Here are some thoughts that may provoke a fruitful discussion with Vlastimil Vohanka on the topic of mysterianism in the philosophy of mind and in theology. He kindly sent me his rich and stimulating paper, "Mysterianism about Consciousness and the Trinity." The paper is available here along with other works of his. His view is that a mysterian line is defensible in both the philosophy of mind and in Trinitarian theology. I have some doubts.
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There are different sorts of materialism about the mind, among them eliminative materialism, identity-materialism, and functionalism. There is also mysterian materialism. Here is a little speech by a mysterian materialist:
Look, we are just complex physical systems, nothing more. And yet we think and are conscious. Therefore, we are wholly material beings who think and are conscious. We cannot understand how this is possible. But what is actual is possible whether or we we are able to understand how it is possible. So the fact that we cannot understand how it is possible that thinking and consciousness are nothing more than brain activity does not show that they are not brain activity. It shows that the how is beyond our understanding. What we have here, then, is a mystery: a proposition that is true and non-contradictory despite our inability to understand how it could be true.
What motivates this mysterian materialism? Two things. There is first of all the deep conviction shared by many today that there is exactly one world, this mind-independent physical world, that we are parts of it, that nothing in us is not part of it, and that it and us are wholly natural and in no respect supernatural. This naturalist conviction implies that there is nothing special about us, that we are continuous with the rest of nature. We are nothing special in that we have no higher origin or higher destiny. There is no God who created us in his image and likeness. And there is no higher happiness other than the transient and fitful happiness that some of us can eke out, if we are lucky, here below. We are irremediably mortal and natural, like everything else that lives, and anything (conscience, consciousness, self-consciousness, ability to reason, love and longing, sensus divinitatis, etc.) that suggests otherwise is susceptible of a wholly naturalistic explanation. Part of why people embrace the naturalist conviction is that it puts paid to central tenets of old-time religion: God, the soul, post-mortem rewards and punishments, the libertarian freedom of the will, man's being an image and likeness of God, etc. So hostility to religion is certainly, for some, part of the psychological (if not logical) motivation for the acceptance of the naturalist conviction.
Now take the naturalist conviction and conjoin it to the intellectually honest admission that we have no idea at all how it is so much as possible for a wholly material being to think and enjoy conscious states. The conjunction of the Conviction and the Admission generates a mysterian position according to which one affirms as true a proposition that one cannot understand as possibly true, a proposition that for us is and most likely will remain unintelligible, namely, the proposition that we are wholly material beings susceptible of exhaustive natural-scientific explanation who nonetheless think, feel, love, make moral demands, feel subject to them, etc.
This mysterianism is an epistemological position according to which our contingent but unalterable make-up makes it impossible for us ever to understand how it is possible for us to think and be conscious. The claim is not that thought and consciousness are mysterious because they are non-natural phenomena; the claim is that they are wholly natural but not understandable by us. Our cognitive architecture (a phrase I believe Colin McGinn employs) blocks our epistemic access to those properties the understanding of which would render intelligible to us how we can be both wholly material and yet the subjects of intentional and non-intentional mental states.
Well, this mysterianism is certainly to be preferred to an eliminativism which argues from the unintelligibility of a material thing's thinking to the nonexistence of its thinking. But eliminativism is a lunatic position best left to the exceedingly intelligent lunatics who dreamt it up. I won't waste any words here refuting this mindless doctrine; I have wasted words elsewhere.
We should note that one could be a mysterian in the philosophy of mind without being a mysterian materialist. One could be a mysterian substance dualist. Some maintain that the interaction problem dooms substance dualism. A mysterian might hold that substance dualism is true, that mind-body interaction is unintelligible, that interaction occurs, and that our inability to understand how mind-body interaction occurs merely shows a cognitive limitation on our part. It seems obvious that there is nothing in the nature of mysterianism in the philosophy of mind to require that one be a mysterian materialist/physicalist/naturalist.
We should also note that one could be a mysterian in areas other than the philosophy of mind, in theology, for example.
Mysterianism as a general strategy rests on a fairly solid foundation. First of all, it is a self-evident modal axiom that actuality entails possiblity. It is also self-evident that if x is possible, then it does not follow that we are in a position to understand how it is possible. So it may well be that there are certain objects and states of affairs and phenomena whose internal possibility we cannot discern due to our irremediable cognitive limitations. Apparent contradictoriness would then not argue unreality.
But surely there is something very strange about maintaining that there are true mysteries. A true mystery is a true proposition that is unintelligible to us, though not unintelligible in itself. Now here is my difficulty in a nutshell. If a proposition either is or entails a broadly-logical contradiction, then I wouldn't know what I had before my mind if I had such a proposition before my mind. And if I didn't know exactly which proposition I had before my mind, I wouldn't know exactly which proposition I was claiming was both true and mysterious.
Bear with me as I try to clarify my objection.
Before I can take a position with respect to a proposition I must know what that proposition is. I must know the identity of the proposition. But a proposition that strikes my mind as unintelligible is not one about whose identity I can be sure.
