Maverick Philosopher

George Santayana on the Three Traps that Strangle Philosophy

From Animal Faith and Spiritual Life, ed. John Lachs, Meredith, 1967, p. 168:

There are three traps that strangle philosophy: the Church, the marriage-bed, and the professor's chair. I escaped from the first in my youth; the second I never entered, and as soon as possible I got out of the third.

Perhaps we could call them the theological trap, the tender trap, and the tenure trap. But are they truly traps? That might be disputed.

Nietzsche might be brought in as a witness concerning the marriage trap, not that he had any experience in the matter. Somewhere in his Nachlass he compares the philosopher burdened by Weib und Kind, Haus und Hof with an astronomer who interposes a piece of filthy glass between eye and telescope. The philosopher's vocation charges him with the answering of the ultimate questions; pressing foreground concerns, however, make it difficult for him to take these questions with the seriousness they deserve, let alone to answer them.

But in another place Nietzsche balances this harsh observation by noting that the man without Haus und Hof, Weib und Kind is like a ship with insufficient ballast: he rides too high on the seas of life and does not pass through her storms with the steadiness of the solid bourgeois weighted down with property and reputation, wife and children. The judgments of such a high-rider on matters local and temporal should not be taken too seriously.

Understanding Conservatism and Tradition

An outstanding essay by James Kalb.

The Ambiguity of Islam

James V. Schall here reviews Samir Khalil Samir, 111 Questions on Islam.

Evidence Mounts That Global Warming is a Lot of Hot Air

So far I have been very measured and noncommittal in my comments on global warming.  I have contented myself with drawing some elementary distinctions that would have to be observed in any rational discussion of the issue.  See here and here. 

But having spoken to a climatologist and having read more on the subject, I am now inclining to the view that much of so-called climate science contains a sizeable admixture of leftist, anti-capitalist ideology fueled by grant-funding agencies with political axes to grind who favor  those who toe the party line.  This WSJ article is a bit more evidence that this is so. 

Original and Derived Intentionality, Circles, and Regresses

1. Original/Derived Intentionality. All will agree that there is some sort of distinction to be made here. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's physical and geometrical properties. Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together should mean steeper is a meaning assigned by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater.

So some things derive their referential and semantic properties from other things. What about these other things? I draw you a map so that you can find my camp. I use the Greek phi to mark my camp and the Greek psi to mark the camp of a heavily-armed crazy man that you are well advised to avoid. I intend that phi designate my camp. That intending (narrow sense) is a case of intentionality (broad sense). This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether my intending is a case of original or of derived intentionality.

If the latter, then a regress ensues which appears to be both infinite and vicious. But before discussing this further, I need to bring in another point.

Brentano and Whether Propositions are Intrinsically Intentional

Franz Brentano, for whom intentionality is the mark of the mental, is committed to the thesis that all instances of (intrinsic) intentionality are instances of mentality. The last post in this series considered apparent counterexamples to this thesis. But there are others.  Joseph Jedwab usefully pointed out in a comment on my old blog that propositions and dispositions are apparent counterexamples. Whether they are also real counterexamples is something we should discuss. This post discusses (Fregean) propositions. Later, dispositions — if I am so disposed.

Brentano, Dretske and Whether There is Intentionality Below the Level of Mind

For Brentano, intentionality is the mark of the mental: (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, and (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental. This post considers whether there is intentionality below the level of conscious mind, intentionality that can exist without any connection, actual or potential, to conscious mind. If there is, then of course (ii) is false.

Brentano and Three Types of Unconscious Intentionality

We saw that for Brentano, (i) all conscious states are intentional, and (ii) all intentional states are conscious. We also saw that felt pain is an apparent counterexample to (i): to feel pain is to be in a conscious state, a state that is not of or about anything. But there are also apparent counterexamples to (ii). Perhaps we should distinguish three classes of putattive counterexamples:

1. Intentionality without conscious awareness but with an easy transition to conscious awareness.
2. Intentionality with neither conscious awareness nor an easy transition to conscious awareness.
3. Intentionality below the level of mind.

Brentano on the Mark of the Mental

1. What is the mark of the mental? Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch. 1.)

2. What is intentionality? ‘Intentionality’ is Brentano's term (borrowed from the Medievals) for that property of mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. The state of perceiving, for example is necessarily object-directed.  One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist. Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the "intentional in-existence of an object."  Mental states for Brentano are object-directed by their very nature as mental states: there is no need that  a particular state's object actually exist for that state to be intentional.  It follows that intentionality is not, strictly speaking, a relation.  For, necessarily,  if a relation obtains, then all its relata exist.  In the case of an intentional 'relation,' however, the object-relatum need not exist.

