interrupt a sustained exercise in abstract reasoning with a non-technical aside, as he does in the course of discussing the metaphysics of truth in Volume I.  He there offers (at pp. 461-466) a commentary on Francis Bacon’s “idols of the mind” which is even more relevant now than it was in Harper’s day.

Lacordaire on the existence of God

Preaching on theological topics is a tricky business.  The more substantive and rigorous a sermon, the greater the danger of its being inaccessible to the average listener.  But the more accessible it is, the greater the danger of its being woolly and banal.  (In our egalitarian and mawkish age, the latter vice is by far the more common one.  Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sermon that exhibited the former vice.)   The 19^th-century Dominican theologian Henri-Dominique Lacordaire was famously able to strike the right balance.  Like other writers of the period, he has a style that to the contemporary reader is bound to seem a bit purple and prolix.  But, I think, he stops short of excess even on that score – indeed, the tone is, if anything, refreshing.  Whereas rhetorical excess in contemporary preaching tends to pull our attention downward, to our own petty sentimentalities, Lacordaire’s flourishes raise it up to God.

Smith and divine eternity

Quentin Smith, one of the most formidable of contemporary atheist philosophers, died late last year.  One of the reasons he was formidable is that he actually knew what he was talking about.  Most of his fellow atheist philosophers do not, as Smith himself lamented.  In his article “The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” Smith opined that “the great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and an unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false.”  He thought that most of them held their opinion as a prejudice, and didn’t know or engage with the most serious arguments of the other side.  If that is true even of most atheist philosophers, it is even more true of atheists outside of philosophy – other secularist academics, New Atheist propagandists, Reddit loudmouths, et al.

What is religion?

The question is notoriously controversial.  Consider a definition like the following, from Bernard Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy:

religion, n. 1. the sum of truths and duties binding man to God. 2. personal belief and worship in relation to God.  Religion includes creed, cult, and code.

By “creed,” what Wuellner has in mind is a system of doctrine.  A “cult,” in this context, has to do with a system of rituals of the kind associated with worship and the like.  The “code” referred to has to do with a system of moral principles.  So, the definition is telling us that doctrines, rituals, and moral principles are among the key elements of religion.

Cundy on relativity and the A-theory of time

One of the many topics treated in Aristotle’s Revenge is the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy of nature and contemporary debates in the philosophy of time.  For example, I argue that, while at least the most fundamental claims of an Aristotelian philosophy of nature might be reconciled with the B-theory of time, the most natural position for an Aristotelian to take is an A-theory, and presentism in particular.  Thus was I led to defend presentism in the book – which requires, among other things, arguing that the presentist view of time has not been refuted by relativity theory.  Nigel Cundy disagrees.  A physicist with a serious interest in and knowledge of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, he has posted a detailed and thoughtful critique of this part of my book at his blog The Quantum Thomist.  Cundy thinks that presentism cannot be reconciled with relativity, and that other A-theories of time at least sit badly with it.  What follows is a response.

Word to the Wise

Eric Wise takes to Facebook to express shock that an author would be annoyed with a book reviewer who doesn’t have anything to say about the actual contents of the book under review.  He also manages to pack an amazing amount of further obfuscatory nonsense into a small space.

Wise defends his criticism of my arguing for broadly Aristotelian views rather than grappling with Aristotle’s own texts by noting that the title of my book is, after all, Aristotle’s Revenge.  Shouldn’t I have called it something else if it wasn’t going to be offering detailed exegesis of De Partibus Animalium?  This is like criticizing Tolstoy’s title War and Peace on the grounds that it is really just about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia rather than war in general, or objecting to Nietzsche’s title The Antichrist on the grounds that it isn’t really about eschatology or apocalyptic literature. (I thought Straussians were not supposed to be literal-minded.)

A clarification on integralism

Talk of integralism is all the rage in recent weeks, given the dispute between David French and Sohrab Ahmari and Matthew Continetti’s analysis of the state of contemporary conservatism, on which I commented in a recent post.  What is integralism?  Rod Dreher quotes the following definition from the blog The Josias:

Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him: a temporal power and a spiritual power. And since man’s temporal end is subordinated to his eternal end the temporal power must be subordinated to the spiritual power.

The voluntarist personality

A voluntarist conception of persons takes the will to be primary and the intellect to be secondary.  That is to say, for voluntarism, at the end of the day what we think reflects what we will.  An intellectualist conception of persons takes the intellect to be primary and the will to be secondary.  For intellectualism, at the end of the day, what we will reflects what we think.  The two views are, naturally, more complicated than that.  For example, no voluntarist would deny that what we think affects what we will, and no intellectualist would deny that what we will affects what we think.  But the basic idea is that for the voluntarist, the will is ultimately in the driver’s seat, whereas for the intellectualist, the intellect is ultimately in the driver’s seat.

Carrier on Five Proofs

In an article at his blog, pop atheist writer Richard Carrier grandly claims to have “debunked!” (exclamation point in the original) Five Proofs of the Existence of God.  It’s a bizarrely incompetent performance.  To say that Carrier attacks straw men would be an insult to straw men, which usually bear at least a crude resemblance to the argument under consideration.  They are also usually at least intelligible.  By contrast, consider this paragraph from the beginning of Carrier’s discussion of the Aristotelian proof:

Meta-bigotry

Sophistry is the attempt to persuade someone of some proposition or policy by the use of fallacious arguments.  What I have called meta-sophistry involves accusing others of fallacies or of sophistry in a manner that is itself fallacious or sophistical.  The meta-sophist cynically deploys labels like “sophist” as a rhetorical device by which he might smear and discredit an opponent.  Where the opponent’s arguments can easily be read in a way that involves no commission of fallacies, the meta-sophist will instead opt for a less charitable reading so as to facilitate the accusation that the opponent is a sophist.  Because the meta-sophist poses precisely as a foe of sophistry and fallacious argument and as a friend of reason, his brand of sophistry is especially insidious.  He is like the politician who makes the loud condemnation of sleazy politicians a useful cover for his own sleaziness.  (As I have documented many times over the years – e.g. here, here, and here – “New Atheist” writers are paradigmatic meta-sophists.)