I count four positions or attitudes one can take toward a proposition: accept as true, reject as false, suspend judgment as to truth-value, practice epoché , ἐποχή. Pithier still: Accept, Reject, Suspend, Withdraw. The first three are self-explanatory. By Withdraw I mean: take no position on whether or not there is even a proposition (ein Gedanke, a complete thought) before one's mind. (The notion of Withdrawal is derived via Benson Mates from Sextus Empiricus.) Withdrawal goes farther than Suspension. To suspend is to refuse to accept or reject a well-defined proposition while accepting that there is such a proposition before one's mind. In the state of Withdrawal I take no position on whether or not there is a well-defined proposition before my mind. In the state of Withdrawal I have before my mind a verbal formulation, and the senses of its constituent words, but I take no position on the question whether the verbal formulation expresses a proposition.
Example. A Trinitarian says, 'There is exactly one God in three divine persons.' Studying the doctrine I come to the conclusion that I can attach no definite sense to it on the ground that it seems to me to entail one or more logical contradictions. That is not a case of rejection or of suspension; it is a case of epoché. I 'bracket' (to borrow a term from Husserl) two questions: the question as to truth-value, and the more fundamental question as to whether or not there is even a proposition (a unified, coherent, sense-structure) before my mind as opposed to an incoherent, un-unified bunch of word-senses.
Suppose you say to me, "Snow is white and snow is not white." Being the charitable fellow that I am known to be, I would not churlishly impute to you the assertion of a formal-logical contradiction. I would take you to be using a contradictory form of words to express a non-contradictory proposition, perhaps, the proposition that snow is white where I didn't relieve myself, but not white where I did. Or something like that. The time-honored method of showing an apparent contradiction to be merely apparent is by making a distinction in respect of time, or respect, or word sense.
But if someone insists that he means literally that snow is white and snow is not white where there is no distinction in respect of time, respect, or sense of the word 'white,' then I wouldn't know what the content of the assertion was. I wouldn't know which proposition my interlocutor was trying get across to me. For if my interlocutor was otherwise rational, the Principle of Charity would forbid me from imputing a contradiction to him. I would have to practice withdrawal.
If you say with a straight face "Snow is white and snow is not white" and you are neither equivocating on any term, nor making any distinction with respect to time or respect, and I charitably refuse to impute to you the assertion of a formal-logical contradiction of the form *p & ~p,* then I must say that I have no idea at all which proposition you are trying to convey to me. And so I naturally practice epoché with respect to your utterance.
(I grant that there is a sense in which a self-contradictory proposition -- *No dog is a dog* for example -- is intelligible (understandable): for if I did not understand the proposition I would not understand it to be self-contradictory and thus necessarily false. What I mean by 'intelligible' here is 'understandable as broadly-logically possibly true.' On this narrow use of 'intelligible,' a claim to the effect that no dog is a dog or that snow both is and is not white is unintelligible.)
Back to the mysterian materialist. I must put his asseverations within the Husserlian brackets. He bids me accept propositions that as far as I can tell are not propositions at all. A proposition is a sense, but the 'propositions' he bids me accept make no sense. For example, he wants me to accept that my present memories of Boston are all identical to states of my brain. That makes no sense. Memory states are intentional states: they have content. No physical state has content, or could have content. So no intentional state could be a physical state. The very idea is unintelligible. To be precise: it is unintelligible as something broadly logically possible. The vocabularies we use when speaking of brain states and mental states respectively are radically incommensurable. Axon, dendrite, synapse, etc. on the one hand, qualia, intentionality, content, etc. on the other. Even if one were to know everything there is to know about the electro-chemistry and neuro-anatomy of the brain one would still have no clue as to how consciousness arises from it. By consciousness, I mean not only qualia but intentional (object-directed) states.
But where there are no thoughts one can always mouth words. So one can mouth the words, 'Memories are in the head' or 'Thoughts are literally brain states.' But one cannot attach a non-contradictory thought to the words.
No doubt there is an illusion of sense. There is nothing syntactically wrong with 'Thoughts are brain states' or 'Sensory qualia are physical features of the brain.' And the individual words have meaning. What's more, the words taken together seem to convey a coherent thought in the way in which 'Quadruplicity drinks procrastination' does not seem to convey a coherent thought. But when the meaning is made explicit, the unintelligibility becomes manifest.
To say of a sensory quale q that it is identical to a brain state b is to say something that is unintelligible. For if q = b, then they share all properties, by the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which no more luminous can be conceived. But it is plain that they do not share all properties: the quale but not the brain state has a phenomenological feel, a Nagelian what it-is-like, an element of irreducible subjectivity. Thus the materialist identity claim is seen with a just a tiny bit of reasoning to be utterly unintelligible.
If you tell me that one and the same item in my skull has both physical and phenomenological properties, then I say you have changed the subject: you now have a dual-aspect theory going. I will then press you on what this third item is that has both physical and phenomenological features.