Why Brentano is Important

If Edmund Husserl is the father of phenomenology, Franz Brentano is its grandfather: his Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, along with his lectures at the University of Vienna were powerful influences on the young Husserl who, though a Ph.D. in mathematics (under Weierstrass on the calculus of variations) abandoned mathematics for philosophy. (2) Brentano's dissertation under Trendelenburg, On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle, was a powerful impetus to Heidegger's ruminations on Being. (3) Brentano, as Gustav Bergmann points out, was "the first linguistic philosopher." (Realism, p. 234) Brentano, then, can be said to stand at the source of both the phenomenological and the analytic streams of thought as they developed in the 20th century.

The Supreme Enigma

Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 4:

Every puzzle that fascinates innumerable persons and induces them to attempt its solution -- be it mathematical and profound or ordinary and simple -- is an echo on a lower level of the Supreme Enigma that is forever accompanying man and demanding an answer: What is he, whence and whither? The quester puts the problem into his conscious mind and keeps it there.

On Forming Societies at Faint Provocation

Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 154, #56:

I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and it is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste time.

 

Well said. Would Thoreau have joined the Thoreau Society? Merton the Merton Society? Would Groucho Marx have joined a club that would have him as a member?

Seriously, there is something dubious about societies. Were I to read a paper the least bit critical of Thomas Merton at the Merton Society, I would receive a hostile response no matter how good the paper was. I would be taken as attacking their man, someone with whom they identify. In a one-on-one exchange, it is not uncommon for an interlocutor to 'get his back up' if one criticizes, however judiciously, something or someone in whom the interlocutor has invested time and energy. But when there is a bunch of these people reinforcing each other, look out! They close ranks and their critical acumen goes to zero.

Merton, Heidegger, Ayn Rand and so many others who inspire a cult-like following need to have their works discussed critically, and that means: not by followers and not by dismissers, but by the independent. But what happens for the most part is that their works get chewed over lovingly in uncritical enclaves while being ignored or dismissed by those outside the charmed circles.

Who Are the Oddballs?

Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of Paul Brunton, vol. II, The Quest (Burdett, NY: Larson Publications, 1986), p. 24:

We are regarded as odd people because we trouble our heads with the search for an intangible reality. But it never occurs to our critics that it is much more odd that they should go on living without pausing to inquire if there be any purpose in life at all.

Dubious Consolation for the Bald

Paul Brunton, who was bald, writes,

I take comfort in the continental proverb,"A hundred years hence we shall all be bald." (Notebooks, VIII, 202.)

I am not bald and the genetics of my lineage suggest the unlikelihood of my becoming bald. But the occasional dream reveals a subconscious anxiety. In one, I caught a glimpse via an array of mirrors of the beginning of a bald spot on the back of my head. But why should the thought of balding induce anxiety if not because the bald spot is a harbinger of the meatless skull each head is headed for?

Hair today, bone tomorrow.

Meditation as Disciplined Nonthinking: A Brunton Passage Exfoliated

‘Meditation’ has two main senses. The first refers to disciplined discursive thinking. Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy classically illustrates this first sense. If we use ‘thinking’ as short for ‘discursive thinking,’ we can say that the second sense of ‘meditation’ refers to disciplined nonthinking. Accordingly, meditation₂ is an attempt to silence the discursive mind and enter into a nondiscursive state of awareness.

 

With this clarification in mind, we are ready to appreciate a passage from Paul Brunton:

All thinking keeps one’s awareness out of the Overself. That is why thinking about the Overself merely produces another thought. Only in the case of the sage, who has established himself in the Overself, is thinking no barrier at all. In this case, thinking may coexist with the larger awareness. So it is not enough to be a good thinker; one also has to learn how to be a good non-thinker. Of course, the way to do this is through the practice of meditation. (Inspiration and the Overself, p. 144)

Why Be Consistent? Three Types of Consistency

A reader inquires:

This idea of the necessity to be consistent seems to be the logician's "absolute," as though being inconsistent was the most painful accusation one could endure. [. . .] What rule of life says that one must be absolutely consistent in how one evaluates truth? It is good to argue from first principles but it can also lead one down a rat hole.

Before we can discuss whether one ought to be consistent, we need to know which type of consistency is at issue. There are at least three types of consistency that people often confuse and that need to be kept distinct. I'll call them 'logical,' 'pragmatic,' and 'diachronic.' But it doesn't matter how we label them as long as we keep them separate.

Can a Black Man Vote Against Obamacare?

If a black congressman were to vote against a Democrat health care reform proposal, could he call himself a black man?  According to this source:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill from Alabama,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

Brother Jesse apparently thinks that it is somehow inscribed into the very essence of being black that one be a leftist.

When we conservatives label libs and lefties as loons, it is this sort of preternatural idiocy that we have in mind. 

