Footnote 190 in Vlastimil Vohánka, Modality, Logical Probability, and the Trinity: A Defence of Weak Skepticism

To put it oxymoronically, I am seriously toying with taking a mysterian line with respect to such Christian dogmas as Trinity and Incarnation.  To this end, I need to come to grips with our Czech friend Vlastimil Vohánka's footnote 190 on pp. 79-80 of his 2011 dissertation.  This subject-matter is difficult, so put on your thinking caps.  I will first quote the entire footnote, and then report on what I make of it.

190 WMST [Weak Modal Skepticism about the Trinity Doctrine] is rather a (part of a) meta-theory of the Trinity than a (part of a) theory of the Trinity. It‘s a position in the epistemology of the belief in the Trinity. According to WMST, the Trinity doctrine is a mystery, in a sense. In which sense?

Dale Tuggy distinguishes the following senses: (i) a proposition not known before divine revelation of it, but which has now been revealed by God and is known to some; (ii) a proposition which cannot be known independently of divine revelation, but which has now been revealed by God and is known to some; (iii) a proposition we don‘t completely understand; (iv) a true proposition we can‘t explain; (v) a true proposition we can‘t fully or adequately explain; (vi) an unintelligible proposition, the meaning of which can‘t be grasped; (vii) a true proposition which one should believe even though it seems, even after careful reflection, to be logically and/or otherwise impossible and thus false. See D. Tuggy ―The Unfinished Business of Trinitarian Theorizing,‖ Religious Studies 39, No. 2 (2003), pp. 175-176; and D. Tuggy, ―Trinity,‖ in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 Edition), E. N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/trinity (accessed October 14, 2011), # 4.

Tuggy does not specify the modality of his 'cannot.' Taking it as psychological impossibility, we may plausibly say that if the Trinity doctrine is logically possible, WMST implies the doctrine is a mystery in the sense (iii). WMST leaves the issue of other senses of 'mystery' open even under the assumption of logical possibility of the doctrine. Under the assumption that the Trinity doctrine is true, WMST implies the doctrine is a mystery in the senses (iii) and (v).

Further, WMST implies mysterianism about the Trinity, in Tuggy‘s sense of the word. Mysterianism about the Trinity says that the true theory of the Trinity must, given our present epistemic limitations, to some degree lack meaning which we can understand or lack meaning which seems to us logically possible. Cf. D. Tuggy, ―Trinity,‖ op. cit., # 4. The implication by WMST of what Tuggy (ibid.) calls as positive mysterianism is much less clear. By this sort of mysterianism, he means the claim that the true theory of the Trinity must seem to us logically impossible. But there‘s some distance between (psychologically) necessary absence of evident (logical) possibility and (psychologically) necessary appearance of (logical) impossibility. WMST also does not seem to imply the position labeled by Tuggy as negative mysterianism: the claim that the true theory of the Trinity cannot seem logically possible and cannot seem logically impossible. (Ibid.) If the Trinity doctrine, in my sense, exhausted the true theory of the Trinity, then negative mysterianism would imply WMST. But it still would be contentious to assert that the converse holds, too, because the appearance of logical impossibility might be (psychologically)possible under WMST. Finally, it‘s worth noting that although positive mysterianism and negative mysterianism are incompatible, there‘s still a middle ground between them. A mysterian could hold – against both of the two contraries – that the Trinity doctrine need not, but can seem logically impossible; or that the Trinity doctrine need not seem logically impossible, but can seem logically possible.

Let's see if I can clarify this in my own terms.  

Positive mysterianism (PM): this is the epistemological meta-thesis that the Trinity doctrine, given our present cognitive limitations, must appear to us as logically impossible.

Negative mysterianism:(NM): this is the epistemological meta-thesis that the Trinity doctrine, given our present cognitive limitations, cannot seem to us logically possible and cannot seem to us logically impossible.  

What is the force of the 'must' and the 'cannot' in (PM) and (NM)?  Following Vohanka, we can take the modal terms as referring to psychological necessity and psychological impossibility, respectively.  Thus on PM we can't help but find the doctrine to be logically impossible. In this sense it must appear to us as logically impossible. This is due to the actual constitution of our minds, a constitution  which may be metaphysically contingent.  

But who are we?  You could say human animals, but I prefer to say discursive intellects or ectypal intellects whether biologically human or not.  There may be some extraterrestrial non-human mysterians out there. 

And what is meant by 'present' cognitive limitations'? I take 'present' wide open so as to cover our entire embodied existence or perhaps our entire embodied fallen existence. Our present cognitive limitations are our limitations 'here below' to use an old-fashioned religious phrase or our limitations 'here and now.' We should hold open the possibility that in our prelapsarian state we did not suffer from our present cognitive limitations.

Disjunctive Mysterianism (DM): "[Disjunctive] mysterianism about the Trinity says that the true theory of the Trinity must, given our present epistemic limitations, to some degree lack meaning which we can understand or lack meaning which seems to us logically possible.

Vlastimil tells us that according to WMST, the Trinity doctrine is a mystery, in a sense.  In what sense? In a sense that implies (DM). It seems to me that Vlastimil's attitude toward the Trinity doctrine is not one of skepticism or doubt; what he is doing is making a non-skeptical claim about the intelligibility to us of the Trinity doctrine.  (Needless to say, the doctrine and the Trinity itself, the reality behind the doctrine if there is one, must be distinguished.)

It may help to distinguish five possible attitudes towards a proposition:

1) Accept as true.
2) Reject as false.
3) Reject as meaningless.
4) Suspend judgment as to whether either true or false.  
5) Suspend judgment as to whether either meaningful or meaningless. (The epoche of the Pyrrhonists.)

(5), when applied to the Trinitarian proposition, is the attitude according to which one suspends judgment on the question as to whether or not one even has a (Fregean) proposition before one's mind when one intones or hears the Trinitarian formula or verbalism, "There is one God in three divine persons."

The last two, (4) and (5), are forms of skepticism.

Let the proposition be: There is one God in three divine persons.

It seems to me that my and V's attitude to the Trinitarian proposition is none of the above five. 

I am inclined to accept (PM) while V. is apparently accepting (DM).  Both of us are making non-skeptical claims about the intelligibility to us (not in itself) of the Trinitarian proposition.

Does this seem right?  

Comments

[Vlastimil]

Bill,

I think I agree.

My WMST says it's psychologically impossible for us to be objectively _certain_ (or, to know with _Evidenz_) that the Trinity doctrine (there are three divine persons but just one divine substance) is conceptually ('logically', I say in the diss.) possible.

Because the doctrine lacks for us in the objectively certain (evident) conceptual possibility, it lacks to some degree in meaning which we could understand or in meaning which would seem to us conceptually possible. Evidently possible propositions are better understood than others.

I argue for WMST inductively; like you do for the intractability of all (substantial) philosophical problems. I even cite you as I introduce the inductive strategy. But I do not come up with any theoretical explanation for the inductive fact; mainly because I don't know of any that would sound plausible (to me).

I also try to define the notion of psychological impossibility. If interested, you can take a look into the published version, which I emailed to you. (Still clumsy, but better than the diss.)