Suppose you stick to the topic but make a mysterian move. You grant me that it is unintelligible for us that q = b, but insist that it is intelligible in itself. You say it is true in reality despite the irremediable appearance of unintelligibility. It is true and non-contradictory in reality that sensory qualia and thoughts are nothing other than events or processes transpiring inside the skull. You say it is true and non-contradictory that when I think about Boston that thinking is just something going on in my head, adding that it is and will remain a mystery how this could be.
My objection can be put as follows. We have a verbal formulation (VF) such as 'Qualia are brain states.' VF expresses the unintelligible-for-us proposition (UFUP) *Qualia are brain states.* We are told that VF is true even though we, with our cognitive limitations, cannot understand how it is true or even how it could be true. So there must be a true intelligible-in-itself proposition (IIIP) distinct from (UFUP) to which we have no access. How is IIIP related to VF? It cannot be that VF expresses IIIP. VF expresses UFUP. So we are supposed to accept a proposition to which we have no access, a proposition that stands in no specifiable relation to VF. But surely that I cannot do. I cannot accept a proposition to which I have no access.
The formulations of the trinitarian theist appear to be in the same logical boat. I am of course assuming that the logical problem of the Trinity cannot be solved on the discursive plane. That is, one cannot solve it in the usual way by making distinctions. If one could solve it in this way, then there would be no need to make a mysterian move. The doctrine would be rationally acceptable as it stands, though not rationally provable since the triunity of God can be known only by revelation.
To sum up my objection. We are offered a verbal formulation, e.g., "There is one God in three divine persons." This verbal formulation expresses a proposition that is unintelligible to us. (It is unintelligible to us because contradictions can be derived from it using given doctrinal elements and unquestionable notions such as the transitivity of identity.) We are assured, however, that while the manifest proposition is unintelligible to us, the verbal formulation expresses a second proposition that is true and intelligible in itself. But since this proposition is inaccessible, one annot accept it, reject it, or suspend judgment with respect to it.
If you tell me that there are not two propositions, but that one and the same proposition is both unintelligible to us but intelligible in itself, then I will ask you which proposition this is.
I suppose what I am saying is that a true proposition that is a mystery is an item so indeterminate that one cannot take up any attitude to it except that of Withdrawal or epoché as I defined this term.
"To sum up my objection. We are offered a verbal formulation, e.g., "There is one God in three divine persons." This verbal formulation expresses a proposition that is unintelligible to us. (It is unintelligible to us because contradictions can be derived from it using given doctrinal elements and unquestionable notions such as the transitivity of identity.) We are assured, however, that while the manifest proposition is unintelligible to us, the verbal formulation expresses a second proposition that is true and intelligible in itself. But since this proposition is inaccessible, one annot accept it, reject it, or suspend judgment with respect to it."
"I suppose what I am saying is that a true proposition that is a mystery is an item so indeterminate that one cannot take up any attitude to it except that of Withdrawal or epoché as I defined this term."
I don't know, but I'd be interested in what you think about the following. There are lots of mathematical sentences of which I have some understanding, maybe even a great deal, but I'm uncertain whether they express a true proposition. Perhaps there's sufficient ambiguity such that I can derive a contradiction from a certain sentence together with obvious axioms and rules. However, I also know that I'm rational in believing a mathematician who informs me that the mathematical sentence is indeed true, but I just do not know enough math to grasp that true proposition. (In fact there are plenty of mathematical sentences I accept as true even though I have no idea what they mean.)
This situation, I think, is similar to what a number believe about the doctrinal statements about the Trinity. The Trinitarian formulation (e.g.) as concretely expressed in the Nicene Creed is to be accepted as true on the basis of authority--the Church's as God's representative. Even if you can't fully grasp all the propositions expressed by the formulation, you are to accept as true the concrete formulation as expressing true propositions. If one is rational in thinking the Church is reliable when it comes to pronouncing which concrete doctrinal formulations are to be accepted as true, then presumably one could be rational in believing a concrete trinitarian formulation is true.
I hope that makes sense.
Posted by: Tully Borland | Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 11:17 AM
I resist the claim that in order to give assent to a proposition you must apprehend its content more than is possible when it plainly appears to you to entail a contradiction.
I resist it on two counts. First, I think you overestimate the obscurity of such propositions. To be sure, if p is genuinely contradictory and I see that it is so, then it it is incomprehensible to me because incomprehensible in itself, and I rightly regard it as incomprehensible to me becaue I see [success verb] its self-contradictory nature. But in the dialectical situation at hand we are investigating propositions that ex hyp are not really contradictory but plainly seem so to me. This plain seeming is strong evidence for its incomprehensibility: strong, but defeasible.