Revelation and Miracles

The question I want to pose and to which I do not have a firm answer — Nescio ergo blogo! — is whether every case of divine revelation is a miraculous event, or whether there are or can be cases of divine revelation that are not miraculous. To treat this question properly we need some preliminary definitions of key terms. After proposing some definitions I will suggest that they point in the direction of the possibility of non-miraculous revelations.

Of Summertime in the Desert and Miracles

When cold water comes out of the 'hot' tap, and hot water out of the 'cold,' is it a miracle? No, it is summertime in the desert. (The pipe from the water heater runs through the air-conditioned house; the cold water line comes from outside where the temperature is in the triple Fahrenheit digits. So if I want nice cold water for a short time, I turn on the 'hot' tap.)

What appears to be an exception to an exceptionless regularity is not one at all, for the apparent exception is itself regular. The statement, "Hot from 'hot,' cold from 'cold'," has a counterexample. But it does not follow that the underlying regularity has an exception. For if the underlying regularity were to be captured in a complete statement, that statement would be seen to have no counterexamples since all the exceptions would have been built into it.

This is just a little 'warm-up' for a further series of posts on miracles.  And I just noticed that Frege (whom to have on one's side in a logic fight is like having Doc Holliday on one's side in a gunfight) seems to be on my side:

The word 'law' is used in two senses. When we speak of laws of morals or the state we mean regulations which must be obeyed but with which actual happenings are not always in conformity. Laws of nature are the generalization of natural occurrences with which the occurrences are always in accordance. (First paragraph of "The Thought: A Logical Inquiry")

A law may be more than an exceptionless regularity, but it is at least one.

More with Mason on Miracles

Franklin Mason e-mails (mid-June 2007):

I'd meant to get back to a little point you'd made a few days ago.

You said this: "I think of creation as an ongoing 'process': God sustains the world in being moment by moment. But at each moment, the totality of what exists is completely determinate: for each individual x and for each property P, either x has P or x has the complement of P. I would say that all and only the complete exists. Creation is bestowal of existence. So if at time t God is sustaining the world in existence, and what exists is complete, it is hard to see how God could add anything to it. The world at t is complete; anything added to it would precipitate a contradiction."

I agree with everything you say, but it doesn't seem to me to rule out the possibility of an input of new energy into space-time. It would of course be a contradiction if God were to both sustain the world at a time such that no new energy was anywhere present and, by a special act of will, bring it about at that time that there was new energy. But the creation of new energy at a time need not entail this contradiction. Rather, if there's new energy at time t, its existence is part of the complete world-whole at t; and God does not, at up to and at t, sustain the world-whole such that no new energy is present. Completeness does not imply a lack of novelty. Rather all that it implies is that novelty, when it occurs, is part of the world-whole at the time of its introduction and thereafter.

Laws of Nature, Civil Laws, and the Idea of 'Breaking' a Law

In Kant on Miracles,  I wrote:

The advantage of the epistemic approach [to miracles] is that it rescues us from the rank absurdity, pointed out by Hume, of having to say that there are laws of nature that admit of exceptions. Since our understanding is imperfect, our formulations of the laws of nature will some of them admit of exceptions. But it is hard to credit the idea that the laws themselves could admit of exceptions.

This assertion that (deterministic) laws cannot have exceptions drew heavy fire. 'Ockham' commenting at my old blog, wrote:

If a law couldn't be broken, why do we ever use the word 'broken' in the same vicinity as 'law'? Indeed, at this point I could use a 'contrast argument' which I know Bill hates. It only makes sense to talk about laws not being broken, if laws can be broken. Ergo, laws can be broken.

We do speak of breaking laws and of laws being broken. But this is almost always in the context of civil (legal) laws and moral laws. The latter are prescriptive and proscriptive: You shall do X and you shall refrain from doing Y. Laws of these forms are often broken.  But when they are broken, this has no tendency to show that they are not valid or binding. Legally and morally, one must feed one's children; but it would be absurd to argue that since some parents do not feed their children that these laws do not hold.

But in the case of laws of nature, violations do show that they are not valid. A law of nature that could be violated would not be a law of naure. A legal or moral law that could not be violated, by contrast, would not be a legal or moral law. The latter are 'laws of freedom,' laws that legislate with respect to free beings. A necessary feature of them is that they allow the possibility of their own violation. By contrast, a necessary feature of laws of nature is that they be exceptionless.

The necessity that attaches to moral and legal laws is moral necessity or obligatoriness. Now the following is a consistent set: {It is obligatory that All Fs are Gs; Some Fs are not Gs). By contrast, the necessity that attaches to laws of nature is nomic necessity. The following is an inconsistent set: {It is nomically necessary that All Fs are Gs; Some Fs are not Gs.)