Supervenience on the hands of an angry God

In his book Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, Jaegwon Kim puts forward the following characterization of the materialist supervenience thesis:

I take supervenience as an ontological thesis involving the idea of dependence – a sense of dependence that justifies saying that a mental property is instantiated in a given organism at a time because, or in virtue of the fact that, one of its physical “base” properties is instantiated by the organism at that time.  Supervenience, therefore, is not a mere claim of covariation between mental and physical properties; it includes a claim of existential dependence of the mental on the physical. (p. 34)

Denial flows into the Tiber

Pope Honorius I occupied the chair of Peter from 625-638.  As the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia notes in its article on Honorius, his chief claim to fame is that “he was condemned as a heretic by the sixth general council” in the year 680.  The heresy in question was Monothelitism, which (as the Encyclopedia notes) was “propagated within the Catholic Church in order to conciliate the Monophysites, in hopes of reunion.”  That is to say, the novel heresy was the byproduct of a misguided attempt to meet halfway, and thereby integrate into the Church, an earlier group of heretics.  The condemnation of Pope Honorius by the council was not the end of the matter.  Honorius was also condemned by his successors Pope St. Agatho and Pope St. Leo II.  Leo declared:

We anathematize the inventors of the new error… and also Honorius, who did not attempt to sanctify this Apostolic Church with the teaching of Apostolic tradition, but by profane treachery permitted its purity to be polluted.

Secret crisis of infinite links

New Scientist magazine opines that metaphysics has much to contribute to the study of nature.  Part of a special issue on the theme.

On the other hand, at Nautilus, empiricist philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen tells scientists to steer clear of metaphysics.

As usual, Aristotle had the answer long before you thought of the question.  His little known treatise on internet trolling.

Slurpee cups.  Marvel Treasury Editions.  Gerber’s Howard the Duck.  Hostess fruit pie ads.  Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men.  Secret Wars.  Crisis on Infinite Earths…  If you’re of a certain age, you know what I’m talkin’ about.  At Forces of Geek, George Khoury discusses his new book Comic Book Fever: A Celebration of Comics 1976 to 1986.

Putnam and analytical Thomism, Part II

In a previous post I examined the late Hilary Putnam’s engagement with the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition on a topic in the philosophy of mind.  Let’s now look at what Putnam had to say about Aristotelian-Thomistic ideas in natural theology.  In his 1997 paper “Thoughts Addressed to an Analytical Thomist” (which appeared in an issue of The Monist devoted to the topic of analytical Thomism), Putnam tells us that while he is not an analytical Thomist, as “a practicing Jew” he could perhaps be an “analytic Maimonidean.”  The remark is meant half in jest, but that there is some truth in it is evident from what Putnam says about the topics of proofs of God’s existence, divine simplicity, and theological language.

Putnam is not unsympathetic to some of the traditional arguments for God’s existence, such as those defended by Aquinas and Maimonides. He rejects the assumptions, common among contemporary secular academic philosophers, that such arguments are uniformly invalid, question-begging, or otherwise fallacious, and that it is absurd even to try to prove God’s existence.  He notes the double standard such philosophers often bring to bear on this subject:

Lofter is the best medicine

New Atheist pamphleteer John Loftus is like a train wreck orchestrated by Zeno of Elea: As Loftus rams headlong into the devastating objections of his critics, the chassis, wheels, gears, and passenger body parts that are the contents of his mind proceed through ever more thorough stages of pulverization.  And yet somehow, the grisly disaster just never stops.  Loftus continues on at full speed, tiny bits of metal and flesh reduced to even smaller bits, and those to yet smaller ones, ad infinitum.  You feel you ought to turn away in horror, but nevertheless find yourself settling back, metaphysically transfixed and reaching for the Jiffy Pop.

A note on falsification

Antony Flew’s famous 1950 article “Theology and Falsification” posed what came to be known as the “falsificationist challenge” to theology.  A claim is falsifiable when it is empirically testable -- that is to say, when it makes predictions about what will be observed under such-and-such circumstances such that, if the predictions don’t pan out, the claim is thereby shown to be false.  The idea that a genuinely scientific claim must be falsifiable had already been given currency by Karl Popper.  Flew’s aim was to apply it to a critique of such theological claims as the thesis that God loves us.  No matter what sorts of evil and suffering occur in the world, the theologian does not give up the claim that God loves us.  But then, what, in that case, does the claim actually amount to?  And why should we accept the claim?  Flew’s challenge was to get the theologian to specify exactly what would have to happen in order for the theologian to give up the claim that God loves us, or the claim that God exists.

So, what are you doing after your funeral?

There is, among contemporary Thomists, a controversy over the metaphysical status of human beings after death.  Both sides agree that the human soul is the substantial form of the living human body, both sides agree that the human soul subsists after death, and both sides agree that the body is restored to the soul at the resurrection.  But what happens to the human being himself between death and resurrection?  Does a human being in some way continue to exist after death?  Or does he cease to exist until the resurrection?  Which answer do the premises that both sides agreed on support?  And which answer did Aquinas himself support?