For instance, suppose a physicist tells me light is a wave and a particle, which seems plainly contradictory to me. I'm tempted to seek some way to reinterpret his statement so that it makes sense, in the minimal sense of not seeming contradictory, but he advises me not to do that because any interpretation that makes sense to me, lacking as I do the necessary mathematical training, is further away from the true meaning of his statement than the apparently contradictory interpretation. This explicit statement of his defeats the normal dictates of the principle of charity to reinterpret a plainly apparent contradiction, and my reasonable confidence that as a physicist he knows what he's talking about defeats my otherwise reasonable conclusion that what plainly seems contradictory is incomprehensible. There certainly remains a real, yes, even a severe deficiency in my understanding of the content of the proposition he intends to assert. But this is consistent with the beliefs (1) that what he intends is closer to the apparently contradictory thought I have in mind when I hear his statement than to any not-apparently-contradictory reinterpretation I could come up with, and (2) what he intends is true.
I have deliberately phrased this so as to focus attention on the proposition he intends, as the object of my belief, rather than the thoughts in my mind when I interpret his statements. For this is my second criticism of the claim above: in order to (reasonably) believe a proposition it is not necessary to have any apprehension of its content in mind at all. Suppose you tell me, "The last thing Mr. X said last night was true, indeed proven beyond all possibility of doubt." I know you to be of such intellectual virtue that you wouldn't say such a thing unless it were well-nigh certainly the case. I then rigidly designate the proposition Mr. X expressed with that statement (whatever it was), q. I can then reasonably form the belief that q even without any knowledge whatsoever of what Mr. X said, let alone what he meant by it.
In order to believe a proposition reasonably I require nothing more than an indirect way of making it the object of my mental act, together with some indirect reason to believe it, both of which are supplied when I have reason to believe that God has made statements by which he intends to assert some proposition largely incomprehensible to me. Let's designate as 'r' the proposition that God intends by those particular statements, whatever it may be. It is both possible and reasonble for me to believe r, even if I have no apprehension at all of the content of r.
Of course the importance of us believing the orthodox doctrine of the trinity and our ability to formulate it other than by directly quoting divinely revealed statements is wrapped up in the possibility of our having some significant apprehension of r. But for the purpose of responding to your argument I don't need to show that the degree of apprehension reaches some lower limit, since there is no lower limit below which a proposition too little apprehended (as to its content) cannot be reasonably believed.
Posted by: Christopher McCartney | Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 12:50 PM
Thanks for the comments, Tully.
>>(In fact there are plenty of mathematical sentences I accept as true even though I have no idea what they mean.)<<
Very interesting. So there are some sentences you accept even though you don't know what they mean, which is to say that you accept those sentences even though you do not know which propositions they express. So what are you accepting? You are accepting that a sentence expresses some true proposition or other.
But you are also accepting that there are some experts who have access to that proposition *in propria persona*; that you could be brought to have that access; and that the verbal formulation of the proposition is not unintelligible to the experts.
Applying this to the Trinity, you would be accepting that the sentence 'There is exactly one God in three divine persons' refers to (not expresses) some true proposition or other, a proposition that you cannot state, but only refer to in a general sort of way.
The doctrine of the Trinity would come to this: There is some true proposition unbeknownst to us in this life, a proposition that we cannot formulate, and it is this proposition that is referred to by 'There is exactly one God in three divine persons.'
It looks like the Trinitarian case and the mathematical case are disanalogous. For one thing, in the math case the sentence expresses a proposition, one that is not accessible to you, but is accessible to some experts, while in the Trinitarian case the proposition is not accessible to anyone in this life, and so cannot be said to be expressed by the Trinitarian sentence.
Apart from the disanalogy, it seems unstatisfactory to say that doctrine of the Trinity is that there is some true proposition unbeknownst to us in this life, a proposition that we cannot formulate, and it is this proposition that is referred to by 'There is exactly one God in three divine persons.'
For if we don't know what this proposition is, then we don't know what we are talking about.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 01:30 PM
"Apart from the disanalogy, it seems unstatisfactory to say that doctrine of the Trinity is that there is some true proposition unbeknownst to us in this life, a proposition that we cannot formulate, and it is this proposition that is referred to by 'There is exactly one God in three divine persons.'
For if we don't know what this proposition is, then we don't know what we are talking about."
Thanks, Bill. First, I agree that if we do not know what this proposition is, then we don't know what we're talking about with much precision. Presumably we do know that we are talking about God, persons, etc. (and not about Satan or Bob Dylan). But we do not refer to the relevant proposition. Second, I think that it can be rational for one to "withdraw" from the statement for the reasons you say in the body of the post. But to show that it is irrational for others to believe on the basis of their beliefs in the reliability of the Church in indicating which important concrete statements to accept, it seems that one would have to show that the church is unreliable in pronouncing on such matters or that one is not rational in believing the Church is reliable on such matters.
So even if not a single person in the church could express the relevant Trinitarian proposition, IF one rationally believes that the church is reliable in indicating which important concrete doctrines are to be accepted, then one might be rational in accepting (e.g.) the concrete doctrine of the Nicene Creed. Then when the mysterian is saying "I believe that [fill in the Nicene Creed]" the mysterian is expressing his belief that the sentences refer to true propositions (about God, the Son, etc.) which no one as yet is known by the mysterian to be able to express, but that he is rational in believing are true.