If we bear clearly in mind the distinction between laws of nature on the one hand, and legal/moral laws on the other, then we will not speak of the breaking of laws of nature.

With respect to Ockham's contrast argument, I concede that it is bound up with the very sense of 'legal/moral law' that it be possible for such laws to be broken. But a law of nature is not a law in this sense. Events in nature can neither abide by laws of nature nor break them. That one and the same word 'law' is used both for legal/moral imperatives and also for nature-descriptive declaratives is an interesting fact, but it looks to be a case of pure equivocation.

Ceteris Paribus Laws and Miracles

Here is a passage from a paper by Nancy Cartwright, In Favor of Laws that are not Ceteris Paribus After All, for you to break your eager heads against:

Turn now to what Earman, Roberts, and Smith call “special force laws”, like the law of universal gravitation (A system of mass M exerts a force of size GMm/r^2 on another system of mass m a distance r away) or Coulomb’s law (A system with charge q1 exerts a force of size ε0q1q2/r^2 on another system of charge q2 a distance r away). These are not strict regularities. Any system that is both massive and charged presents a counterexample. Special forces behave in this respect just like powers. This is reflected in the language we use to present these laws: one mass attracts another; two negative charges repel each other. Attraction and repulsion are not among what Ryle called ‘success’ verbs. Their truth conditions do not demand success: X can truly attract Y despite the fact that Y is not moved towards X. But perhaps, as with the delights of our universe or the Ratman’s desire for the death of his father, the requisite effects are really there after all. Earman, Roberts, and Smith feel that the arguments against this position are not compelling. I think they are: the force of size GMm/r^2 does not appear to be there; it is not what standard measurements generally reveal; and the effects we are entitled to expect –- principally an acceleration in a system of mass m a distance r away of size GM/r^2 – are not there either.

Possibility, Intelligibility, and Miracles

Dave  Gudeman at my old blog commented forcefully and eloquently:

I've always had difficulty with arguments like this:

It is not easy to understand how God could add causal input to the space-time system.

I'm aware that such arguments have a distinguished history, but I don't get it. Just because you don't understand how it works, you doubt that it is possible? But you don't really understand how anything works. Not matter, not energy, not beauty, not humor. Science pretends that it understands things, but if you trace their theories to the end, all they do is propose underlying mechanisms that suffer from the same opaque nature as what they are trying to explain.

Since you don't understand how any cause at all operates, what does it prove that you can't understand how God operates?

This deserves a careful response.

A Definition of 'Miracle' Examined

Franklin Mason, on my  old blog, wrote:

The definition of a miracle that I have in mind is this: event M is miraculous just if (i) M was brought about by an agency outside nature, and (ii) at the time and place at which event M occurred, there was no natural cause at work sufficient to bring about M. This of course leaves open the possibility that M is not at all out of the ordinary. God might, for instance, make a wave a few inches taller than it otherwise would have been so that He might submerge a boat; no observer would ever guess that a miracle had occurred. Though it is not detectable, it is still miraculous. The available energy in the system before God intervened would not have been sufficient to raise the wave to the level that in fact it reached. But M might also be quite spectacular. God might bring about a great conflagration where there had been no material to burn before. How would he do this? Ex nihilo creation of tinder and a spark.

This is clear, interesting, and not obviously mistaken. But here are some comments and criticisms.

Is the Problem of Miracles a Special Case of the Interaction Problem?

1. The Ontological Problem of Miracles

The ontological problem of miracles is the problem of explaining what miracles are and how they are possible. These questions are logically prior to the questions of whether any miracles have occurred or whether such-and-such an event is a miracle. You may believe, for example, that miracles have occurred, and you may cite as an example of a miracle Therese Neumann's subsistence for decades on no food except a daily communion wafer. The philosopher of religion, without necessarily denying either the general occurrence of miracles or this particular instance, will then ask: what is it that makes this supposedly miraculous event miraculous and how is the existence of miracles rationally integratable into the rest of what we know and believe about the world? In short: What are miracles? How are they possible? The philosopher of religion needn't be arguing for miracles or against them; he may simply be trying to understand them, both in themeselves, and in relation to everything else.

In this respect the philosopher of religion may comport himself like the typical philosopher of science. It is rare for a philosopher of science to argue against any scientific procedure or result; for the most part, philosophers of science simply try to understand science: the nature of scientific explanation, the status of laws, etc. They do not question the truth of scientific results.

The ontological problem of miracles is also logically prior to the various epistemological questions that arise, questions about the reliability of the testimony of eye witnesses, etc.