Posted by: Tully Borland | Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 03:59 PM
C. C. Very good comments!
>>But in the dialectical situation at hand we are investigating propositions that ex hyp are not really contradictory but plainly seem so to me. This plain seeming is strong evidence for its incomprehensibility: strong, but defeasible.<<
It seems to me that the dialectical situation is one in which it is up for grabs whether the propositions in question are really contradictory. Although I would say that 'Qualia are brain states' is contradictory, and thus necessarily false, I am not dogmatic about it. And although I am strongly inclined to accept the tri-unity of God, I am troubled by the logical problems.
>>For this is my second criticism of the claim above: in order to (reasonably) believe a proposition it is not necessary to have any apprehension of its content in mind at all. Suppose you tell me, "The last thing Mr. X said last night was true, indeed proven beyond all possibility of doubt." I know you to be of such intellectual virtue that you wouldn't say such a thing unless it were well-nigh certainly the case. I then rigidly designate the proposition Mr. X expressed with that statement (whatever it was), q. I can then reasonably form the belief that q even without any knowledge whatsoever of what Mr. X said, let alone what he meant by it.<<
I think you are right that one can have *de re* beliefs with respect to propositions. I can believe, of a proposition, that it is true, without knowing which proposition this is. So I can believe of the last proposition expressed by Mr X last night that it is true without having any idea as to what this proposition is.
And so I might say that I believe whatever the one, true, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church teaches with respect to the nature of God without knowing what it teaches. And since it teaches the tri-unity of God, I believe, of the proposition that God is triune, that it is true.
If you ask me what it is that the Church teaches about God, I could then say, "I have no idea; but whatever it teaches I believe to be true."
At which point you might become justifiably irritated. "You mean to tell me that you believe what the Church teaches despite having no idea what the Church teaches?"
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 04:03 PM
Tully,
Looks like you can make common cause with C. C.
Let's assume that the Church teaches with authority. And let's set aside the question which church this is. (You are not a R. C. are you?) And so your point is that it is rational to believe what the Church teaches even in those cases in which what it teaches is unintelligible to us. And so it is rational to believe that God is triune even if no one has ever been able to explain how this is logically possible, even if the doctrine appears to us and indeed must appear to us in this life, as logically contradictory.
Have I understood your position?
Well, what about the competing magisteria, Science and the Church?
How do you decide between mysterian naturalism and mysterian supernaturalism?
Suppose I say that I am not a naturalst because nat'lism can't explain why anything at all exists, how life emerged from the abiotic, how consciousness arose from pre-conscous life, and moral sense, and reason, and how intentionality is possible, etc. The naturalist could just go mysterian, right?
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 04:30 PM
Bill:
This is a great discussion, so pardon my attempt to just cut your Gordian knot.
Mysterianism isn't about propositions, but things themselves. Right? The putative mystery is the qualia-physical relation, or mind-body dualism, or God's tri-uniate nature, or the Real Presence despite the appearance of mere bread and wine. Being knowers, we naturally desire to couch what little we do know of such things in propositions. But the propositions themselves shouldn't be the mystery under discussion. Right? For example, when I read Chalmers, I didn't take him as a mysterian about certain propositions, but about the real connection between matter and mind. The propositions will have all the usual properties of being true or false, or closer or farther from reality, etc.
Chris Kirk Speaks
Posted by: Chris Kirk Speaks | Monday, September 14, 2015 at 09:33 AM
Bill,
"Suppose I say that I am not a naturalst because nat'lism can't explain why anything at all exists, how life emerged from the abiotic, how consciousness arose from pre-conscous life, and moral sense, and reason, and how intentionality is possible, etc. The naturalist could just go mysterian, right?"
Since most naturalists nowadays consider themselves epistemic naturalists first, their mysterianism seems provisional: we cannot explain the putatively non-natural for the time-being.
An ontological naturalist would have to wrestle instead with the problem that, if he knows so little about the non-natural he allows himself to assert, then he cannot honestly claim he *knows* naturalism is true.
Chris Kirk Speaks
Posted by: Chris Kirk Speaks | Monday, September 14, 2015 at 10:09 AM
Chris Kirk Speaks:
>>Mysterianism isn't about propositions, but things themselves. Right?<<
Well, there could be a mysterian line about propositions as such. For example, propositions are held by many to be abstract objects, hence neither causally active nor passive. Suppose further that one can know only that with which one can causally interact. So it might occur to some philosopher to say: we know some propositions but it is and must remain a mystery how this is possible.
But I take your point: the standard examples are things like the qualia-brain relation. A quale is not a proposition and neither is a brain state. But if I state that qualia are identical to brain states, I am affirming a proposition, a proposition from which a contradiction can be derived. A mysterian will say that the proposition is true, but it is a mystery how the proposition can be true.
As for your second comment, my understanding of McGinn is that our cognitive architecture disallows us insight into the mind-brain relation and that this architecture is unalterable. I take this to be an entailment of mysterianism. In the theological cases, the idea is that in this life we will not be able to understand the Trinity, the Real Presence, and so on.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Monday, September 14, 2015 at 12:34 PM
"You mean to tell me that you believe what the Church teaches despite having no idea what the Church teaches?"
You cannot be said really to have faith in the Christian religion if you literally have no idea what its content is. This is because having faith involves more than affirming in some indirect way the propositions the church affirms; it requires notitia, the first of Martin Luther's three elements of faith: notitia, assensus, fiducia. Someone who has literally no idea of the content of the doctrine of the Trinity, even if he can indirectly affirm it, lacks notitia, and is in that sense not a "believer" in the doctrine.
But that's not the position we are in. There are plenty of comprehensible trinitarian heresies, and we understand that VF, whatever else it means, certainly includes the rejection of these heresies. That's a significant ammount of notitia. Indeed, our difficulty is not lack of notitia but, so to speak, surpluss: it says so much that it seems to be contradicting itself.
Forgive me if I'm reading things into your argument that aren't there, but I think I may be perceiving an implicit assumption: that a proposition that seems incomprehensible-to-me really is incomprehensible-to-me (or at least not presently comprehended by me) because the act of comprehension is phenomenally transparent. Saying "I seem not to be comprehending a proposition here, yet I really am" is a bit like saying "I seem to be having a certain phenomenal experience, but I'm really not." There's something not altogether rationally kosher about that.
But there's an ambiguity. When the reason I seem to lack comprehension is because I lack notitia, it really is the case that I lack comprehension. But when the reason I seem to lack comprehension is because the proposition I am thinking about seems to be contradictory, the appearance of a lack of comprehension is dependent on the appearance of contradiction. In other words, the apparent lack of comprehension is not something I see just by looking at the introspectible character of my thinking; it's something I infer from the appearance of contradiction in the proposition, the object of my thinking. And if I'm mistaken about the contradictory character of that proposition then my feeling that I'm not comprehending anything is groundless.
Posted by: Christopher McCartney | Monday, September 14, 2015 at 01:00 PM
Bill,
Some of your examples of unintelligible propositions are drawn from the philosophy of mind and you locate the unintelligibility in violations of the law of Indiscernibility of Identicals. We can find parallel examples. Eddington's table is solid but Rutherford tells us it is mostly empty space linked together by electron orbits. However, over the past century we have grown comfortable with this contradiction, partly perhaps because we have an account of the table's solidity in terms of the relative sizes of its atoms and the wavelength of the light by which we see it. Generalising from this, my suggestion is that IndI may not apply when we try to inject a manifest image property like solidity into the scientific image, and vice versa. We should keep manifest and scientific properties well separated (*). We can however explain at least some manifest properties in terms of scientific properties. This restriction on IndI applicability removes the contradiction from the q=b equation that leads so immediately to its unintelligibility, but the mystery returns in our inability to explain manifest qualia with scientific brain-states or whatever, and more generally, in how the two images are to be reconciled. Clearly this strategy does not work for the trinitarian puzzle.
(*) You hint at this, I think, when you say "The vocabularies we use when speaking of brain states and mental states respectively are radically incommensurable."
Posted by: David Brightly | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 04:41 AM
Bill,
Thanks! And sorry for the delay.
-- You say, "No physical state has content, or could have content."
I just don't see that. What's your usage for 'physical'?
-- "We are offered a verbal formulation, e.g., 'There is one God in three divine persons.' ... We are assured ... that ... the ... formulation expresses a ... proposition that is true ... But since this proposition is inaccessible, one cannot accept it, reject it, or suspend judgment with respect to it."
What about this proposition? There are three divine supposits and just one divine substance.
Seems intelligible to me. So here's a challenge: derive from it an explicit self-contradiction. Below are the involved, salient concepts, explained.
------
Substance = an individual being that has at least one suppositality.
Suppositality (= subsistence) = inherent ontological principle of a being in virtue of which it is not a feature (accident) of anything.
(Comment: No substance is a feature of anything. This is due to some ontological principle inherent to the substance. The principle is not the nature (essence) of the substance, nor even its individual nature. For it is a large step from a nature to its bearer. E.g., it is a large step from Socrateity to Socrates; Socrateity is not Socrates yet. The principle that turns the individual nature of a substance into the substance is called suppositality.)
Individual being = a being that has individual nature.
Individual nature = inherent ontological principle of a being in virtue of which it has what is individual about what it is.
(Comment: Nature (essence) is an inherent ontological principle of a being in virtue of which it is what it is. A distinction is to be made between specific nature and individual nature. Specific nature is an inherent ontological principle of a being in virtue of which it is what it is, but not in virtue of which it has that which is individual in what it is. The inherent ontological principle which turns the specific nature of a being into its individual nature is called individual difference. In some beings, individual nature, specific nature, and individual difference may differ. Other beings may have a simple, non-composite individual nature. (When no individual difference is needed to individuate them.))