Kant on Divine Concurrence and Miracles as Complementa ad Sufficientiam

The question concerning the possibility of miracles is connected to a wider question concerning the relation of secondary or natural causes and the causa prima, God. How do these two 'orders' of causation fit together?

1. One extreme position is occasionalism according to which all causal power is exercised by God. For the occasionalist, God is all-powerful not just in the sense that he can do all that is (broadly) logically possible, but also in the sense that he exercises all the power that gets exercised. For the occasionalist, God is the only genuine cause and all secondary causes are mere occasions for the exercise of divine power. Although I have defended occasionalism elsewhere ("Concurrentism or Occasionalism?" Am Cath Phil Quart, Summer 1996, 339-359), I will not be assuming its truth here.

Kant on Miracles

Earlier posts uncovered epistemic as opposed to ontic conceptions of miracles in Augustine and in Spinoza; but Immanuel Kant too seems to favor an epistemic approach. "If one asks: What is to be understood by the word miracle? it may be explained . . . by saying that they are events in the world the operating laws of whose causes are, and must remain, absolutely unknown to us." (Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Harper Torchbooks, p. 81) There is no talk here, as in Hume, of a miracle as involving a "transgression" of a law of nature. The idea is that in the case of miraculous events there are laws of nature operating but these laws are unknown to us. This seems to imply that the miraculousness of a miracle is an appearance relative to our ignorance. If we knew the laws, there would be no miracles.

Spinoza's Epistemic Theory of Miracles

Chapter Six of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is entitled, "Of Miracles." We do well to see what we can learn from it. Spinoza makes four main points in this chapter, but I will examine only two of them in this entry.

We learned from yesterday's discussion of Augustine that there is a certain tension between the will of God and the existence of miracles ontically construed. Miracles so construed violate, contravene, suspend, or otherwise upset the laws of nature. But the laws of nature are ordained by God, and that would seem to be the case however laws are understood, whether as regularities or as relations of universals or whatever. So it seems as if the theist is under a certain amount of conceptual pressure to adopt an epistemic theory of miracles. We heard Augustine say, Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura: A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. We find a similar view in Spinoza, despite the very considerable differences between the two thinkers:

Saturday Night at the Oldies: "Let's Think About Livin'"

I'll buy you a beer if you can remember this 1960 crossover hit from Bob Luman (1937-1978).  A period piece offering wry commentary on the music business of the day.

Augustine and the Epistemic Theory of Miracles

In The City of God, Book XXI, Chapter 8, St. Augustine quotes Marcus Varro, Of the Race of the Roman People:

There occurred a remarkable celestial portent; for Castor records that, in the brilliant star Venus, called Vesperugo by Plautus, and the lovely Hesperus by Homer, there occurred so strange a prodigy, that it changed its colour, size, form, course, which never appeared before nor since. Andrastus of Cyzicus, and Dion of Naples, famous mathematicians, said that this occurred in the reign of Ogyges.

The Bishop of Hippo comments:

So great an author as Varro would certainly not have called this a portent had it not seemed to be contrary to nature. For we say that all portents are contrary to nature; but they are not so. For how is that contrary to nature which happens by the will of God, since the will of so mighty a Creator is certainly the nature of each created thing? A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature, but contrary to what we know as nature. (Modern Library, p. 776, tr. Dods, emphasis added.)

Swinburne on Miracles: Quotes and Notes

Herewith, a bit of commentary on R. G. Swinburne's "Miracles" (Phil. Quart. vol. 18, no. 73, October 1968. Reprinted in Rowe and Wainwright, pp. 446-453) To be fair, I should consider what Swinburne says in his later publications on this topic; perhaps in subsequent posts.

1. What is a miracle? Swinburne writes,

I understand by a miracle a violation of a law of Nature by a god, that is, a very powerful rational being who is not a material object (viz., is invisible and intangible). My definition of a miracle is thus approximately the same as Hume's: "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent." (446)

Three Senses of 'Law' Distinguished

1. There is a distinction between a law of nature and a law of science. If there are laws of nature, they have nothing to do with us or our theorizing. They are 'out there in the world.' For example, if we adopt a regularity theory of laws, and I am not saying we should, the regularities, and thus the laws, exist independently of our theorizing. Surely, if there are physical laws at all, and whatever their exact nature, their existence antedates ours. Laws of science, on the other hand, are our attempts at formulating and expressing the laws of nature. They are human creations. Since physics is a human activity, there were no laws of physics before human beings came on the scene; but there were physical laws before we came on the scene. Physics is not the same as nature; physics is the study of nature, our study of nature. It is obvious that physics cannot exist without nature, for it would then have no object, but nature can get on quite well without physics.