Being = e.g., a human, an animal, a plant, a feature (such as white, two-feet long, in the market, double as that, yesterday, sitting, having shoes on, cutting, or being cut).
(Comment: 'Being' (‘ens’ in Latin) is a primitive concept, gathered from examples. Any being, in the suggested sense, is a substance or a feature (accident) of a substance. Any feature of a substance that can loose it is a being distinct from the substance; otherwise the substance could not loose it.)
Supposit (= suppositum = hypostasis) = that which has just one suppositality.
(Comment: It seems that any supposit is individual: none can have more than one instance. Also, any supposit persists (if it is in time) and exists all at once (so none is an event or a process). Examples of supposits: Socrates, a horse, a tree, a divine person in the Trinity. Not all individuals are supposits. For any supposit has unity that individuals like planets or cities do not have.)
Divine supposit = a supposit that has divine nature.
Divine substance = a substance that has divine nature.
Divine nature = a nature in virtue of which something is omnipotent.
------
-- One expected objection against the supposit Trinitarian proposition above:
If there are just three supposits with an individual (divine) nature, then there are just three beings with an individual (divine) nature and with at least one suppositality, and so there are just three (divine) substances with an individual nature. As the more general principle woud state, if there is a set of A’s each of which is a B (where ‘A’ and ‘B’ are sortals), then there are not fewer B’s than A’s. (Thus Cartwright, “On the Logical Problem of the Trinity”, 1987.)
A reply:
Three (divine) supposits may be just one individual (divine) being with at least one suppositality, and so just one (divine) substance. In other words, three times a (divine) supposit sometimes may not be three times a (divine) being. This seems to many impossible – or at least extremely improbable. But it is not self-evidently impossible. Similarly for the general principle: it is not clearly valid. (Thus Geach, “Identity”, 1967, and “Ontological Relativity and Relative Identity”, 1973.)
Posted by: Vlastimil Vohánka | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 05:41 AM
Also, even if I doubt that no physical state could have content, I don't have any specific and evidently possible idea or model _how_ such a state could have content.
Likewise, even if I doubt that the supposit Trinity doctrine is self-contradictory, I still don't have any specific and evidently possible idea or model _how_ it could be true.
More in that paper of mine.
Posted by: Vlastimil Vohánka | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 06:22 AM
Hello, Bill. Thanks for the substantive post.
If I might go existential for a moment, there is an important difference between mysterian materialism and mysterian trinitarianism. A position of acceptance or rejection on trinitarianism is said to be soteriologically momentous and unavoidable. As Pascal said, we must take a stand. We are "embarked."
If it is the case that human agents must take an accept/reject position on trinitarianism, then there is such a position to take. If there is such a position to take, then there is an intelligible proposition at hand. Thus, if one must take an a/r position, then some accurate account of trinitarianism is intelligible for human agents.
The contrapositive is that if there is no intelligible account, then it's not the case that one must take an a/r position. This seems to be the point you made in the final sentence of your post.
Christian orthodoxy apparently holds that we must take an a/r position. Is it consistent to hold the conjunction of (a) we must take a position on the doctrine of the trinity, and (b) the doctrine is a genuine mystery? And can one who says the conjunction is consistent go mysterian if asked to explain why the conjunction is consistent?
Posted by: Elliott | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 08:59 AM
"Let's assume that the Church teaches with authority. And let's set aside the question which church this is. (You are not a R. C. are you?) And so your point is that it is rational to believe what the Church teaches even in those cases in which what it teaches is unintelligible to us. And so it is rational to believe that God is triune even if no one has ever been able to explain how this is logically possible, even if the doctrine appears to us and indeed must appear to us in this life, as logically contradictory."
"Have I understood your position?"
Not quite. I wasn't trying to argue or assume that the Church (R.C., Orthodox, etc.) is, in point of fact, an authority. My point is just about what it would take to show that the mysterian trinitarian is irrational who believed that concrete propositions were true on the basis of his belief that the authority in question reliably indicates which theological concrete theological statements are to be accepted. (This was prompted by your claim in the post about irrationality and not, say, understanding.) It seems to me that one would have to show that (a) the authority is unreliable (e.g. by showing that numerous statements are false or unintelligible, that the central concrete doctrines really should be peripheral, etc.) or (b) one is irrational in accepting a few statements referring to unknown propositions from an otherwise reliable authority when it comes to dictating which concrete statements are to be accepted.
"Suppose I say that I am not a naturalst because nat'lism can't explain why anything at all exists, how life emerged from the abiotic, how consciousness arose from pre-conscous life, and moral sense, and reason, and how intentionality is possible, etc. The naturalist could just go mysterian, right?"