The Supernatural and the Miraculous

I think it is important to distinguish the supernatural from the miraculous especially inasmuch as their conflation aids and abets the 'Dawkins Gang.' (That's my mocking moniker for Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and their fellow travellers.) Let's briefly revisit Daniel Dennett's definition of religions as

. . . social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. This is, of course, a circuitous way of articulating the idea that a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone.(Breaking the Spell, p. 9, emphasis added)

Two Aspects of Miracles

What makes a miracle a miracle? Is it the type of causation that issues in the miraculous event? Or is it the fact that the miraculous event fails to fit an expected pattern? Suppose God parts the Red Sea in the manner depicted in the movie "The Ten Commandments." Does the miraculousness of this event reside in the fact that this TYPE of event does not occur (except for the one miraculous occasion on which it does occur) and so constitutes an exception to a regularity? Or does the miraculousness of the event reside in the fact that a supernatural cause brings about this event TOKEN? Or both?  My claim is that both are involved.  A miracle is both a violation of a law of nature and something whose cause is supernatural.

Are Miracles Logically Possible? Part II

The problem raised in the first post in this series is whether we can make logical room for miracles, specifically, divine interventions in, or interferences with, the natural course of events. Now nature is orderly and regular: it displays local and global ('cosmic') uniformities. If that were not the case, it would not be possible to have science of it. (But we do have science, knowledge, of nature, ergo, etc.) For example, it is a global uniformity of nature that any two electrons anywhere in the universe will repel each other, that no signal, anywhere, can travel faster than the speed of light, etc. Here is the form of a global uniformity, an exceptionless regularity:

1. Wherever and whenever F-ness is instantiated, G-ness is instantiated.

Now for various reasons which we may consider later, a law of nature cannot be identified with an exceptionless regularity. (For one thing, law statements support counterfactuals while statements of global uniformity do not support counterfactuals.) But laws manifest themselves in global uniformities. (This talk of 'manifestation,' which I find felicitous, I borrow from D. M. Armstrong.)

Are Miracles Logically Possible?

John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford 2000), p. 8:

. . . if a miracle is a violation of a law of nature, then whether or not the violation is due to the intervention of the Deity, a miracle is logically impossible since, whatever else a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity.

According to a standard way of thinking, miracles are violations of laws of nature. This approach has an impressive pedigree. Thus Thomas Aquinas writes, in the Summa Theologica (Q. 110, art. 4, respondeo), "A miracle properly so called takes place when something is done outside the order of nature." Thomas makes it clear that by 'nature' he means the whole of created nature, and not just physical nature. He concludes that God alone can work miracles.

Thomas also alludes (in Reply Obj. 2) to a distinction between miracles ontically and epistemically construed. This is not his terminology. He speaks of miracles "absolutely" considered and miracles "in reference to ourselves." Something that occurs by a power unknown to us may appear miraculous to us and yet not be miraculous absolutely.  We could call that an epistemic miracle: an event  which does not contravene a law of nature, but appears to do so due to our ignorance.  Genuine miracles, events that in fact do contravene laws of nature, we could call ontic miracles.  But don't be misled by the terminology: the suggestion is not that there are two kinds of miracles, epistemic and ontic, but two senses of 'miracle.'  'Epistemic' in 'epistemic miracle' is an alienans adjective.

Now consider:

1. A miracle is an exception to a law of nature.
2. Every law of nature is an exceptionless regularity (though not conversely).
Therefore
3. A miracle is an exception to an exceptionless regularity.
Therefore
4. Miracles are logically impossible.

This argument seems to show that if miracles are to be logically possible they cannot be understood as violations of laws of nature. How then are they to be understood?  Please note that (2) merely states that whatever a law of nature is, it is an exceptionless regularity.  Thus (2) does not commit one to a regularity theory of laws according to which laws are identified with exceptionless regularities.  The idea is that any theory of  (deterministic) laws would include the idea that a law is an exceptionless regularity.

Travesty in New York

Will there be no end to the idiocies perpetrated by the Obama Administration?  The latest is the absurd decision to give Islamic terrorist  Khalid Sheik Mohammed a civilian trial in New York City.  As usual, Charles Krauthammer cuts to the nerve of the matter:

So why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.

Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) "do not get convicted," asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. "Failure is not an option," replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn't the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure -- acquittal, hung jury -- is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.

See also Mona Charen's Holder's True Motive for some incisive analysis.

A Note on Into the Wild, the Movie

Into the Wild, the movie, impressed me and held my attention for its two and a half hours. But I'm understating: it moved me and ought to  be added to my list of most memorable movies, there to rub shoulders with the likes of Zorba the Greek and La Strada. Not that I would rate it as high as those two classics. Here is a reviewer who didn't get it:

Krakauer and Penn see themselves as kindred spirits to McCandless, rugged individualists seeking the fullness of life in nature. And that probably explains why they both attribute McCandless' reckless adventures to a philosophical quest rather than to what appears to be an obvious act of youthful rebellion.