I'm unsure. Here is a parallel case to the one I'm describing above: The naturalist goes mysterian but believes that the scientific community (or members of the APA?!) is reliable in dictating which concrete statements are to be accepted. How could one show that this naturalist is irrational in accepting the mysterian statements on the basis of this belief in the reliability of the scientific community/experts? In the same way as I describe above. Perhaps it turns out that the mysterian is rational in accepting the mysterian statements along with the rest. But rationality (rational acceptance rather than knowledge, understanding, etc.) has a fairly low epistemic bar to meet.
With that I bow out. Thanks for entertaining my thoughts and replying. Great post, by the way.
Posted by: Tully Borland | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 10:27 AM
Penetrating comment, Elliot. We must never lose sight of the Existential lest philosophy end up a mere academic game of logic-chopping.
An even clearer example is the Incarnation. One's salvation depends on accepting it. If I must either accept it or reject it, then there must be some content intelligible to me (not merely intelligible in itself) that I either accept or reject. If there is no such content, then it is not the case that I must either accept or reject.
You are right to discern that I seem committed by the above post to the latter.
A possible response would be: Trinity and Incarnation, though impossible to understand in this life, are yet not totally meaningless. After all, we understand the God-Man identity theory well enough to distinguish it from the God is three-in-one theory. And Muslims understand both well enough to reject both. You must accept both despite their both being mysteries. Furthermore, it is a mystery why one's salvation should depend on such acceptance!
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 10:40 AM
Maybe, as some of the interlocutors have suggested above, if we must take a position of acceptance or rejection, the acceptance position is something like this:
"I have good reason to trust God and to trust that the doctrine is divine revelation. Thus, if the doctrine is a mystery to us, I trust that it's meaningful in itself, and that it's true."
We might also note that rationally believing that P does not always require showing how P is possible. Suppose a submarine were to take a team of archaeologists to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The team finds there clear evidence of an ancient city. The archaeologists would be reasonable to believe that persons built the city even if nobody could explain how.
If the team were to surface on the island of Saipan and hold a press conference, they'd be rational to claim that the city was built by personal agents, even if they couldn't explain how it happened.
Posted by: Elliott | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 02:23 PM
VV writes,
>>-- You say, "No physical state has content, or could have content."
I just don't see that. What's your usage for 'physical'?<<
What I mean is that no physical item possesses intrinsic intentionality, intrinsic object-directedness. No physical item is intrinsically about anything.
Given this clarification, do you still disagree? And if we can't agree on something as basic as this, what could we agree on?
Can you give me an example of an object-directed physical state? Some of your brain states for example?
Is it your view that it is your brain, or parts of your brain, that is thinking when you are thinking?
You will agree, I hope, that even if some of your mental states are brain states, not all of your brain states are mental states. If you agree with this, then what distinguishes the brain states that are mental states from the brain states that are not?
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Tuesday, September 15, 2015 at 02:56 PM
Bill,
I don't know whether I should agree.
For you still haven't said how you are using the term 'physical'. If you label something that way only if all its features are spatial, or spatial plus temporal, then it really seems that nothing physical could have content. But then the question comes, Why hyperdimensional manifolds or strings could not have content, even though they would not be physical in that limited sense?
No, I can't give you an example of a hyperdimensional entity or state which would have content. But I don't know that there couldn't be any any such entity or state. Do you? If you think you do, aren't you presupposing that everything physical is spatial? (Check McGinn on this, as cited in my paper.)
Even if many brain states could not have contents, perhaps they could be causally connected with hyperdimensional entities or states having content. In fact, even these latter states might be states of the brain itself, if the brain has a hyperdimensional aspect.
Granted, I know next to nothing about hyperdimensions, including their very possibility and the question what they would have to be like to have content. So I am quite open to be convinced by arguments that hyperdimensional entities and states are impossible, or that it is impossible for them to have content.
Posted by: Vlastimil | Friday, September 18, 2015 at 02:35 AM
>>For you still haven't said how you are using the term 'physical'. If you label something that way only if all its features are spatial, or spatial plus temporal, then it really seems that nothing physical could have content.<<
What do you mean by 'features'? Properties? But surely the properties of physical items are not themselves physical. (Or at least this is an open question.) Suppose a particle has a negative charge. The property of having a negative charge does not itself have a negative charge, nor is it located at a space-time position.
Do I think everything physical is in space? Yes. Do you have a counterexample?
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Friday, September 18, 2015 at 05:33 AM
V:
If there are irreducible dispositions in nature, then you might exploit the analogy between dispositionality and intentionality to argue that some physical items have something analogous to intentional content.
Posted by: Bill Vallicella | Friday, September 18, 2015 at 06:37 AM
Bill,
Suppose 'features' means 'tropes'. Why say that tropes of physical items are not themselves physical? In case they really aren't, suppose 'features' means 'aspects' or 'moments'.
Granted, I don't know that non-spatial -- say, hyperdimensional -- physical items exist. But I don't know they don't either. Do you? How? And if you don't, how do you know they could not have content? (Literally, that is; not just analogically like dispositions.)
Posted by: Vlastimil Vohánka | Friday, September 18, 2015 at 04:07 PM