No doubt McCandless was reckless, and his recklessness got him killed. But only someone who is spiritually dead could dismiss McCandless' quest as a mere act of youthful rebellion. The jaded, the security-obsessed, and those devoid of all idealism will find it easy to mock as hyperromantic and melodramatic the posturings of "Alexander Supertramp." But unlike them, the living dead, he was searching for something more, for the Real, for the truth of his existence. Life without a quest for the Real beyond the sham taken-for-real of one's society is just not worth living. Either you see that or you are spiritually blind.

Only someone who, like Krakauer, sees a bit of himself in McCandless will be able to appreciate what was genuine and worthwhile in him. That is one reason why Krakauer's book is so good. I was pleased to see that the movie stays very close to the book.

Most Memorable Movies

Here are my selections. But before I begin, I'll relate a retort of Michael Medved's. Hearing that Roger Ebert had awarded "two thumbs up" to some piece of trash, Medved quipped, "Two thumbs up what?"

1. Casablanca
2. The Seventh Seal
3. La Strada
4. Zorba the Greek
5. Lawrence of Arabia
6. Dr. Zhivago
7. Persona
8. Closely Watched Trains
9. Triumph des Willens
10. Crimes and Misdemeanors
11. Aguirre the Wrath of God
12. The Man Who Wasn't There
13. Blue Velvet
14. Barton Fink
15. Mulholland Drive

How many can you identify by dates, actors, directors?

Faith and Prayer: The Case of Ron Franz

One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild  is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name 'Ron Franz.' He was 80 years old when his and Christopher McCandless's paths crossed. McCandless made indelible impressions on the people he met, but he affected Franz more than anyone else, so much so that the old man with no surviving next of kin wanted to adopt the 24 year old as his grandson. The story of their encounter is recounted in the chapter entitled 'Anza-Borrego' and is also well told in the movie version of Krakauer's book. Franz came to pin his hopes on the remarkable young man and longed for his return from Alaska. When he heard from a hitchhiker that McCandless had died, he and his faith were shattered:

The Strange Case of Gene Rosellini

Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild  is not just about Chris McCandless and the people he met during the two years he was incarnating 'Alexander Supertramp.' It also about other oddballs such as Gene Rosellini. The term 'oddball' is not necessarily one of disapprobation in my mouth: most of the people I remain in contact with I would classify as oddballs. And of course it takes one to know (and appreciate) one. Here is a passage about Rosellini lifted from the essay Anarchism Versus Primitivism:

Czeslaw Milosz on Simone Weil and Albert Camus

Czeslaw Milosz, "The Importance of Simone Weil" in Emperor of the Earth: Modes of Eccentric Vision (University of California Press, 1977), p. 91:

Violent in her judgments and uncompromising, Simone Weil was, at least by temperament, an Albigensian, a Cathar; this is the key to her thought. She drew extreme conclusions from the Platonic current in Christianity. Here we touch upon hidden ties between her and Albert Camus. The first work by Camus was his university dissertation on St. Augustine. Camus, in my opinion, was also a Cathar, a pure one, ['Cathar' from Gr. katharos, pure] and if he rejected God it was out of love for God because he was not able to justify Him. The last novel written by Camus, The Fall, is nothing else but a treatise on Grace — absent grace — though it is also a satire: the talkative hero, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who reverses the words of Jesus and instead of "Judge not and ye shall not be judged: gives the advice "Judge, and ye shall not be judged," could be, I have reason to suspect, Jean-Paul Sartre.

Simone Weil and the Illusoriness of Worldly Goods

A correspondent, responding to Weil's Wager, has this to say:

[. . .] What worries me when I turn to Weil’s argument is that she seems to be trying to replace Pascal’s serviceable scale of goods with a dichotomy of illusory and absolute goods. I have no idea what it means to say ”health and fitness are illusory goods” or “only God is absolutely good.” The former seems to me just some metaphysically tricked-out term of abuse. I have no idea at all how to unpack “God is the absolute good” (despite your remarks in Part IV ). Pascal at least talks about salvation and an eternal afterlife. Is that what is supposed to be absolutely good for me? And so God as the provider is somehow also valuable or “absolutely good” for me? All of this dark and murky to me in Weil’s argument, while I think I understand what Pascal is proposing.

I agree that the whether-or-not version of (7) is incompatible with (1), but otherwise I remain lost at sea in her attempt to argue that I must pursue the only thing that is “absolutely good” whether or not it really exists. [. . .]

Central to Weil's thought is the notion that the goods of this life are unreal: "Things of the senses are real if they are considered as perceptible things, but unreal if considered as goods." (Gravity and Grace, p. 45) To understand this one must see it in the light of Plato, Weil's beloved master. It has been said with some justice that every philosopher is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian, and there is no doubt that Weil is a Platonist and was hostile to Aristotle. My correspondent, however, is an Aristotelian (to force him into our little schema) and so it comes as no surprise to me that he is at a loss to understand what it could mean to say that such things as health and fitness, food and drink, property and progeny, are illusory goods.

Weil's Wager

I

In her New York Notebook from 1942, Simone Weil presents an argument which she claims “...is greatly preferable to Pascal’s wager.”[i] One of her commentators agrees, finding her argument “obviously both morally and intellectually” superior to Pascal’s.[ii] I will call this argument “Weil’s Wager.” As far as I know, it has yet to be subjected to a close examination. The argument runs as follows:

Simone Weil on False Gods

Despite her infuriating extremism, Simone Weil may well be the purest incarnation of religious sensibility in the twentieth century. "It's not up to us to believe in God, but only not to grant our love to false gods." As Weil understands, essential to genuine religion, though not exhaustive of it, is the realization that nothing here below can satisfy us, and that the things we zealously pursue as if they could satisfy us are false gods. The following statement of Weil's is exactly right:

First, not to believe that the future is a place capable of fulfilling us. The future is made of the same stuff as the present. We well know that what we have that is good, wealth, power, esteem, knowledge, love of those we love, prosperity of those we love, and so on, does not suffice to satisfy us. But we believe that the day when we will have a little more, we will be satisfied. We believe it because we are lying to ourselves. For if we really think about it for a while we know it's false. Or again if we are suffering affliction, we believe that the day when this suffering will cease, we will be satisfied. There again we know it's untrue; as soon as we have gotten used to the cessation of suffering we want something else.

More here.

Simone Weil and Generic Wretchedness

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Emma Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 70:

The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it.

This suggests one of several tests you might apply to yourself to see if you have a religious 'bent' or sensibility, or orientation toward life, or however you wish to phrase it. If, upon reading the Weilian line, a 'yes!' wells up in you, then the chances are excellent that you are religiously inclined. If your response is in the negative, however, or if you are just puzzled, then that indicates that you lack the religious attitude.

 

I offer the following, from an earlier post, as a partial unpacking of the Weil quotation:

Man's wretchedness is 'structural': man qua man is wretched. Wretched are not merely the sick, the unloved, and the destitute; all of us are wretched, even those of us who count as well off. Some of us are aware of this, our condition, the rest hide it from themselves by losing themselves in Pascalian divertissement, diversion. We are as if fallen from a higher state, our true and rightful state, into a lower one, and the sense of wretchedness is an indicator of our having fallen. We are in a dire state from which we need salvation but are incapable of saving ourselves by our own efforts, whether individual or collective.

An interesting thing about the Red Virgin is that, though she remained a virgin until death, she came to see though the illusions of the Left. This begs raises the question whether speaking strictly there could be a religious Left. To tackle this question properly, however, would involve explaining what ought to be meant by 'religion,' what ought to be meant by 'Left,' and then arranging a confrontation of their respective denotata.

A Pascalian Indication of Our Fallenness

Edward T. Oakes in a fine article quotes Pascal:

The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is called nature we call wretchedness in man; by which we recognize that, his nature now being like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his. For who is unhappy at not being a king except a deposed king? Who is unhappy at having only one mouth? And who is not unhappy at having only one eye? Probably no one ever ventured to mourn at not having three eyes; but anyone would be inconsolable at having none.

A Philosopher's Notes on Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

This post continues my commentary on the Book of Ecclesiastes, the first installment of which is here. But a brief review is in order. The central theme of the book, you will recall, is the vanity and futility of all human endeavor including such pursuit of wisdom and understanding as the Preacher himself undertakes in the book in question. Surprisingly, this seems to extend even to God's rewarding of the righteous and punishing of the sinner. "This too is vanity and striving after wind." (2:26) Here are some questions that the book suggests:

A Philosopher's Notes on Ecclesiastes, Chapters 1-2

Herewith, a first installment of some chapter-by-chapter observations on the magnificent Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, with an attempt to lay bare some of the philosophical issues lurking below the surface of the text.

1. Chapter 1 sounds the central theme of the Book: Omnia vanitas, "All is vanity." What is the scope of 'all'? Presumably it does not include God, but it does include every human pursuit whether for pleasure, power, possessions, progeny, or any other finite good that mortals strive after. All is vanity and "striving after wind." (1:14) Even the striving for wisdom is a vain pursuit. (1:17-18)

Obama's Fiscal Malpractice

Essential reading by Robert Samuelson.  What were you thinking when you voted for this empty suit?